Fact or Fiction?

Fiction.

The Southern Nevada Home Builders Association, d/b/a the Southern Nevada Water Authority, used public money to advertise the agency's deceptive arguments justifying its attempt to defoliate rural Nevada in a full-page ad in Sunday's Review-Journal.

These ads go for about $50K, which might seem like a lot of money but is really peanuts compared to the millions the SNWA spends to prop up its environmentally destructive and myopic policies. Anyhoo, the ad, titled "FACT or fiction?" argues:

“Rural communities, ranchers and wildlife are protected by Nevada water law and federal environmental law. (1) In an effort to reduce our community’s 90 percent dependence on the drought-plagued Colorado River, the SNWA will draw upon unused groundwater supplies within Nevada.(2) The SNWA is proposing to access water that is naturally replenished each year – just as farmers and eastern Nevada residents do.(3) The SNWA will install a system of wells to sustainably manage the withdrawal of available, unused groundwater, and the project will be overseen by federal agencies including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nevada State Engineer.(4) The bottom line is that the SNWA is committed to responsible groundwater management – and the law demands it.”(5)

To address these points in order: (1) Conservationists have had to sue the federal government to protect species that are on the brink of extinction, and even when facing court orders, the feds are loathe to act when they go up against powerful commercial interests such as the SNWA. (2) By "unused water," the SNWA is relying on Nevada state law that defines the resource as that which is not making people any money. That includes the water that is going to support the trees and plants and critters in rural Nevada, including such unusable resources as the Great Basin National Park. (3) Show me a farmer that wants to take 65 billion gallons out of rural Nevada and Utah annually. (4) Of course, the SNWA will be responsible for the monitoring of the water drawdown. I'm sure we can trust their figures. (5) Complete horseshit.

The fact, er, "FACT" is that the Water Grab depends on taking the water that now goes to support native foliage through "evaporative transpiration." Eliminating that foliage consigns the region to a dust bowl. The SNWA and its corporate clients are counting on being able to fool the public and prevent governmental oversight just long enough to build the pipeline and drain the aquifers - by which time it will be too late to stop them.

For more on the science, see the Las Vegas Sun here.

Utah Gov Throws Down the Gauntlet

Apologies, my fellow prisoners, for failing to update this blog as frequently as I'd like. Something about an election has taken up a wee bit of time around the PLAN offices that I call my second home...
Anyhoos, there's still lots happening around the water, Yucca Mountain and alternative energy fronts - and I mean LOTS. Friends of the Earth, PLAN and Sierra Club are working on a coordinated media campaign on Yucca Mountain - details to come.
Faculty at the College of Southern Nevada are working to fund a training program for folks to work with and install clean alternative energy systems in homes and business - the kind of thing that could help fulfill the promise of this state as a leader in renewable energy nationwide.
And Gov. Jon Hunstman of Utah has thrown down the gauntlet on the our friendly local developer's drive (beneath the mask of the SNWA) to defoliate rural Nevada and Utah. Huntsman is braving inclusion on the SNWA enemies list in this recent speech in Utah:

"Now I have told Nevada in no uncertain terms that we are not going to budge an inch in terms of giving up our water to their casinos in Clark County which is exactly what they want it for. I don’t care if there are 10, 200, or 2,000, people living in the West Desert (of Utah); if it in any way impacts their way of life for their viability in the West Desert we want nothing to do with it.
"So we are simply asking for science to determine when it begins to affect these straws that they are pumping on, on the Nevada side of the border, and taking water when does it actually affect our water table?
"We want to know the science; we want to know exactly the implications of what Nevada is doing before we agree to anything. Now I know we are going to be up against tremendous pressure, I feel it coming, I was in Nevada yesterday with Senator Reid speaking at a conference on clean energy. It’s a very real issue.
"Now I haven’t said publicly that we are about ready to commit troops to the Utah Nevada border, but we are coming darn close."

Of course, for years the response from the SNWA has been "science, schmience, slot machines and tract houses make more money than farms, endangered species and people. So get out of the way."
Shout out to Terry Marasco for the feed on Huntsman's talk, btw.

Here's the link to Huntsman's website, with edited comments.

Wonketteer Ken Layne...

On the rapidly vanishing desert tortoise that is such an inconvenience for the home builders and their enablers in Clark County government and the federal Interior Department. This story, like real life, does not have a happy ending. At least not yet. And especially not if Clark County actually builds the unnecessary, expensive and environmentally disastrous Ivanpah Airport 40 miles south of the city and ground zero for land set-aside for tortoise preservation.

"What I need to see is a desert tortoise, in the wild. I started coming out here in the 1980s and I’ve never come across one of the Living Fossils. I must see tortoises, while we still have some. They used to be so common in springtime that campers would fill their pockets with the babies and imprison the gentle critters as backyard pets."

Layne's regular column in LA CityBeat can be found here.

Mulroy Has Seen the Future of Las Vegas...And It Looks Like This:

Oh, look at what Pat Mulroy sees as our future!

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Bush administration's horribly disemboweled Environmental Protection Agency (you know, the guys that want to get rid of that pesky Endangered Species Act) and the National Association of Home Builders (always on the front lines of conservation) are looking for folks to attend yet another conference trumpeting "water smart" technology, this one a three-day affair in October.

The guest of honor will be His Royal Highness Prince Feisal Ibn Al-Hussein of Jordan brother of King Abdullah II. The cost to hear the Prince's keynote speech and learn how to conserve water is a mere $390 - an amount that should serve to keep the riff-raff out of the SouthPoint casino for the duration.

Bringing in yet another royal to lord over the commoners is of course fully in line with Las Vegas tradition, being that the Southern Nevada Water Authority and, by executive fiat, all of Nevada, is ruled by Czarina Patricia Mulroy. But does Prince Feisal know that he will have to bow before Her Royal Highness? Czarina totally outranks "prince."

The funny thing, of course, in turning to the Jordanians for advice about water conservation is perhaps a bit misplaced. (Although turning to SNWA for such advice is even more misplaced, in that the average Las Vegas uses about 3-5 times the amount of water as the average Jordanian and more than any other desert city in the Southwest.)

But an interesting factoid: Groundwater basins in Jordan are being over-pumped by as much as 319 percent of the recharge. A 2005 report from the Jordanian government found that groundwater is over-appropriated by more than 33 percent. Farmers, conservationists and residents of rural Nevada and Utah will recognize that these are exactly the policies favored by SNWA's demands on the regional groundwater resources: Use it up and turn the areas into economically destroyed deserts, all the better to concentrate political and economic power in Las Vegas.

So this "water smart" conference is yet another reminder what Mrs. Mulroy (sorry, Czarina Mulroy) has planned for us: Defoliated, dessicated desert in what was once a fertile crescent.

Another fun fact: Along with the homebuilders, a major sponsor of the conference to be held Oct. 8 - 10 is Black and Veatch, a huge multinational industrial contractor that knows both Southern Nevada and the Middle East because the company is a) building the SNWA pipeline and b) a major partner in the Bush administration's endless occupation of Iraq. Isn't it good when there is such ... synergy ...between the bullies of the world?

Nuke Waste OK for Nevada, Not for Arizona

Or so sez the Senior Senator from Arizona and presumptive Republican candidate for President, John McCain. In fact, he's an enthusiastic backer of nukes and nuke waste everywhere - but not for his home state of Arizona.
Doesn't that qualify him for NIMBY of the Year? Decade? Century?
McCain, as the Sierra Club is pointing out today, wants to truck high-level radioactive waste through 44 states on the way to dumping in Nevada. Somehow, though, he's not going to allow that waste anywhere near his home state, no way, no sir, no how.
Just for the record, the nuclear industry is not an alternative to oil. It is an incredibly expensive, dangerous and inefficient energy source that relies, as a matter of policy, on turning Nevada into a radioactive graveyard, poisoning our land and water essentially for eternity.
Check out McCain's disgraceful NIMBYism here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPlaHQCKc34

MGM Mirage Cancels Dumb Project

Our friends over at MGM Mirage, who are hell-bent on cannibalizing the existing customer base to support their eleventy-jillion-dollar CityCenter, also had ambitions to be the next Harvey Whittemore by building thousands of home 40 miles from Las Vegas to choke I-15 with commuting workers and air pollution every day.
But the Captains of Industry did not apparently count on gasoline being $4 a gallon. Which, like Whittemore's project 60 miles north of Las Vegas, has doomed this sterling example of idiotic sprawl.
Cancelling the project is one more indication that we must rethink the design fundamentals of dumb, energy-wasteful ex-urbs.
Satellite communities miles from urban centers waste land, energy and air quality. No amount of offshore drilling or tax breaks for the petrochemical industry can overcome the fact that oil and its products will become ever more expensive; long commutes didn't make sense three years ago, and they really, really don't make sense today. Such misguided development efforts are particularly silly when you look around Las Vegas' urban center and see huge tracts of land begging for infill development.

SNWA Strangles Open Discussion

Oh, those sharpies over at the Southern Nevada Water Authority know that open, honest discussion about their plan to defoliate the Great Basin does not serve the Captains of Industry. So of course, the goal is to muzzle the pesky American Indians, conservationists, ranchers and inhabitants of the entire state of Utah, all of whom have the temerity to question the God Given Right of Las Vegas' developers to continue to build foreclosure magnets.

From the Great Basin Water Network release:

If the Southern Nevada Water Authority gets its way, ranchers, American Indian tribes, conservationists and local governments in two states would be excluded from participating in the public decision-making process for the proposed Las Vegas groundwater development project.

SNWA, Las Vegas’ water wholesaler, hopes to win approval from the Nevada State Engineer to take billions of gallons from the environmentally fragile Snake Valley in rural Nevada and Utah. The State Engineer will review those applications at a pre-hearing conference on July 15 in Carson City, where he will also set the range of evidence to be admitted and the date for the full hearing date to examine the availability of water in Snake Valley, as well as threats the project poses to existing water rights, the fragile desert environment, the economies of rural communities, and air quality all the way to Utah’s Wasatch Front.

Groups and individuals that would be affected by the water-exportation scheme have asked the Nevada State Engineer to be considered “Interested Persons” in the upcoming hearings on the issue. But SNWA has taken legal action in an attempt to bar many of those who would be most affected from participating in the hearing, which will determine how much water, if any, the agency can take from the valley.

The issue of participation is critically important to thousands of people who for various reasons could not formally protest SNWA’s applications to take the water when they were filed nearly two decades ago, but who would be significantly harmed by the water exportation. Fourteen organizations and individuals have sought Interested Party status, including the Salt Lake and Utah County governments, a regional water authority representing eight rural Nevada counties, two Shoshone tribes and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation (Goshute Tribe).

Those who have expressed concerns about the impacts of the SNWA effort said the move to bar public participation is consistent with the agency’s past practices.

“Once again, SNWA is showing its true colors: anti-tribe, anti-environment, anti-truth and anti-public participation,” said Ed Naranjo, Tribal Administrator of the Goshute Tribe.

Others throughout the Great Basin agreed.

“SNWA loses no opportunity to shut out legitimate protests to their scheme,” said Ken Hill of the North Snake Valley Water Users Association. “We’ve seen it in the pipeline environmental impact study and in the Nevada Engineer’s hearings. The fact they are pushing the State Engineer for rushed hearings in Snake Valley while related negotiations between Utah and Nevada continue shows they are acting in bad faith.”

Steve Erickson, a Utah-based organizer with the Great Basin Water Network, compared the SNWA’s legal action to a cynically calculated “SLAPP” suit designed to quash public participation in a matter of huge importance to millions in Nevada, Utah and the nation.

“SNWA is using a legal tactic familiar to developers, a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” he said. “They want to keep the public out of this process as much as possible, as evidenced by their opposition to allowing parties to participate simply because they weren’t around to protest twenty years ago. And this from an agency that is unelected and unaccountable, and whose books are hidden from view. It’s outrageous.”

County governments in Utah argued in their legal response to the SNWA motions that the Las Vegas water agency “has no good reason to keep the Utah counties from telling their side of the story. The Utah counties, with over a million and a half citizens who stand to take the brunt of these air quality impacts, have a compelling reason to be granted interested person status.”

“How can SNWA or anybody else argue with a straight face that [regional air quality impacts caused by the proposed action] does not qualify as a ‘broad public issue’?” the governments argued in their written response.

The counties note that some of the same air-quality concerns arising from increased erosion and dust storms have come up in negotiations between the federal government and SNWA.

“For SNWA to now turn about in the Snake Valley proceedings and dismiss the very same interests and concerns advanced by the Utah counties is hypocritical and simply not technically nor legally well taken.”

UPDATE, 7-10-08

Nevada State Engineer Tracy Taylor barred most of those petitioning to be included as "interested persons" from participating in the hearings. Among those excluded are the Goshute Tribe, the Wells Band of the Shoshone, and Utah and Salt Lake counties in the Beehive State.

Taylor suggested that those parties should have realized 20 years ago that the SNWA planned to turn the Great Basin into a lifeless dustbowl, so too bad.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Taylor's ruling said the counties should have known they needed to protest when the pipeline permit was submitted in 1989. But Ann Ober, Salt Lake County's Environmental Policy Coordinator, said the counties weren't aware nearly 20 years ago of the air-quality problems they would face today under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules.

Taylor's decision on interested-person status came down the same day he granted the SNWA about 6 billions gallons of water annually from three valleys in rural Lincoln County, but not before he also required ongoing monitoring of the SNWA's effort to destroy the rural economies and environment. Unfortunately, he also put SNWA in charge of collecting that info, so there is doubt among some quarters (i.e., everyone) on the reliability of the data.