Emily Green has a great post on groundwater and the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Specifically, she writes about the recent release of the BLM's Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for SNWA's 300-mile pipeline to deliver rural Nevada groundwater to the Las Vegas area.
The image below is from the FEIS's cover (click to enlarge).
Brendon Bosworth, a reporter for the High Country News, pegs the length of the document at 5,000 pages.
Then Emily has this gem:
Should anyone bother reading the FEIS before Interior deems it done and
dusted? It is an open secret that these things are written to get politicians with short attention spans to judge them by their weight, or even the length of their titles. But yes, the Bureau of Land Management worked hard on this report. Its staff caught incoming from every possible direction. And apart from the over-generosity of the SNWA with its own data and analyses, there are good pickings, among them Chapter 3, Section 3.
I won't spoil things by telling you what's in 3.3; read her post (or her comment below).
I certainly will take a look at that section, since I have more than a fleeting interest in the topic.
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What with drought and global warming we will see more articles like this one, which describes increasing use of groundwater in the face of drought, and this one, describing conflict over diminishing surface water.
I recall something I wrote a few years ago (very last paragraph of the post):
Yes, we can see it [groundwater depletion] coming. And when you add climate change on top of this you get a bigger morass: in some areas of the world where surface water supplies are decreased, people may turn to groundwater for relief. A lot of that groundwater may be transboundary water, which could foment conflict.
To 'climate change' you can add 'drought'. And by 'transboundary', I do not necessarily mean transnational boundaries. Heck, look at Memphis and Mississippi! And recall this post.
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I think I will start reading Shafiqul Islam and Lawrence Susskind's new book, Water Diplomacy: A Negotiated Approach to Managing Complex Water Networks. It just arrived.
Friend and colleague Todd Jarvis will review this book for Ground Water, likely in the November-December 2012 issue.
Goodnight.
"He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well.” - Baltasar Gracian (thanks to the Northwest Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 4)
Michael, I also just received my copy of "Water Diplomacy" from Amazon. What a coincidence. Once I have finished reading "Activists beyond Borders" I will tackle Islam's and Susskind's tome.
Posted by: Dorian Roffe-Hammond | Tuesday, 14 August 2012 at 01:41 AM
Aquadoc, you made my day. Thank you. Plus, I’m glad that you’re drawing eyes to Chapter 3, Section 3. Everyone interested in groundwater should read it. There is good stuff on the geology and suspected transmissiveness of the rock underlying the basin and range system. The SNWA is targeting the most transmissive element, the carbonate aquifer, which makes the project impacts very difficult if not impossible to monitor. Other interesting elements in 3.3 include a spring survey that makes vivid just how much stands to collapse region wide. Some of the recharge estimates appear quite high, occasionally crazy high; the SNWA predictably prefers the higher figures. Then, in another worrying touch, the FEIS gives capacity estimates for each of the target basins. Most people don’t understand the difference between capacity and sustainable yield, so this is potentially dangerous information in the wrong hands. As it stands, it’s just a little creepy, like a vampire remarking that the average human has 10 pints of blood while waving a 5,000-page document meant to assure potential donors that the vamp wouldn’t dream of drinking more than four.
Posted by: Emily Green | Sunday, 12 August 2012 at 11:33 PM