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Water thieves at work in Las Vegas: shades of the Owens Valley versus City of Los Angeles

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 9, 2008 at 7:33 am

From the Mammoth Lakes Daily News, an article/commentary that doesn’t mince any words about the comparison between Las Vegas’ plan to use rural Nevada groundwater to quench its thirst and Los Angeles’ diversion of Owens Valley water nearly 100 years ago:

It seems hard to comprehend that in this day and age of tons of history on the great water theft in the Owens Valley-accomplished over 100 years by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, that anyone would think twice about it happening again. However, history is replaying an ugly chapter on the Nevada/Utah border.

This week the Great Basin Water Network filed a legal petition in Ely, NV, along with other groups of conservationists, scientists, native American tribes, the state of Utah, and citizens of the Delamar, Dry Lake and Cave Valleys.

The legal action stems from the recent (July 9 ruling) by Nevada’s state Engineer Tracy Taylor, who gave the Southern Nevada Water Authority (the city of Las Vegas) the right to pump 6.1 billion gallons of water a year to Vegas. Taylor reduced the initial amount of more than 11 billion gallons of groundwater a year down to 6.1 billion gallons a year.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority says it is entitled to this water. Taylor has told the media the amounts of water he approved “will not unduly limit future growth and development” in these remote Nevada valleys. And, Taylor also wants more studies done on the hydrologic and biologic values in the region. If it was determined that the pumping was “detrimental to the public interest or is found to not be environmentally sound,” the pumping could be halted.

Yeah, and this line of BS sounds just like the lines of poo LADWP handed the citizens of Inyo and Mono Counties over the past 100 years. How do you know the water keepers of the bigger cities are lying? Their mouths are moving.

This is another historic fight in the making of the “Water Wars” of the West, and the poor farmers, ranchers and residents of Delamar, Cave and Dry Lake Valleys have been subjected to the same kinds of pressures from Las Vegas water miners as the Owens Valley has been–and continues to be.

At stake are groundwater pumping standards, and what type of scientific evidence the city of Las Vegas will put forward to convince the state’s Engineer, Mr. Taylor, that “nothing bad is going to happen if we pump the crap out of the area.”

Similar to the Owens Valley and its distance from the City of Los Angeles–these unique Nevada valleys are located 75 to 125 miles from Las Vegas. This out-of-sight/out-of-mind situation makes the water mining seem invisible to the Las Vegans, who, probably like their counterparts in Los Angeles won’t actually see the devastation unfolding in these Nevada/Utah bordering communities.

Read more from the Mammoth Lakes Daily News by clicking here.

August 9, 2008 · Filed Under Las Vegas & Nevada, Owens Valley & Mono Lake

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