WaterWired

Emily Green's The Week That Was (in Water), 20-26 December 2009 (and More!)

Emily Green's got some real good stuff in her post this week. 

Take Copenhagen - please! She's got some different perspectives on the Copenhagen Conference.

First, this:

China played an important constructive role in promoting the attained achievements at the conference and demonstrated the greatest sincerity and the greatest efforts. — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao

Okay. Now:

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen. — Mark Lynas

Duhhh....Lastly, the one with the wonderful Latin quote:

Two weeks ago thousands descended on Copenhagen to save the world. The result is 12 paragraphs of good intentions … The Romans had a phrase for it: Parturient montes nascetur ridiculus mus ("The mountains have been in labor, and a little mouse has been born.") -- Philip Lloyd

What's that Meat Loaf song - Two Out of Three Ain't Bad (I still get chills whenever I hear that - but that's fodder for another blog). Too bad the outcome wasn't more like Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

And she has more goodies: Westlands Water District, almonds, LADWP, Denver (the city, that is), 60 Minutes, Asian carp, Ft. Wayne, Lloyd G. Carter, and more.

Give it a read.

“I expect that these waters in the mountains, instead of being a menace to the people upon the plains, will be their source of strength and their source of wealth.” -- William Jennings Bryan, in Colorado (1910), from Emily's post

'60 Minutes' Tackles California Water: Videos and Print Story

Last night 60 Minutes had a piece ( c. 13 minutes) on California's water problems, focusing on the San Joaquin Valley and the Bay Delta.

The Governator himself had a fair bit of face time, and was upbeat about finding a solution. Here he is expounding upon a water diet in a brief (one minute) video.

Here is a print version of Lesley Stahl's story.

Here is Emily Green's take, Hasta la Vista, 60 Minutes.

"People have died over water. You know, movies have been made about the wars of water in California."--  Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, quoted in the story

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Are California's Water Laws Being Enforced?

Lloyd G. Carter, whose blog has the wonderful title, Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood, has a recent post in which he asks, "How about enforcing current water laws?" That's certainly a reasonable inquiry.

He begins:

 

Seventeen years ago, Patrick Porgans and I co-authored an article that ran at length in the Forum section of the Sacramento Bee. We argued then that new and proposed state and federal water marketing changes would enrich some people "by turning [publicly-owned] water into a freely transferable commodity."

Sadly, as proven by a recent below-the-radar $73 million water transfer from a small irrigation district in the western San Joaquin Valley to an urban district in the Mojave Desert, time has proven us right. Profiteering by buying cheap water from the public and selling it to the highest bidder is now making small groups of people enormously rich, to the detriment of farming, the Delta, and the state treasury.

An appropriate post for the holiday season, when gift-giving abounds.

Give it a read.

 

And here's a letter he wrote to the New York Times in 1996. I keep thinking: the more things change, the more they remain the same.

 

"In regard to the identified illegal diversions, although I am obviously aware of them, the Division has not taken follow up action because of a lack of resources." - Vicky Whitney, Chief, Water Rights Divsion, California State Water Board (quoted in the article)

We Suck At Managing Exempt Wells: Is There Big Trouble in Big Sky?

Cally Carswell's recent post on the Goat Blog of the High Country News  relates the story of exempt well problems in Montana's Gallatin Valley. There, rancher Joseph Miller is claiming that exempt wells, aka domestic wells, are depleting his water. These wells supply water to the new homes and subdivisions in the valley. Miller believes thay have been responsible for drying up at least one stream on his ranch.  The rub is that Miller likely has permitted rights to his water, whereas the exempt wells, by definition, are exempt from permits.

Carswell reports:

To address the problem, Miller and a few other ranchers recently petitioned Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to stop letting residential developments use exempt wells to skirt the state’s water laws. They claim exempt wells will draw down water supplies that they have senior rights to.

I have previously posted on Western exempt well issues including the Bounds case in New Mexico, which sounds similar to the situation Carswell describes. This case, still under appeal as far as I know, found for the rancher who claimed domestic wells were impairing his water right.

Carswell's post states that there are about 200,000 exempt wells in Montana, almost as many as we have here in Oregon (c. 240,000) and more than in New Mexico (c. 130,000). As many as 78,000 more are expected in the next 10 years. I suspect that virtually of these new wells will supply homes by out-of-staters in subdivisions, many of whom will be 'amenity ranchers' or 'amenity farmers'. 

The post continues:

In Montana, groundwater wells pumping less than 35 gallons a minute and no more than 10 acre feet a year don’t require a permit and aren't regulated under prior appropriation during drought. A 60-lot subdivision, for instance, can legally drill 60 wells into the same aquifer without permits or environmental review as long as those wells aren't connected. Even though the law says the exemption doesn't cover a "combined appropriation" by multiple wells from the same source if, together, they suck more than 35 gallons a minute, the state only considers wells that are physically connected by pipes to be a "combined appropriation."

The above describes a major problem: subdivisions where the water supply for each home is provided by an exempt well. In this manner, developers can escape the responsibility to obtain a water right and build a water system; the homeowners assume the responsiblity. If you're using an exempt well out in the middle of nowhere, your well will probably not have much effect. But if you are in a large subdivision in which each home has a well, that could be a different story. Water quality could suffer as well, since homes are likely on septic tanks.

I encountered this problem in New Mexico. I recall getting an earful from a state senator railing against developers who would 'game the system' by building subdivisions that required homeowners to drill their own wells. Not only did such wells impair the rights of others, but they compromised groundwater quality because the homes were closely-spaced and on septic tanks. In some cases, the developers had water rights, but withheld them so they could lease or sell them at a later date.

Carswell includes this quote:

"There’s really no protection in place for senior water rights," says Matthew Bishop, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, which filed the petition on the ranchers’ behalf. Bishop says the state has known exempt wells are a problem "for a number of years," but "no one’s been willing to fix it."

"We felt we had to force the issue," he says.
 
What struck me about this story is that Jared Diamond touches on this problem in his excellent book Collapse, in which Montana has a key role. Diamond uses the case of the Bitterroot Valley in Ravalli County (see pages 52-53) and mentions the issue of domestic wells and their effects.

One of these days, states will wise up to the exempt well issue and do something about it. It's not so much that state water resources departments don't recognize the problem; it's that they don't have the resources or laws to regulate these wells because state legislatures fear doing anything about them. That's been the case here in Oregon.  

You hear the SOS: "I'm not the problem, I just have a domestic well." Yeah, you and a gazillion other folks.

The graphic (from GOOD's Summer 2009 issue) says it all: We suck at this. Do we ever!

"The county itself lacks the resources to monitor its aquifers and does not carry out independent assessments of water availability when it is considering a developer's application to build a new house. Instead, the county relies on the developer's assurance that enough well water will be available for the house." -- Jared Diamond, Collapse, p. 53, referring to Ravalli County, MT [as of 2005]

Groundwater Mining in the Central Valley: Something New?

Last week, there was much interest in the news that satellite data indicated [thanks to colleague John Lambie for this link] that groundwater pumping in California's Central Valley had extracted the equivalent of one Lake Mead (about 24 MAF at full pool) during the past six years. The data confirmed an earlier report by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Yes, Virginia, that's a lot of water, almost double the average annual flow of the Colorado River.

Recent reductions in surface water for irrigation have no doubt contributed to the high pumpage figures (see quote below).

But this realization is nothing new, although the amount of pumpage may be. Groundwater has been pumped unsustainably (mined or overdrafted) in the Central Valley for decades. When I took Aquifer Mechanics from the late Dr. Gene Simpson in 1971, the Central Valley was already one of the 'poster children' for groundwater mining (we didn't refer to it as 'unsustainable pumping') and land subsidence. Pumpage had long since exceeded recharge, and when coupled with the necessary geologic conditions, land subsidence resulted.

Here is a classic photo of USGS hydrologist Dr. Joe Poland standing by a utility pole near Mendota, CA, that graphically illustrates over 50 years of subsidence, 1925-1977. At this location the subsidence was about 29 feet, at the time the maximum amount of subsidence in the San Joaquin Valley.

Subsidence in the Valley had been noted as early as 1935, as mentioned in this 1970 paper by USGS hydrologist Ben Lofgren that we used in Gene's class:

Download 088031

So although the amount of groundwater pumping in the Central Valley may have increased in the past six years, it's been a much longer time since it was 'sustainable' (although that depends upon your definition of 'sustainable' - I'm using it in the sense of  groundwater 'overdrafting' or 'mining').

My blogosphere colleague David Zetland has a somewhat different perspective on the Central Valley pumping. Give him a read.

So what do you think? Does California need to regulate groundwater on a statewide basis?

"It's an undeniable cause and effect - farmers are having to pump more groundwater to survive the surface water cuts designed to save fish. " -- Mike Wade, California Farm Water Coalition

The Real Reason I Left New Mexico

Leslie Kryder, who just finished her Master of Water Resources degree at the University of New Mexico, sent me this.

 

"Every calculation, based on experience elsewhere, fails in New Mexico." -- Territorial Gov. Lew Wallace, 1878

Carpe mañana! -- New Mexico state motto 

NRC Announces New Studies of Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta

Today the National Research Council, one of the National Academies, formally announced the study of the California Bay-Delta and the 15-person committee [you can comment on the choices] that will undertake this task.

[Disclosure notice: I am on the committee. Note that I am the former Director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds.]

The study will last two years and will produce two reports:

1) In its first report, the committee will focus on scientific questions, assumptions, and conclusions underlying water-management alternatives in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) Biological Opinion on Coordinated Operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project (15 December 2008) and the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Biological Opinion on the Long-Term Central Valley Project and State Water Project Operations Criteria and Plan (4 June 2009). This report is tentatively scheduled to be completed by 15 March 2009.

2) Second, in the fall of 2011, the committee will issue a second report on how to most effectively incorporate science and adaptive management concepts into holistic programs for management and restoration of the Bay-Delta. 

The first meeting is scheduled for 24-28 January 2010 in the ARC Ballroom on the UC-Davis campus. Sounds like the perfect spot:

With its private courtyard and calm ambiance [emboldening mine], the ARC Ballroom is the perfect location to host wedding receptions, banquets, and professional conferences.

Here is the complete announcement:

Download Bay-Delta Study Announcement

Here is the committee:

   Robert J. Huggett, Professor Emeritus, College of William and Mary,

  Seaford, VA, Chair

   James J. Anderson, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

   Michael E. Campana, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

   Thomas Dunne, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

   Albert E. Giorgi, BioAnalysts, Inc., Redmond, WA

    Patricia M. Glibert, Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland

   Center for Environmental Science, Cambridge, MD

   Christine A. Klein, University of Florida College of Law, Gainesville, FL

   Samuel N. Luoma, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA

   Michael J. McGuire, Michael J. McGuire, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

   Thomas Miller, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Maryland

   Center for Environmental Sciences, Solomons, M

    Jayantha Obeysekera, South Florida Water Management District,

   West Palm Beach, FL

   Max J. Pfeffer, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

   Denise Reed, University of New Orleans, LA

   Kenneth A. Rose, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA

   Desiree D. Tullos, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

 

   David Policansky, NRC Study Director

 

  More information is available here.

“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” – Warren Buffet

"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going because you might not get there." -- Yogi Berra

Oregon's Integrated Water Resources Strategy @ ORAWRA Inaugural Meeting

We had about 55 people show up in Portland for the inaugural meeting of the Oregon Section of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA), also known as ORAWRA.

Download 2009-12-16 Flyer

If you would like to join ORAWRA, send your contact information to our membership chair, David Gilbey (dgilbey@ci.oswego.or.us),  and join the e-mail list.

I attribute the excellent turnout to the 'dynamic duo' we had for speakers: Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) Director Phil Ward and his counterpart at the Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ), Dick Pedersen, gave an excellent tag-team presentation on Oregon's Integrated Water Resources Strategy (IWRS).

Here is a pdf of their presentation:

Download 2009-12-16 IWRS

OWRD, ODEQ and the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) are the main departments involved in the development of this strategy, with OWRD taking the lead.

Development of the IWRS will be a daunting task, but it is in good hands.

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." -- Unknown

Las Vegas: Hope Springs Eternal

And I'm not talking about Moapa Springs, either.

Emily Green's at it again - picking on poor ol' Las Vegas! Check out her post, 'Gag Me With a High Rise', all about the new CityCenter.

Here is the Los Angeles Times story.

So what's this about Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman going to Copenhagen?

"Presidents and presidential assassins are like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.  Even though one city is all about sin and the other is all about salvation, they are identical, one-dimensional company towns built up by the sheer will of true believers." ~ Sarah Vowell

"In the case of an earthquake hitting Las Vegas, be sure to go straight to the Keno Lounge.  Nothing ever gets hit there."  ~ Unknown

"Las Vegas is sort of like how God would do it if he had money." ~ Steve Wynn

Desal: No Magic Bullet for New Mexico?

John Fleck alerted me to this article featuring my former University of New Mexico colleague Bruce Thomson about the wisdom of basing future growth in New Mexico on unsustainable water supplies, specifically desalinated groundwater.

Regarding Sandoval County's experimental desalination plant, nearing the end of its pilot operation, Thomson opines: 

Thomson calls the desalination pilot “a very useful project; I congratulate Sandoval County planners for having the foresight to undertake this thing.” He says it’ll help Sandoval and its surrounding counties—Bernalillo, McKinley and Santa Fe—better understand how much brackish water lies in the ancient aquifer beneath them, how much it’ll cost to access that water, and what kinds of treatment methods will be necessary to make it potable.

“It’s one of the cutting-edge projects of this type in the Southwest,” Thomson says. But, he adds, “I don’t think we should allow residential growth that depends on a non-sustainable water supply.”

The plant is pumping deep, brackish groundwater and treating it.

Here are two earlier posts of mine on this topic (17 August 2008 and 13 November 2008) and one reporting on a Thomson Op-Ed.

“When we plan for new residential growth, we need to talk in terms of sustainability, and that sustainability needs to be in perpetuity. It doesn’t need to be 30 or 40 or 100 years; it needs to be forever.” -- Bruce Thomson

November/December 2009 Southwest Hydrology: Water Conservation

The current issue of Southwest Hydrology is devoted to water conservation.

You can freely download the entire issue or individual articles/departments.

The feature articles deal with ag, municipal, residential, California's CII sector, program design, and more.

And don't forget the various departments!

Here are the cover and ToC.

Enjoy!

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth.  We are all crew."  ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964

Las Vegas Taps Lake Tahoe? Resurrect the Bateman Plan!

In the Las Vegas Sun's 'Ask Mr. Sun' column of 20 November 2009 a reader asked if the Southern Nevada Water Authority had ever considered tapping Lake Tahoe. The answer is that it doesn't matter if they have considered it, because they are not going to get any water from that lake, short of mounting an armed invasion.

But it conjured memory of an event that occurred around 30 years ago: the Bateman Plan, named for my then-Desert Research Institute colleague, hydrologist Dick Bateman. In the late 1970s Dick Bateman proposed his plan to mitigate northern Nevada' s drought. Since the state could not legally extract more water from Lake Tahoe, Bateman proposed installing a watertight Lucite slab 50 feet below the lake's surface, drilling a tunnel west from Carson City, and sucking out all the water from under California's nose. The key aspect would be to do the installation under cover of darkness.

If I recall correctly, some people thought Dick was serious. Californians were not amused.

 I used Dick''s idea as the basis for my 2008 April Fools' Day post, substituting Crater Lake for Lake Tahoe.

"I don't know if you're aware of it, but we're losing Lake Tahoe." -- Steve Goldman

Southern Nevada Water Agonistes (SNWA), Part 2

This is Part 2 because I already did Part 1 almost 18 months ago.

The ever-perspicacious Emily Green posts about the upcoming Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) board meeting on 19 November, which happens to coincide with World Toilet Day.

She specifically reports on Item 5, which calls for the SNWA directors to take the recent ruling by Judge Norman C. Robison to the State Supreme Court:

5. Authorize the General Counsel to file an appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court in Case No. CV-0830008 of the Seventh Judicial Court, Carter-Griffin, Inc., et al. vs. Tracy Taylor, Nevada State Engineer, et al. concerning the Nevada State Engineer’s Ruling Number 5875 regarding the Authority’s Delamar, Dry Lake and Cave Valley water rights.

My hunch is that they will decide to do so. [Note added at 7 PM: they did.]

Emily mentions something else interesting:

The same day that the ruling was issued, unaware of its loss, the SNWA board voted to pay one of the parties to the suit before Judge Robison $4m to drop its suit.

Whoa! More information:

To see how (and if) the SNWA staff will justify to its board having paid $4m for nothing and to hear the grounds for appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, watch the board meeting, which will be broadcast live Thursday November 19th from 9am. Click here for links.

Emily further reports on the dance between Utah and Nevada over Snake Valley and the role of Sen. Harry "Hardball" Reid (D-NV).

I should add that agenda Item 7 interests me:

7. Make appointments to the Advisory Committee for Groundwater Management in the Las Vegas Valley Groundwater Basin

Doubt I will be approved.

"Hatred is not what Las Vegas is about. We will have zero tolerance for anyone who is intolerant. " -- Oscar Goodman, Mayor of Las Vegas

My Truckee River Symposium Keynote Address

Yesterday I delivered the keynote address at the Nevada Water Resources Association's Truckee River Symposium (TRS), 3-5 November 2009, at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, NV.

Download TR_Symp_Program

The Truckee River flows from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake. It is about 110 miles long and has to be one of the 'hardest working' rivers in the USA.

Here's the pdf of my presentation:

Download Campana_TRS_3_ Nov_2009

It's always good to return to Reno. Lots of good WaterWonks and others here. And gorgeous scenery!

"It's not what you don't know that will hurt you, but what you know for sure that will." -- Mark Twain

Westlands Water District: Reaping Riches in a Wretched Region - Subsidized Industrial Farming and Its Link to Perpetual Poverty

Lloyd G. Carter just published this provocative article in the Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal.

Here are the first few paragraphs of Reaping Riches in a Wretched Region: Subsidized Industrial Farming and Its Link to Perpetual Poverty:

In the last few decades, well over a billion dollars in taxpayer aid has been provided to a few hundred growers in the Westlands Water District (Westlands), which is part of the San Luis Unit of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation‘s Central Valley Project (CVP)  in Central California. The CVP is the largest publicly funded water-management system in the United States, and the Westlands is the biggest agricultural irrigation district in America. At nearly 1000 square miles, the Westlands is still dominated by a few pioneer dynastic families although congressional backers of the San Luis Unit half a century ago promised that 6100 small family farms would be created if Northern California river water was brought to the desert on the West Side of the San Joaquin Valley (Valley). The promise was never kept, and the larger landowners are still in control.

While Westlands, considered one of the nation‘s most politically powerful irrigation districts, has produced an undisputable bounty of cotton and field crops over the decades in western Fresno and Kings counties, irrigation of this mineral-laden desert has also created huge environmental problems, and the wealth generated has not trickled down to farmworkers or the surrounding poverty-stricken communities.

The Twentieth Congressional District, encompassing Westlands and a portion of the western San Joaquin Valley down through Kings and Kern counties, has the dubious distinction of being the poorest of the 436 congressional districts in America.

The region is rife with social problems ranging from high unemployment8 to gang and drug problems, high teen-pregnancy rates, an appalling high school dropout rate (25-35%), and other side effects of poverty.

Enjoy (or not)!

"The subsidized factory farm economy, it seems, doesn‘t have much of a trickle down effect for the families and communities of workers who bring in the harvest."

"In fact, it appears as though this system has helped to foster a culture of unsustainable farming practices, caused large scale environmental degradation, and has created a massive socioeconomic rift between land owners and their primarily Latino workforce. " -- Lloyd G. Carter, from the article

This 31st of October, a Scary Post: Exempt Wells!

Might as well celebrate Halloween with a really frightening post. Las Vegas? Pat Mulroy? 'The Source'?The Delta? Atlanta?

No - really frightening.

Exempt wells!

Yes, those low-capacity wells threaten to overwhelm Western water managers and others, because, like zombies, there are so many of them, they keep coming, and they can't be killed. 

What with Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize for her work on common-pool resources, it was appropriate that someone should conflate exempt wells and CPRs. Rob Emanuel over at H2ONCoast did that quite nicely with this post.

Cally Carswell wrote a piece in the the High Country News with the wonderful title, "Death by a thousand wells".

Both Cally and Rob focus on the PNW, although Cally discusses other areas in the West.

This is a problem that's going to get worse before it gets better.

"We're going to have a water war. You can just see the knives are sharpening."  -- Rachael Paschal Osborn, executive director of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy, referring to the exempt well issue in Washington

Lloyd G. Carter's Video Presentation: California's Water Mess - Is Anyone Doing Anything Right?

Lloyd G. Carter, born and raised in Fresno, former journalist, and current Cailfornia deputy attorney general in the Criminal Division, spoke here at OSU on 28 October 2009 about California's Water Mess: Is Anyone Doing Anything Right?

I'm glad I finally got the chance to meet, hear, and have dinner with him. Fascinating guy - an ambulatory encyclopedia of California water issues and fact. And stories!

Interesting factoid from Lloyd: Sacramento, Modesto, and Fresno don't have residential water meters.

Check out his blog/WWW site, The Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood.

From that site:

Lloyd G. Carter, former UPI and Fresno Bee reporter, has been writing about California water issues for more than 35 years. He is President of the California Save Our Streams Council. He is also a board member of the Underground Gardens Conservancy and host of a monthly radio show on KFCF, 88.1 FM in Fresno.This is his personal blog site and contains archives of his news career as well as current articles, radio commentaries, and random thoughts.
 

Here is the video's URL.

Enjoy!

"We need more water. We need more storage. We need to build more storage, and we have to build conveyance, the canal, all of those kinds of things . I know the environmentalists don't like to create and talk even about conveyance. They don't like that. And they don't like to build more water storage. I understand it when you come from their point of view. They were up there in my office. We were all talking yesterday about it. They want to do another five-year study. There is no more study. We have studied this subject to death." -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), 14 June 2007

“I have just one statistic, one only, and that is 25 million people depend on Delta water for the drinking water of the state. And the probability of a big earthquake over 6.7 is 75% in the next 30 years. And if that were to happen, there are all indications that the Delta would collapse, the water would be gone, there would be no water for drinking, there would be no water for agriculture, there would be no water for fish, marsh, ecosystems.” -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), 2007.

Ooops! Judge: No SNWA Pumping From Cave, Delamar, and Dry Lake Valleys

A Nevada two-fer today!

Boy, do we ever live in interesting times!

From Henry Brean's story in today's Las Vegas Review-Journal (the map is from the article):

For the moment at least, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has lost the water it hoped to pump to Las Vegas in the first phase of its proposed pipeline across eastern Nevada.

In a strongly worded order issued last week, a district judge overturned a 2008 state ruling that granted the authority permission to tap groundwater from three valleys in central Lincoln County.

Judge Norman Robison ruled that State Engineer Tracy Taylor "abused his discretion" and "acted arbitrarily, capriciously and oppressively" when he cleared the authority to pump more than 6 billion gallons of groundwater a year [about 18,500 AF/year]  from Cave, Delamar and Dry Lake valleys.

The senior judge from Gardnerville wrote that the state's chief water regulator traditionally requires "specific empirical data" before allowing groundwater to be transferred out of a basin. This time, though, the state engineer is "simply hoping for the best while committing to undo his decision if the worst occurs," Robison wrote.

Authority officials are expected to challenge the judge's ruling, which spokesman Scott Huntley described as biased and "flat-out wrong."

"We believe there are numerous grounds for appeal," Huntley said. "There was some evidence the judge may have come into the case with a prejudged opinion."

Note that this decision does not directly affect the plans to pump from Snake Valley on the Nevada-Utah border but there may be repercussions. Read Emily Green's excellent analysis that goes far beyond the R-J article.

Looks like it is back to the drawing board (or hearing room, or courtroom) for the SNWA.

Read the entire story here. The comments are quite interesting.

"I think we're just digesting it right now to be honest with you." -- Susan Joseph-Taylor, chief hearing officer, Nevada Division of Water Resources

Exclusive Photo Report from Snake Valley, Nevada-Utah

Former student and longtime friend Michael Dale, along with lovely spouse Malynn and Roffie, el perro gigante (130 pounds!) sent me these exclusive photos from Snake Valley, the basin that straddles the NV-UT border and is the object of Las Vegas' hydraulic affections.

They went to Baker, NV, in Snake Valley, at the right-hand end of the purple line (U.S. Route 50) in the accompanying map. They visited Great Basin National Park, Nevada's only NP. Here is a map of the GBNP.

Michael and Malynn took these pictures knowing full well that I would want to post them so I have received their permission to do so.

Michael noted that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is not real popular in rural Nevada, and today's quote reflects a sign seen a number of times along U.S. Route 50, the so-called Loneliest Road in America (unless, of course, you're stuck on it during a NoVa traffic jam in Arlington or Fairfax Counties, VA).

Shown above is Wheeler Peak,  just a shade over 13,000 feet [thanks for the correction, Bob.] Michael, a native Virginian, tells me it was originallyJeff Davis Peak but was renamed Union Peak when Nevada joined the Union in the Civil War. The name was eventually changed to the present moniker after the Army surveyor, and Jeff Davis Peak was bestowed upon the third highest peak in the park.

Now for some pictures of pipes found around Baker and Snake Valley. I don't think captions are necessary.

SNWA and its boss, Pat Mulroy, are not well-liked here. Duhhhh...

No, Roffie! Don't soil Pat's pipe!


Michael noted that there is much concern about Snake Valley becoming another Owens Lake, with the SNWA pumping desiccating the valley, producing huge dust storms.

A colleague of mine, who has no axe to grind, thinks that is unlikely since the playa lake in Snake Valley is not a discharging (wet, fed by groundwater) playa but a dry playa. So he is skeptical of claims that pumping will produce an Owens Valley scenario.

But let's figure this out before going ahead with the pipeline.

Interestingly enough, Michael noted the effects of agricultural diversions on Sevier Dry Lake in western Utah, which is a source of dust that periodically sweeps towards the Wasatch Front. They saw such a cloud rising from the desert floor. You don't hear much about this.

Harry's pipe.

Roffie was a good doggie and didn't mess up the pipe. I suspect the locals would not have minded if he had. 

 

 

 

 

Finally this gorgeous shot looking east across Snake Valley with Utah and the Confusion Range in the background.

This is spectacular country! I've been away from it for too long. Thanks, Michael and Malynn - and Roffie.

"Anybody Butt Harry Reid." -- typical political sign on Highway 50 in eastern Nevada

The Pavlovian Response to Western Agricultural Water

The title of this post could be that of a PhD dissertation in agricultural economics or some similar discipline. But whether the term is used improperly or not it's designed to pique your curiosity.

Shaun McKinnon of The Arizona Republic wrote this piece on the water used by Arizona agriculture and how urban water managers are thinking of some of that water for cities.

It's a story that rings true in most, if not all, Western states: agriculture uses by far the greatest amount of water, has many senior water rights, but contributes a disproportionately low share to a state's GDP. So water managers begin salivating about purchasing/leasing some of those senior agricultural water rights for urban growth.

Why, I seem to recall that none other than Western water expert/reputed mob lawyer Mayor Oscar Goodman of Las Vegas made a comment a few years ago that Vegas wouldn't run out of water, because they could just buy the IID (Imperial Irrigation District) water. Oh, Oscar, this ain't criminal law.

So choose your preference - you want more growth, replete with a sea of red-tiled rooftops, or verdant fields of alfalfa with riparian strips along irrigation ditches? That's how one farmer in New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande Valley put it to an audience several years ago.  

Unfortunately, it's usually not that simple a choice.

McKinnon's article is even-handed - no "good guys vs. bad guys" stuff.

What really struck me was this statement:

Most planners start with the idea that water shouldn't limit growth. [emboldening mine]

Huh?

That attitude is a major part of the water problem in the Southwest, as is the problem embedded in today's quote:

"Because I can." -- Middle Rio Grande farmer, when asked why he flood-irrigated his land.

Cooperation and Water Buffaloes

The other day an article from the Salt Lake Tribune caught  my eye. The article begins:

About halfway through secret four-year negotiations on how a reluctant Utah could share the Snake Valley aquifer with Nevada, a Silver State official and a Las Vegas water utility threatened they could take the matter to court or to Congress, memos and e-mails show.

The correspondence, released under an open-records request from the Great Basin Water Network, illuminates Nevada's no-surrender insistence that Snake Valley water be split 50-50, even though Utah officials believed that impossible.

The documents also appear to undermine recent assurances from Mike Styler, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, that the proposed water-sharing agreement is as good for Utah as it is for Nevada.

Obviously, the Las Vegas water utility is the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) and we know that whatever the SNWA wants, the State of Nevada will be inclined to support. So it looks like Nevada was playing hardball with Utah. Nothing wrong with that, right?

But what has happened to the new era of 'cooperation' and 'interdependence' in Western water issues heralded by SNWA boss Pat Mulroy in a talk in DC last July? I guess cooperation means different things to different people.

And while I am on the subject of Mulroy and Western water, I will recall Matt Jenkins' story in the 12 October 2009 High Country News about Mulroy and her groundwater pumping project: 

Mulroy understandably bristles at any reference to Chinatown. Yet she has achieved a degree of power that might even make Mulholland envious. Mulroy has largely set the terms of Western water over the past two decades. She has challenged what she calls the conservative "belt-and-suspenders" mindset that has traditionally prevailed among Colorado River water bosses. And, most controversially, she has led a two-decade-long effort to build a massive groundwater project that will tap huge aquifers lying beneath the Great Basin in eastern Nevada and pipe billions of gallons of water to Las Vegas.

Mulroy does like to tout her challenges to the status quo. She deserves kudos for challenging the 'water buffaloes' and their precious Colorado River Compact. But she really is no different from them. She touts unbridled growth in a region of the USA whose water resources can ill handle more growth, and she seeks supply-side solutions. She makes policy, although she will deny that.

The fact is, she's just a water buffalo, albeit one who wears gold lamé shoes.

"It's a desert, stupid." -- bumper sticker produced by the water conservation folks, City of Albuquerque, early 1990s

Just Say No to NAWS?

About a week ago Noah Hall's Great Lakes Law blog published an item about the NAWS (Northwest Area Water Supply) project of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The story related how the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center had filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief on the side of Manitoba, Canada, and others who oppose Reclamation's project.

View a map of the project.

I have to admit that what piqued my curiosity was reading about a transbasin surface water diversion project involving the USA and Canada whose acronym begins with "NA", as in "North American"). Yes, I'm thinking of projects like NAWAPA and NARA designed to move water from Canada to the USA, and then within the USA itself.

But NAWS is not one of these big-picture projects. It's a water-supply project for northwestern North Dakota that is 'small potatoes' in the grand scheme of things - a maximum of about 26 million gallons per day (80 AF).  So why the concern among the likes of Noah Hall, the province of Manitoba, and the federal government of Canada?  It represents the first USA project to transfer water from the Missouri River basin to the Red-Souris basin, which is in the Hudson Bay basin. So Manitoba and Canada are concerned about the possible introduction of aquatic invasive species and pathogens, and so is Hall.

From the Great Lakes Law blog:

The NAWS Project is the first United States transbasin water transfer project to breach the barrier between the Missouri River Basin and the Hudson Bay Basin.  The diversion could transfer invasive species and diseases into downstream waters in the United States and Canada, and threatens the quality and quantity of water supplies.  The proponents of the project have not properly examined less damaging alternatives and options, such as water conservation and recycling.  Nor have the project’s proponents undertaken a full review of the environmental impacts of the water diversion.  For additional background on the NAWS project and other related projects, see the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center’s Transbasin Water Diversions webpage

Conservationists have long been concerned with the risks of the NAWS project to water resources.  The NAWS water diversion represents the first ever federal project involving an interbasin water transfer linking the Missouri River Basin to the Hudson Bay Basin.  For better or worse, it could become an important precedent-setting project for other water diversions.  Given the stakes, the Bureau of Reclamation should have adhered strictly to the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act with a thorough and comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement.  Instead, the Bureau of Reclamation is trying to rush through a novel and potentially devastating project that creates a danger for all fresh water basins in the United States, particularly the Great Lakes.

In addition to setting a precedent for other water diversions, the NAWS project threatens water quality and aquatic life in the Missouri River Basin and Hudson Bay Basin.  The diversion of water from one separate drainage basin to another will also impact residential, commercial and recreational water use.  The reductions of water levels in combination with the impacts from climate change pose an increased risk of invasion of non-native species and subsequent transfer of invasive species through the pipeline to the Hudson Bay Basin.

Doesn't sound as though NAWS has been thought out completely.

"Human beings were invented by water to transport it uphill." -- Unknown  

Where the Riled Things Are: Stewart Schools Hannity

I try to steer clear of politics but when it comes to water, that is often hard to do. So let's talk about the San Joaquin Valley.

The folks over at Fox News - Sean Hannity in particular - have gotten a lot of mileage out of the 'fish vs. farmers' kerfuffle in California's San Joaquin Valley. Comedian Paul Rodriguez has also weighed in on the issue, supporting Latino farmers and their group, the Latino Water Coalition, which is not so much a 'grassroots' organizaton as it is a front for agricultural lobbyists.

Here is Alex Leo's take.

The other night Jon Stewart took Hannity to task, schooling him on some history, the food chain, and a few other items.

Check out the video clip.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Where the Riled Things Are
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

 "The government should stop meddling in the business of the farmers, who would actually still be living in a desert if not for government meddling." -- Jon Stewart

Cadiz is Now a 'Conservation' Project

In the past five weeks or so I have posted a number of items about the ill-fated Cadiz Groundwater Storage and Dry-Year Supply Program.

Emily Green has done all the heavy lifting on this, so I'll invoke her once more: she now reports that the aforementioned project has morphed into a 'conservation' project.

You can hear all about it on KPCC's AirTalk radio program: Scott Slater (General Counsel of Cadiz, Inc.), Elden Hughes (Sierra Club), Richard Sierra (San Bernardino Union of Carriers, Building & Construction Laborers, Local 783) and Green discuss the project.

I'll let you guess who's for it and who's against it.

Like a bad penny, this thing keeps coming back.  

“You cannot depend upon your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” -- Mark Twain

Red Snow Warning: The End of Welfare Water and the Drying of the West

Chip Ward's essay appeared in The Huffington Post a few days ago. I highly recommend it, but it's not for the faint-hearted.

Thanks to Elaine Hebard for alerting me to this.

Ward discusses the Colorado River basin:

The West is as dry as the East is wet, a vast and arid landscape of high plains and deserts broken by abrupt mountain ranges and deep canyons. Unlike eastern and midwestern America, where there are myriad rivers, streams, lakes, and giant underground lakes, or aquifers, to draw on, we depend on snowpack for about 90% of our fresh water. The Colorado River, running from its headwaters in the snow-loaded mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, is the principal water source for those states, and downstream for Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and southern California as well.

While being developed into a crucial water resource, the Colorado became the most dammed, piped, legislated, and litigated river in America. Its development spawned a major federal bureaucracy, the Bureau of Reclamation, as well as a hundred state agencies, water districts, and private contractors to keep it plumbed and distributed. Taken altogether, this complex infrastructure of dams, pipelines, and reservoirs proved to be the most expensive and ambitious public works project in the nation's history, but it enabled the Southwest states and southern California to boom and bloom.

The downside is that we are now dangerously close to the limits of what the Colorado River can provide, even in the very best of weather scenarios, and the weather is being neither so friendly nor cooperative these days. If Portland soon becomes as warm as Los Angeles and Seattle as warm as Sacramento, as some forecasters now predict, expect Las Vegas and Phoenix to be more like Death Valley.

If the Colorado River shut down tomorrow, there might be two, at most three, years of stored water in its massive reservoirs to keep Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and dozens of other cities that depend on it alive. That margin for survival gets thinner with each passing year and with each rise in the average temperature. Imagine a day in the not so distant future when the water finally runs out in one of those cities -- a kind of slow-motion Katrina in reverse, a city not flooded but parched, baked, blistered, and abandoned. If the Colorado River system failed to deliver, the impact on the nation's agriculture and economy would be comparable to an asteroid strike.

A little more to whet your appetite:

Sure, everyone agrees that we have to change, but we in the West are fond of focusing blame on personal bad habits that waste water -- and they couldn't be more real -- rather than corporate habits that waste so much more. The fact is that we Westerners have never paid anything like what our water truly costs and we lack disincentives to waste water and incentives to conserve it. Behind all that fuss you hear from us about the damn government and how independent-minded we Westerners are, is a long history of massive dam and pipeline projects financed by the American taxpayer, featuring artificially low prices and not a few crony-run boondoggles. Call it welfare water.

You can read more of his essays here.

"Human populations in the West will also shift and dwindle, with jarring consequences for all of America, if we do not learn quickly that watersheds have limits, especially within arid and unpredictable climates." -- Chip Ward

September/October 2009 Southwest Hydrology: CO2 Sequestration

The new issue of Southwest Hydrology features CO2 Sequestration. As always, downloads of the entire issue or individual departments are free.

From the introduction:

The supercritical state of CO2 in the subsurface has fluid-like behavior, thus many aspects of hydrology apply to its sequestration. A good candidate storage site, often identified with the help of multi-phase flow modeling, has sufficient porosity to accommodate the volumes of CO2 being injected and low-permeability caprock to prevent its escape. Monitoring through wells, geophysics, and surface measurements is used to determine if any leakage is occurring. If CO2 does escape, it could reach drinking-water aquifers and impact water quality, or it could migrate to the surface, thereby defeating the purpose of sequestration. Regulations to minimize the risks of CO2 sequestration are in development, and pilot projects to test the process are underway across the country, including in the Southwest.

Featured articles:

Opportunities for Carbon Capture and Geologic Storage, by Richard J. Myhre and Marian Stone

The Hydrology of Geologic Sequestration, Gregory Schnaar and Stephen J. Cullen

Managing the Risks of CO2 Sequestration,  Amy Hardberger and Scott Anderson

Regulating Geologic Sequestration of CO2, Patricia R. Pfeiffer and Bruce J. Kobelski

Frio Brine Pilot: The First U.S. Sequestration Test, Susan D. Hovorka

Exploring Geologic CO2 Storage in Arizona, Dennis H. Shirley, Daniel J. Collins, and John L. Boyer

Departments:

1) On the Ground

2) Government

3) Hydrofacts

4)  R & D

5) The Water Page

6) People & Companies

7) In Print and Online and Business Directory

8) Calendar

Enjoy!

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -- Aristotle

The 'Green Guide' to California's $12B Gamble

Emily Green has assembled a great guide to the $12B legislative package that the California legislature is considering. The deadline is this Friday.

Enjoy!

“I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix." -- former Vice President Dan Quayle

“California is where you can't run any farther without getting wet." -- Neil Morgan

Cookin' the Books on the San Joaquin: The More Things Change...

Peter Gleick's blog post of a few days ago reminded me of my high-school French: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." That phrase is often translated as "The more things change, the more they remain the same."

In Peter's case, "things" mean "benefit-cost (B/C) ratios" for a water project, in this case a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation water project, theTemperance Flat Dam and reservoir on the San Joaquin River.  Call me Paul E. Yanna, but I thought we'd progressed beyond the point where Federal water projects presented bogus B/C numbers. People had caught on to that scam, as occasionally practiced not only by the BuRec but also the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

But I was wrong.

The BuRec calculated a B/C of 1.06 for the aforementioned project. Sounds good, right? Benefits > costs, right? But Gleick calls the BuRec out on just a (sarcasm alert) few 'minor' points:

The new reservoir will destroy riverine spawning habitat for American shad and striped bass, it will destroy nearly half of the trout habitat in the study area, and it may completely extirpate the shad population (among other ecological impacts they acknowledge but don't quantify). What value does the BoR assign in their benefit/cost to these ecosystem losses? Zero.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gleick/detail?blogid=104&entry_id=46970#ixzz0QNr4a7Vd

1) Zero value assigned to the destruction of the habitats of several fish species

2) Zero value assigned to the loss of recreational use by rafters and kayakers

3) Zero value assigned to the loss of sacred Native American sites

He's got some other good examples (e.g., inflated benefits) in his post.

Gleick makes the excellent point that, even after inflating benefits and neglecting costs, the best the BuRec could come up with was a B/C of 1.06. Hardly a real winner.

What's next? A "cash register" dam?

"If you dam a river it stagnates. Running water is beautiful water. So be a channel." -- English proverb

V.B. Price Commentary: Future Water Trouble for Western River Cities

I should file this (facetiously) under Tell me something I don't know. 

V.B. Price is a long-time observer of New Mexico politics, environmental issues, human rights, etc. He is what you might call an 'institution'.

A few days ago he published this commentary in the New Mexico Independent.  It paints a rather dismal picture for those areas reliant on the Colorado River. And I thought I was pessimistic about my former home for many years!

Here are the first few paragraphs: 

When your neighbors are in trouble, chances are you’re in trouble too.

Look around southwest and mountain west America. Everywhere you’ll find major cities from Los Angeles to Denver, and Las Vegas to Phoenix worried sick about their water supply – as well they should be.

If the Colorado river continues to dry up and western drought becomes a perpetual hazard as current predictions have it, Las Vegas, Nevada will be facing a Katrina-like catastrophe, only this time it won’t be about flooding, but about running dry. Some 90 percent of Las Vegas’s water comes from the diminishing Colorado River. Phoenix, Tucson, Denver and Los Angeles are in different boats, but their ponds are shrinking too.

And New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming — the “upper basin” states in the Colorado [River] Compact of 1922— have “junior” water rights to California, Arizona, and Nevada, the states that comprise the “lower basin.” And that means in a crisis, upper basin states won’t get their water until lower basin states have theirs.

But when push comes to shove in really tough times, California gets its water first, trumping all other states.

The remainder of his Price's commentary is just as provocative, although I agree with commenter 'Steve  Davis' about the CR Compact. [Note: Stephen B. Davis, Jr. represented New Mexico on the Colorado River Commission, which negotiated the Colorado River Compact -see John Fleck's post.]

And Ray Walker, he of the 'Source' fame , is also there as a commenter, peddling his 1 million acre-feet that he claims will keep Lake Mead full.

I think I need to close this with my favorite New Mexico quote, by the author of Ben-Hur.

"Every calculation, based on experience elsewhere, fails in New Mexico." -- former Territorial Gov. Lew Wallace, 1878.

My Brief, Former Life as an Ersatz Cloud Seeding Hydrologist

What better way to start a new month with a topic that is innocuous: cloud seeding.

Innocuous? Uh-huh!

Here is a recent article from the New York Times. And another one about Wyoming's big $8.8M cloud seeding experiment.

What prompted this post was an article in yesterday's Las Vegas Sun reporting that the Southern Nevada Water Authority(SNWA) may decide to fund the Desert Research Institute's (DRI) cloud seeding program in northern Nevada.

It should be noted that the SNWA funds DRI to seed clouds in the Colorado River Basin, from which it derives about 90% of its water.

DRI maintains 22 ground-based seeding stations. Most of the money to maintain DRI's Nevada program (see map from the LVS article) comes from the State of Nevada, which cut the program this year. DRI estimates that over the past 15 years the program has augmented water supplies by 20,000 to 80,000 acre-feet per year.

I am not an expert in cloud seeding. My limited experience with it occurred during a brief period in the mid-to-late 1980s when I was working at DRI (1976-1989). I was in the water group, whereas the cloud seeding program worked out of the Atmospheric Sciences Center. Funding was provided by the state, and all of it went to the ASC. We hydrologists and engineers got nada, and grumbled about it. Not only did we want some relatively 'hard'  money, but we were also skeptical of how much water was actually produced.

Of course, our skepticism had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that we were cut out of the money loop. If you believe that...

I distinctly remember an episode during one of Nevada's biennial legislative sessions. The DRI program was up for review, and the ASC folks were apopleptic. Seems that someone in the state had asked them to demonstrate how much usable water had actually been produced for Nevada by the cloud seeding. Not precipitation,  mind you, but runoff and recharge.  

The ASC folks came to us and asked us to do this for them, in about a week or so. One of my colleagues could not contain his glee. "Told 'em so for years," he said. The chickens (or silver iodide particles)  had finally come home to roost.

To make a long story short, our group helped them out as best we could, and the program was renewed, probably in spite of our efforts. 

Did we get a slice of the pie? Nope.

I wonder if things have changed since then.

I should note that during this time, Utah was making noises about suing Nevada for "stealing" water that normally would have fallen on Utah. Can't recall what happened. Not much, I suspect.

Another Nevada historical note: DRI used to have its own B-25 Mitchell. It was used to fly into storms to make measurements to test the efficacy of the seeding process. It crashed into a mountain in 1980 killing all aboard. 

Here is a two-year old article from the Lahontan Valley News about Nevada's great cloud rustling controversy.

Mighty fine way to end this post.

Oh - if you are wondering why SNWA would want to fund a cloud seeding program in northern Nevada, you'll have to read the story.

“There are no desperate situations, only desperate people.” -- Unknown

A Walk Through the Rio Grande Bosque

Emily Green reports on an informative walk through the Rio Grande bosque (riparian forest) with James Cleverly of the University of New Mexico and John Fleck of the Albuquerque Journal.

Cleverly conducts research on evapotranspiration (ET) and reports on what will happen to streamflow and groundwater levels in the area as temperatures increase. It's not pretty, although recall that increased ET in one area means increased atmospheric moisture, which could produce precipitation elsewhere.

That's why we call it the hydrologic cycle. 

Also read about some interesting climate research by my former colleague David Gutzler.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Saunders - I'm going to lie to you." -- cartoon in The New Yorker.

Cadiz Clamor Continues: 1) EIR Online; 2) New Environmental Review On Tap

I've been preoccupied with other things (online alliteration workshop) and haven't been keeping abreast of what's going on with Cadiz. So here we go.

1) Thanks to Emily Green's hard work and tenacity (hey, she's a real journalist!) and Peter Gleick and Courtney Smith at the Pacific Institute, the Cadiz EIR and related documents are now available online.

2) And, if that's not enough, the Cadiz project will undergo a new environmental review. Emily's got that, too! You can also read more at Aquafornia.

“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.” -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Pipeline People Speak

Emily Green has a great summary of all that transpired at the SNWA Board meeting on 21 August 2009, including selected quotes from the more than 40 public comments.

As was widely reported and misreported by some (at least in terms of the headline) the Board did not vote Y or N on the pipeline project, but Y or N on the following ( as reported by Green):

1. Direct staff to proceed with state and federal permitting processes, fulfill the requirements of stipulated agreements, and complete the necessary biologic and hydrologic monitoring efforts to support these activities.  (Y)
2. Authorize the General Manager to execute, in materially the same form, the Agreement for Management of the Snake Valley Groundwater System among the State of Nevada, the State of Utah and the Authority, and the Snake Valley Environmental Monitoring and Management Agreement between the State of Utah and the Authority. (Y)

More to come - you can count on that!

“If we vote in favor of this, our political futures are toast. We have political targets on our backs.” – Duncan McCoy, Boulder City councilman and SNWA director

Pat Mulroy and SNWA Retreat

Today was the big vote at the SNWA Board meeting - Y or N on the rural pipeline project. So what happened?

Emily Green reports:

The much vaunted “up or down” vote  on the proposed Great Basin pipeline that General Manager Pat Mulroy reportedly demanded of her board at the Southern Nevada Water Authority today descended into a long, polite and more than a little bit bizarre political retreat. Rather than confront her board to commit to the pipeline, as it was reported that Mulroy would do by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mulroy instead asked it for permission to do what she was doing already: Cooperating with the ongoing US Bureau of Land Management environmental review process and hammering out a Snake Valley monitoring agreement.

Read Emily's account for all the facts, and Henry Brean's story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

"No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back." -- Turkish proverb

Mulroy as Moses

Pat Mulroy as Moses? Wait a minute, since she's been called The Chosen One isn't Moses a step down? Can she lead her followers to the Promised Land?

I am not being facetious, though; I'm not referring to that Moses, but to Robert Moses.

Who?

Bear with me now.

Unless you have studied urban planning or grew up in New York state (especially the New York City metropolitan area) during the 1930s to the mid-1960s, you probably don't know who Robert Moses was. He was the Master Builder, and arguably the most powerful figure in New York City and perhaps all of New York State, for almost 30 years. His 'urban philosophy' became widespread as his disciples spread 'the word' to other cities across the USA.

His biography, the 1,300-page tome The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, earned Robert Caro a Pulitzer Prize and was voted one of the 100 most important English-language books of the 20th century by the Modern Library.

Moses wielded incredible power, and at one time held twelve different positions simultaneously and had 80,000 persons working for him. He made policy simply by building stuff, where he wanted it built.

From his New York Times obituary:

Before him, there was no Triborough Bridge, Jones Beach State Park, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, West Side Highway or Long Island parkway system or Niagara and St. Lawrence power projects. He built all of these and more.

Before Mr. Moses, New York State had a modest amount of parkland; when he left his position as chief of the state park system, the state had 2,567,256 acres. He built 658 playgrounds in New York City, 416 miles of parkways and 13 bridges.

Yet he never held elected office, and the only time he ran for one (governor of NY in 1934), he was creamed. He was a just a public servant.

Uh-huh.

So why all this stuff about Robert Moses and Pat Mulroy? I first thought of the similarity between the two when I got this comment to my The Chosen One post:

Is Mulroy pro-development? Mulroy was handed a job to do. She does not make policy on growth. Go blame the City fathers. The City fathers are responsible for water rates.

Moses was a powerful bureaucrat who cowed politicians and forced his vision on many - his vision of the 2oth century US city, and by God, it was his sacred duty to bring that vision to fruition, politicans and communities be damned. Yes, he made policy every time he built a bridge, tunnel, parkway, or housing project.

Sound familiar?

That's what Pat Mulroy does - make policy. She will deny that and likely say that she is really the public servant who simply does what her bosses tell her to do - find more water for growth in southern Nevada. She transcends the role of  an ordinary public servant. She has a vision of 21st century Las Vegas and will implement that: cheap, plentiful water to fuel growth.

I suspect her 'bosses' - Clark County elected officials - would follow her through Hell carrying gasoline tanks if she told them to.

Don't think she makes policy? Well, don't take my word for it - read David Zetland's post.

She and Moses have one big similarity - they really weren't trained to do what they do. Neither one was trained as a planner, engineer, or lawyer, yet each mastered what they needed to know, and got the job done.

And, like Moses, Mulroy's influence extends far beyond her city - to the entire state of Nevada, and beyond.

Some would prefer to say that Mulroy channels Western water giants such as Los Angeles' William Mulholland (see David Zetland's post on this) or New Mexico's legendary State Engineer (for 35 years!) Steve Reynolds.

But I vote for Robert Moses. Besides, his last name's a better fit.

"Those who can, build. Those who can't, criticize." -- Robert Moses