UNLV scientist: Use war ships to wring salt out of sea water; Using such ships could free up more Lake Mead water for Las Vegas
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 5, 2008 at 6:04 amFrom the Las Vegas Sun:
As drought keeps lowering Lake Mead, UNLV geoscientist David Kreamer wondered how Las Vegas could find other sources of drinking water. And his ideas led him out to sea.
During a scientific meeting in Houston, Texas, Kreamer plans to reveal today how to wring the salt out of sea water by an unlikely means — mobilizing warships now in mothballs. Kreamer said that his idea is not a new one. U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, for example, have had to desalinate ocean water to create fresh water for keeping large crews hydrated while at sea for six months or more. Instead of leaving such ships in dry dock or cluttering working harbors with mothballed vessels, they are ideal desalinization platforms, Kreamer said,
The U.S. Defense Department alone has a fairly large mothballed fleet, including inactive Navy vessels and the U.S. Merchant Marine reserve fleet. Kreamer’s study examines recycling decommissioned Navy ships, especially old aircraft carriers, to become floating desalinization plants.
Read more from the Las Vegas Sun by clicking here.
Groups sue to save fish, stop water grab along Utah-Nevada border
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 2, 2008 at 5:48 amFrom the Deseret News:
A rare fish found only in Utah may become a snag in the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s bid to pump water from sources along the state’s border with Utah to Las Vegas.
The Center for Biological Diversity, Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation and the Great Basin Chapter of Trout Unlimited on Wednesday filed a notice of intent to sue Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne regarding the issue of pumping water from the Snake Valley along the border.
The groups say they’re suing for Kempthorne’s failure “to respond to a petition to protect the least chub, a rare fish species found only in Utah, as a threatened or endangered species under the federal Endangered Species Act.” The claim is that the fish’s numbers have been reduced to six wild populations, including three in the Snake Valley area.
“This small minnow-like fish is an important part of the web of life in Utah,” Center for Biological Diversity science director Noah Greenwald said in a statement.
Read more from the Deseret News by clicking here.
Water grab could dirty Salt Lake air: Dust with toxic elements might be stirred up on the Utah-Nevada border
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 18, 2008 at 5:46 amFrom Deseret News:
If Nevada wins a water war with Utah along the border they share, Utah officials and environmental groups contend it will add to an already bad air-pollution problem along the Wasatch Front.
Snake Valley Citizens Alliance’s Terry Marasco on Wednesday told the Utah State Legislature’s Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee that the Southern Nevada Water Authority wants to take 50,000 acre-feet of water annually from the Snake Valley, a “very dry place” in Utah’s Millard County and Nevada’s White Pine County, for use in Las Vegas. Officials on both sides of the border are currently trying to work out an agreement on how best to tap into an aquifer located in the Snake Valley region.
“There seems to be, from my point of view, a rush to sign an agreement,” Marasco said. “Why the rush?”
Earlier this month, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon and commission chairmen from Juab, Millard, Utah and Tooele counties sent a letter to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., expressing concern about the Snake Valley water project. The county officials urged the governor to direct his negotiating team to protect Utah’s interests by insisting on precise monitoring and mitigation procedures and adequate enforcement by the Utah Attorney General’s Office.
Marasco and other groups are calling for more science on how much water lies beneath the area’s basin and what the long-term environmental impacts will be of removing the water. The fear is that the valley would become another dust bowl, such as what happened under similar circumstances in California’s Owens Valley, and that the airborne dirt would migrate to the Wasatch Front, where pollution from particulate matter is already giving air-quality regulators fits.
Also of concern:
Marasco and Moench both warned lawmakers that surface soil particles contaminated by years of nuclear testing could make their way into Utah’s air. Carcinogenic erionite from volcanic residue in Nevada soil also could pollute Utah’s air, they said.
Read more from Deseret News by clicking here.
Arizona faces lawsuit over water; Company alleges harm after state denied groundwater transfer
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 9, 2008 at 8:42 amFrom the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Arizona is trying to fend off a lawsuit in which a company is suing the state over its refusal to allow groundwater to be piped to neighboring Nevada to support new development.
The lawsuit pending in federal court in Las Vegas contends, among other things, that the denial interfered with interstate commerce and that Arizona officials violated a federal racketeering law by conspiring with project opponents and by purposely stringing out consideration of the application to “throw up numerous costly bureaucratic hurdles.”
The state’s alleged intentional mishandling of Wind River Resources LLC’s application left then-majority owner Erika Van Alstine financially insolvent, forcing her to sell a majority stake in the Arizona-based company, according to the lawsuit.
Lawyers for the state Department of Water Resources have yet to respond to the lawsuit’s charges, instead asking that the lawsuit be thrown out on jurisdiction and other legal grounds, including Wind River’s failure to appeal administratively. If the case isn’t dismissed, it should at least be transferred to federal court in Arizona, the state’s lawyers contend.
Wind River, whose lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, sought to pump water from the Muddy Creek aquifer in the Mormon Wells area north of Beaver Dam and pipe it into Nevada to the Virgin Valley Water District in nearby Mesquite.
Read more from the Las Vegas Review Journal by clicking here.
Yucca Mountain Application in, but water still an issue
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 9, 2008 at 8:32 amFrom the Las Vegas Sun:
As it happens so often with Yucca Mountain, today’s story is about water. In the same breath that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission made its long-awaited announcement Monday that it would accept for review the application for the nuclear waste repository in the Nevada desert, it asked for more studies on water. The commission’s approval, in other words, came with an asterisk.
Yes, the 8,600-page application submitted by the Bush administration’s Energy Department was acceptable, the commission said. All the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed. But only if it is supplemented by an additional water study.
The commission will turn its army of scientists loose over the next four years to decide whether the nation’s nuclear waste dump should be built 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. For now, it wants to know more about the potential for radioactive toxins leaking into the water supply. The commission is not alone.
Not long after scientists started considering the mountain as the potential dump for the nation’s nuclear waste, water became the potential problem. Scientists realized water would seep through the mountain in greater amounts than originally thought, making the rock an imperfect barrier against the canisters of radioactive waste that would be stored underground.
The Environmental Protection Agency also decided that too many cancer-causing toxins could reach the water system, and sent the Energy Department back to work to lower that risk.
Read more from the Las Vegas Sun by clicking here.
Great Basin Ranch: Wrangling over water; Southern Nevada Water Authority stamps its brand on the land
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 7, 2008 at 7:24 amThe Southern Nevada Water Authority may be the only water supplier with cowboys on the payroll, who are managing the land holdings the SNWA purchased in Spring Valley to acquire the water rights for groundwater which they hope will one day flow south to Las Vegas. From the Las Vegas Review Journal:
The water agency’s holdings in Spring Valley now include more than 23,000 acres, 4,000 sheep, 1,700 cows, a working hay farm, and the rights to more than 13 billion gallons of surface water and groundwater each year. The authority also has acquired more than 1 million acres of federal grazing rights, including a sheep range that stretches more than halfway to Las Vegas, some 250 miles away.
The purchases were made to support a scheme to tap groundwater across eastern Nevada.
By as early as 2013, the authority hopes to start sending water south through a pipeline that is expected to cost between $2 billion and $3.5 billion. Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy has described Spring Valley as the “anchor basin” for the project. More than half of the water destined to one day fill the pipeline is expected to come from there.
The water project has stirred fierce opposition, and so have the purchases in Spring Valley. Critics say the authority paid way too much for the ranches and now runs them with a mixture of incompetence and reckless spending.
Rancher and Assemblyman Pete Goicoechea considers it public money down the drain. “If they had to pay for those ranches with the way they’re running their livestock, they’d be broke in three years,” says the Republican from Eureka. “It doesn’t matter who’s running them, though. Christ couldn’t come off the cross to run those ranches and break even with what they paid for them.”
But water authority officials insist the deals make sense in the proper context: They didn’t buy the ranches for the livestock or the land. They weren’t looking to break into the cattle industry or set up a rural retreat where city folk could play cowboy for a weekend. They were after one thing. “We’re paying market value for water,” Humphries explains. “We’re not buying a ranch for a ranch.”
Indeed. The most compelling reason the SNWA continues to operate the ranches is because under Nevada law, if you do not use your water rights, you lose them. Read more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal by clicking here.
Southern Nevada Water Authority agrees to pay taxes on rural Nevada properties
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 27, 2008 at 6:37 amFrom the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
After more than a year of talks, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has reached an agreement to pay property taxes and other levies associated with its ranch property in White Pine County. Though it is exempt from such taxes, the authority agreed to pay $156,400 this year and an additional $45,000 annually in what amounts to a good-will gesture toward the cash-strapped rural county.
Since 2006, the authority has acquired seven ranches and more than 23,000 acres in White Pine County to support the agency’s plan to tap groundwater across eastern Nevada. All of the property is located in Spring Valley, which authority officials consider the “anchor basin” for the groundwater project.
Water authority board members signed off on the in-lieu payments last week, roughly 14 months after General Manager Pat Mulroy first floated the idea. The White Pine County Commission is scheduled to consider the agreement today.
Dick Wimmer, deputy general manager for the water authority, said he would be surprised if the deal failed to go through. “They want to be compensated for these things, and we’re willing to do it. We’re not asking for anything else,” Wimmer said. “This is so they don’t get harmed.”
Just don’t mistake an agreement on in-lieu payments as a county endorsement of the water authority’s pipeline project. County Commissioner RaLeene Makley, who served on the committee that negotiated the payments from the authority, said the county’s stance against the water grab has not changed.
The agreement itself is very specific on that point, noting that by signing the document, the county and the authority “do not compromise or concede their respective positions on any other issue or in any other matter.”
Read more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal by clicking here.
Groups to sue SNWA to block Spring Creek monitoring plan
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 14, 2008 at 5:35 amFrom the Ely Times:
Conservationists and American Indian tribes have served a 60-day notice to stop state and federal authorities from allowing Las Vegas officials to disrupt and potentially gravely harm a culturally and environmentally important creek in rural Nevada.
According to PLAN, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, the coalition is working to block the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s proposed monitoring station at the Spring Creek Rearing Station near Baker. Conservationists fear that the Southern Nevada Water Authority will destroy a critical fish-rearing station. Native American advocates are concerned that SNWA will disturb sacred cultural artifacts at the site.
PLAN spokesman Launce Rake said SNWA is planning “a network of pumps and pipelines to drain rural Nevada’s water to support urban growth in Las Vegas.” SNWA wants to install water-measurement and meteorological equipment at the site.
“The proposed SNWA groundwater pumping project and pipeline poses a significant threat to rural Nevada and Utah water resources, which sustain local economies, the natural environment and the Great Basin’s fisheries resources,” Rake said in a PLAN press release.
Federal law requires formal 60-day notification of intent to sue for violations of the Clean Water Act. The Great Basin Water Network, Trout Unlimited and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Indian Reservation (Goshute Tribes) forwarded that notification to SNWA, state and federal officials this week, Rake said.
“Conservationists and American Indians, who were not consulted by SNWA, fear that the Las Vegas agency could permanently damage the Spring Creek,” the PLAN spokesman added.
Read more from the Ely Times by clicking here.
Don’t let thirsty Las Vegas suck the life out of Utah
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 10, 2008 at 6:59 amFrom the Salt Lake Tribune, an commentary by Cris Cowley, who is a physician, a member of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, among other things. He begins his commentary by describing the now nearly dry Aral Sea and the accompanying health problems for the population who lives in the area. He next describes the Owens Valley, and how that has impacted air quality in the region. Then:
The Southern Nevada Water Authority is seeking to remove 16 billion gallons of water each year from the aquifers under Snake Valley and other central Nevada valleys and pump it to Las Vegas to support the relentless growth of “Sin City.”
This plan is eerily similar to the Los Angeles water grab from Owens Valley. The Snake Valley aquifers were filled over millennia, but through shortsightedness, they can be emptied within decades.
SNWA hired hydrogeologist Timothy Durbin to quantify the impact of the proposal on local water tables. His findings never saw the light of day during the Nevada hearings held in September 2006. Durbin no longer works for the SNWA and is now trying to make his findings public. His scientific modeling predicts a fall of up to 200 feet in the water table under Snake Valley, resulting in the loss of local ponds, seeps, streams and vegetation. This scheme could well turn the Snake Valley into another Owens Valley, and the mistake may be irreversible.
Utahns would be downwind of the blowing dust from the Snake Valley. We likely would suffer the health consequences of inhaling this dust, with increased respiratory, kidney and liver aliments, and increases in cancer. Snake Valley residents would pay for Las Vegas’ water grab with their livelihood, and Utah residents would pay with their health.
It is not too late for Utahns to influence the outcome. Let Gov. Jon Huntsman know that you would support him in vetoing this proposal. He has that power.
Read the full text of this commentary from the Salt Lake Tribune by clicking here.
Petitions challenge Las Vegas’ water pipeline
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 10, 2008 at 6:41 amFrom the Las Vegas Review Journal:
A plan to pipe groundwater to Las Vegas from eastern Nevada has drawn its first legal challenge since state regulators began approving portions of the project last year.
Pipeline opponents filed petitions in two rural courts late this week requesting a judicial review of the most recent decision granting water for the massive Southern Nevada Water Authority pipeline.
On July 9, State Engineer Tracy Taylor issued a ruling that clears the way for the authority to pump more than 6 billion gallons of groundwater a year from three watersheds in Lincoln County. When stretched through reuse, the water from Cave, Delamar and Dry Lake valleys could supply almost 64,000 Las Vegas homes.
But in a petition filed Friday in Ely, opponents argue that Taylor dramatically overestimated how much water could be safely withdrawn from the mostly empty valleys and underestimated how much water should be held in reserve to supply future development there.
Speaking on behalf of the petitioners, Bob Fulkerson said the decision was made to seek a judicial review because “the issues on these valleys were so stark and cried out for relief.”
“We’ve pledged to fight this with every tool at our disposal,” said Fulkerson, who is executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada and a member of the Great Basin Water Network, two groups that oppose the water grab.
A similar petition, filed Thursday in Pioche on behalf of a ranching operation in Lincoln County, specifically challenges the portion of Taylor’s ruling concerning Cave Valley.
Susan Joseph-Taylor, chief hearing officer for the Nevada Division of Water Resources, said the court “might try to consolidate” the separate review requests so they can be heard at the same time.
Water authority spokesman J.C. Davis said agency officials couldn’t comment on the petitions Friday afternoon because they had yet to see them.
Read more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal by clicking here.
Fight heats up for water along Utah/Nevada border; water rulings face legal challenges
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 9, 2008 at 8:07 amFrom the AP & the San Jose Mercury News:
Opponents of a state decision to allow 6.1 billion gallons of water a year to be pumped from three rural Nevada valleys and piped to Las Vegas said Friday they’re going to court to challenge the decision.
Representatives of the Great Basin Water Network and other groups and individuals opposed to the Southern Nevada Water Authority pumping plan said a petition being filed in district court in Ely argues that the pumping from Delamar, Dry Lake and Cave valleys would be excessive.
The petition says state Engineer Tracy Taylor overestimated the amount of water that can be drawn from the valleys, didn’t evaluate impacts on existing water rights and the environment, and didn’t reserve enough groundwater for future economic development in the valleys.
In his July 9 ruling, Taylor reduced an initial SNWA request for more than 11 billion gallons of groundwater a year. That followed a hearing in which the Southern Nevada Water Authority argued that it’s entitled to the water and opponents warned that the pumping could have a catastrophic impact.
Taylor said use of the water in the approved amounts “will not unduly limit future growth and development” in the three valleys, all in central Lincoln County. But before any water is pumped, he wants to see more biological and hydrologic studies. He also said the pumping oculd be halted if it proves to be “detrimental to the public interest or is found to not be environmentally sound.”
The valleys, located between about 75 miles and 125 miles from Las Vegas, are the first to be tapped for SNWA’s massive pipeline project.
More from the San Jose Mercury News by clicking here.
That petition was in response to Taylor’s July 9th ruling on the February hearings regarding Las Vegas’ plan to pump groundwater from the three rural valleys. At the same time, Taylor denied ‘interested party status’ to two Utah counties, who have filed an appeal. From the Deseret News:
Also this week, Utah Association of Counties attorney Mark Ward said an appeal was filed in Nevada state court over Taylor’s denial of Utah and Salt Lake counties as “interested” parties as Taylor moves forward on Southern Nevada Water Authority’s plans to pipe water from the Snake Valley basin to Las Vegas.
Among the biggest concerns at this point are that taking water from aquifers along the border will destroy wildlife and someday create dust-bowl conditions that Salt Lake and Utah counties say will impact their ability to meet federal air quality standards and to provide clean air for residents along the Wasatch Front.
More from the Deseret News by clicking here.
Besides the Utah counties, a number of other interest groups were denied ‘interested party’ status (from the San Jose Mercury News article):
Taylor also rejected the “interested party” status for the Great Basin Water Network, the Wells Band Te-Moak Tribe, Ely Shoshone Tribe and Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, Trout Unlimited, Water Keepers, the North Snake Valley Water Association and Central Nevada Regional Water Authority, representing six Nevada counties.
Taylor has ruled that those groups did not file their protests in a timely manner (Deseret News):
Taylor has so far said that anyone applying for interested party status, or as a protestant, should have done so in 1989, when water-share holders would have been notified of plans to eventually tap into water along the border.
Millard County did file in 1989 but did not include the matter of air quality in the issues it wanted to bring forward as a protestant. Attorneys for Millard County this month filed a petition with Taylor asking him to allow an issue to be brought forward that covers its concerns about drying up the Snake Valley region and its impact on air quality.
Salt Lake County environmental policy coordinator Ann Ober said Salt Lake County likely was not notified back then because it was not a water-share holder. But that’s not stopping anyone from appealing. “We think that Salt Lake County has a great case,” said Ober. “We have a responsibility to fight for clean air.”
From Las Vegas’ Channel 8 News, the Goshute Indians, whose reservation lands straddle the Utah-Nevada border, are also filing suit:
The Goshute Tribe served notice that it intends to file a federal lawsuit against the water authority in 60 days. They say the water authority has initiated a reckless assault on the environment. The Goshutes have had a tough time, for a long time and they seem to be saying, enough is enough.
This week, tribal leaders warned SNWA that a lawsuit is coming — one that alleges the water authority has already violated the Federal Clean Water Act by contaminating a fragile spring area. But this is just the first of many legal salvos aimed at stopping the proposed multi-billion dollar water grab in rural Nevada.
“Water is sacred to our people out here, and I don’t think we would ever dream of selling our water to anybody,” said Christene Steele of the Goshute Tribe.
Steele and the other 500 or so members of the Goshute Tribe aren’t going to be asked to sell their water. They’re pretty sure it will be taken, whether they like it or not, just as so much else has been taken from the tribe over the last 200 years.
Last year, the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs dropped it’s opposition, a move that Goshute tribe members say they weren’t consulted about. The Goshute Tribe is one of the groups being denied interested party status, and being excluded from the upcoming hearings.
The Goshutes think that their lives will be sacrificed so that Las Vegas can continue to grow.
“When it’s gone, it’s gone, and we don’t have nothing,” said Clelle Pete with the Goshute Tribal Council. “If that water was taken from us, there are people who have places to go. We don’t have any place to run to. This is our land,” said Steele.
More from Channel 8 News by clicking here.
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 amFrom 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.
Salt Lake & Utah counties appeal Nevada’s Snake Valley water grab
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 7, 2008 at 11:38 pmFrom the Salt Lake Tribune:
Salt Lake and Utah counties have appealed a Nevada water official’s decision to keep them out of a project that would tap groundwater under Snake Valley and the west desert to feed growth in Las Vegas.
Last month, Nevada State Engineer Tracy Taylor denied the two counties’ request for “interested party” status, saying the counties should have filed a formal objection in 1989 to the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s plans to build a $3.5 billion, 285-mile pipeline project.
In a lawsuit filed this week in Nevada state court, the Utah counties allege siphoning water from an aquifer that lies under the two states to feed Las Vegas would cause vegetation to die. If that happens, winds could pick up the destabilized soils and send them in dust-storm clouds to the Wasatch Front , already struggling with particulate pollution. Twenty years ago, when Las Vegas filed its application in Nevada for the project, little was known about the effects of groundwater pumping on air quality, the petition states.
Opponents say that if Las Vegas takes the groundwater, the water table will be out of reach of the roots from plants that fix the soil, the same phenomenon that led to the destruction of the Owens Valley in California when Los Angeles imported water. Dust storms make the Owens Valley one of the nation’s most polluted places.
All the Utah counties want is to be at the table while Taylor proceeds with the project application, said Utah Association of Counties attorney Mark Ward.
Read more from the Salt Lake Tribune by clicking here.
Nevada State Engineer challenge to Southern Nevada Water Authority: Prove you won’t pump Snake Valley dry
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 1, 2008 at 6:06 amFrom the Las Vegas Sun:
Since the big hearings on Southern Nevada’s plan to take water from eastern Nevada’s Great Basin aquifer began, water officials have been able to avoid presenting scientific predictions about how pumping will affect the lifeblood of that region’s ranchers, plants and animals.
But in July, the state official who is deciding how much of that water will be allocated to the Las Vegas Valley ordered the Southern Nevada Water Authority to run complex, computer-based modeling to develop those predictions about Snake Valley. The results may determine the future of not just urban Clark County, where officials are desperate for more water to sustain unprecedented growth, but also whether the ranching way of life in rural eastern Nevada will continue.
“It has very important implications for all of us” throughout the state, said Launce Rake, a Las Vegas-based spokesman for the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, a group opposing the pipeline.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority has cast a large net across the Great Basin in search of unclaimed water. It has won water rights from Spring, Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys, and it envisions filling a $3 billion, 250-mile pipeline from the high desert to Las Vegas. But still up for grabs is the water beneath Snake Valley, a rich agricultural region that straddles the Nevada-Utah state line. Because of the location, Utah has a say in the matter.
On the Nevada side, State Engineer Tracy Taylor decides who gets water and how much. In the case of Snake Valley, Taylor is saying — for the first time — that before he makes a ruling, the Southern Nevada Water Authority must present a model of the basin and make predictions of what will happen over the next 200 years of pumping the valley.
The demand caught Las Vegas water attorneys by surprise at a preliminary hearing in July. During a morning briefing over Snake Valley, attorneys for the Water Authority had argued that the final showdown over its plans to import billions of gallons of water each year from rural parts of the state should begin in January. They had been through it all before and wanted to move forward as quickly as possible.
But their momentum evaporated with the demand for modeling. They promptly changed their tune about the timeline. They said the Water Authority couldn’t prepare a model by summer. With that, the state engineer’s staff members said they would likely postpone hearings until fall 2009.
Longtime observers say Taylor’s decision to require a model probably comes from the increasing comfort with, and expertise at, modeling among his own staff. “He has now brought on his staff people that are very competent modelers,” said John Bredehoeft, a retired hydrologist who long lobbied Taylor to use modeling. “Without that (expertise) on his own staff, the state engineer was limited with respect to what the models were telling him.”
Without hydrologists on staff, Taylor could only listen to quarreling experts and weigh their testimony. With the Water Authority’s experts arguing that modeling wasn’t particularly useful as a predictive tool, Taylor seemingly gave little weight to the models done by the protesters, Bredehoeft said. “He didn’t listen to what we said,” he recalled. “The first time I have really seen him take cognizance of the model was in the Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar decision.”
Read the rest of this story from the Las Vegas Sun by clicking here.
Climate change to threaten Nevada water supplies
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 25, 2008 at 6:20 amFrom the Reno Gazette-Journal:
Climate change could come with profound risk to Nevada’s water supplies and at great cost to the state’s economy, a new study asserts. The report released this week by the National Conference of State Legislatures and Center for Integrative Environmental Research concluded that rising temperatures associated with a warming climate could create “profound drought conditions” in Nevada, which was examined along with 11 other states around the country.
“Some of these impacts are already noticeable and it’s certainly not going to get better as climate change progresses,” said Daria Karetnikov, a researcher at the University of Maryland who compiled the report.
By 2100, climate change brought about by greenhouse gas emissions could cause the average temperature in Nevada to increase by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit in spring and fall and by up to 6 degrees in the summer and winter, the report said. The result will be changes in precipitation and evaporation patterns and decreased water availability statewide, the report contends.
Costs could be high. Citing a 2004 study by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the report said scaling back development to manage diminishing water resources could translate into a loss of $18.6 billion in tax revenue and $4.7 billion per year in lost wages. Water-based recreation bringing in more than $1 billion annually could also be damaged.
Some of the most dire impacts cited by the report would occur in the Las Vegas area. The report cites studies by the Scripps Institution for Oceanography indicating there is a 10 percent chance that Lake Mead, the water source for 2 million people, could dry up by 2021 and a 50 percent chance it could go dry by 2050.
Read more from the Reno Gazette-Journal by clicking here.
Snake Valley water hearings won’t happen until late next year
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 16, 2008 at 7:03 amFrom the Associated Press & the San Francisco Chronicle:
The main water supplier for Las Vegas, already allowed to pump more than 19 billion gallons of water a year from rural Nevada, pressed Tuesday for a January hearing on its bid for another 16 billion gallons from a valley on the state’s border with Utah. But opponents of the Southern Nevada Water Authority pumping plan for Snake Valley said they need more time to prepare, and asked state Engineer Tracy Taylor for a hearing delay until late 2009.
SNWA’s application for the Snake Valley water is a key element in its efforts to start delivering rural groundwater through a 200-mile-long pipeline network to Las Vegas by 2015.
The authority’s eventual goal is to import enough water to serve more than 230,000 homes, in addition to about 400,000 households already getting its water. Cost of its pipeline project has been estimated at anywhere from $2 billion to $3.5 billion.
Foes of the Snake Valley pumping include many ranchers and farmers who fear the loss of their way of life, environmental and conservation groups, several Indian tribes and White Pine County which encompasses part of the valley. Other opponents include federal agencies such as the National Park Service which has a park near the pumping zone, some local governments in Utah, and the Central Nevada Regional Water authority which represents several outlying Nevada counties.
Read more on this story from the Associated Press by clicking here.
The Las Vegas Sun adds this:
Opponents at a hearing Tuesday argued that they should have at least a year to do additional studies of the groundwater in the rural ranching valley, and to model how pumping the water to Las Vegas would effect the water table and the environment.
They said a $2 million study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Nevada Reno funded by the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, which began in April, should be completed before State Engineer Tracy Taylor rules on the pumping plan. The study won’t be completed until fall of 2011, although test wells could begin producing data as soon as spring 2009.
J. Mark Ward ,of the Utah Association of Counties, said that because only a small corner of Snake Valley is in Nevada, Utah’s rural Millard County should also be given time to work with staff from the state’s own Water Resources Division to completely study how much water Snake Valley residents and business on the Utah side are using and what the impacts of pumping on them might be there.
Ward argued the application of the Southern Nevada Water Authority would lower the water table in Snake Valley and degrade the quality of water, affecting existing water rights and threatening springs in the area. He said he also wants to make the argument during hearings – tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2009 - that pumping will degrade the air quality.
And Ward said he wants Taylor to hold a public hearing in Salt Lake City because there is a “lot of interest” in this water case in Utah.
Ward, representing Millard County in Utah, said that state’s Legislature put up $2 million for a study of water available in Snake Valley. He told Taylor, “You don’t have a lot of information about the Utah side.”
The hearings were initially set to be held in January of 2009, but now will be held in the fall of 2009. For the rest of this story from the Las Vegas Sun, click here.
Forces set to resist bid for rural water; Snake Valley — and its ranches, tribes and park — has chance of defeating Water Authority request
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 15, 2008 at 7:21 amFrom the Las Vegas Sun:
State engineer Tracy Taylor has played it down the middle so far, giving the Southern Nevada Water Authority about half the water it wanted from rural Nevada. His two rulings — on Spring Valley and Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys — were called cautious by some on both sides.
Final arrangements are to be considered today for the biggest showdown to date over rural Nevada’s water — hearings to determine whether the Water Authority can take water from Snake Valley. The hearings will provide another opportunity for Taylor to split the difference between the authority’s request and the contention of ranchers, environmentalists and others who argue that not a drop of water should leave rural Nevada for Las Vegas.
But those opponents say that other than sitting atop an aquifer coveted by the Water Authority, Snake Valley has little in common with the valleys that have come before it. “This is not like Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys, where you would be lucky if you could find a couple human beings,” said Simeon Herskovits, an attorney for many of the opponents of the pumping plan. “Snake is dramatically different.”
Snake Valley has a much larger population than Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys combined and has many more existing water rights than Spring Valley.
In Snake Valley, the ears of mule deer peep above the vegetation on fields kept green by pivot irrigation. It’s that irrigation — and many long-standing water rights — that supports a ranching and tourist economy. Because there are existing water rights and a history of pumping in the area, Herskovits said, it’s no mystery what will happen when pumping begins. There are cases “where ground water pumping on a very modest level — really a totally different scale of magnitude than what SNWA is proposing — … have already caused springs to dry up … and lowered the water table,” he said.
And the existing water rights give Taylor, the state engineer, a legal basis upon which to limit pumping from the valley. Although plants, animals and the environment have limited legal rights under Nevada water law, there are stronger protections for senior water rights. “The law requires that (Taylor) protect existing water rights,” said Tom Meyers, hydrologist for the Great Basin Water Network, which opposes the pipeline plan. “The environment does not have an existing water right.”
Read the full text of this article from the Las Vegas Sun by clicking here.
Las Vegas is granted permission to draw water from Cave, Delamar, and Dry Lake Valleys …
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 10, 2008 at 5:30 am
From the Las Vegas Sun:
State Engineer Tracy Taylor is granting the Southern Nevada Water Authority additional permission to draw 6.1 billion gallons of water from eastern Nevada a year for use in the growing Las Vegas area. The authority sought 11.1 billion gallons but Scott Huntley, a spokesman for the authority, said it was “very pleased” with the ruling.
The application to the state sought 34,752 acre feet a year and Taylor granted 18,755 acre feet, about 53 percent of the request.
Huntley called it a “strong ruling” and it will translate into 32,100 acre feet with the re-use by the authority from the return flows.
Susan Lynn, a spokeswoman for the Great Basin Water Network, complained the ruling would hurt ranchers and wildlife areas in the areas south of Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar Valleys where the water will be drawn from. She called it a “very tough decision.”
From the Elko Daily News:
While the SNWA application sought more than 11.3 billion gallons of groundwater a year from the valleys and the ruling allows about 6.1 billion gallons, Susan Lynn of the Great Basin Water Network said, “It’s way too much considering there are a whole lot of downstream groundwater users who rely on that groundwater flow that is going to be intercepted.”
The SNWA project opponents include ranchers and farmers, as well as local irrigation companies, a water board, the Sierra Club, Nevada Cattlemen’s Association and White Pine County which borders Lincoln County.
The project is backed by casino executives, developers, union representatives and others who point to water conservation efforts in the Las Vegas area and who warn of an economic downturn affecting the entire state unless the city has enough water to keep growing.
From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
SNWA representatives had contended the water authority met all requirements for the pumping and critics’ disaster scenarios are unfounded.
The Great Basin Water Network opposed the plan, saying SNWA tried to hide evidence that the pumping may harm existing water users and the environment in rural Nevada because there’s not enough water in the valleys for long-term exportation.
Taylor said use of the water in the amounts he approved “will not unduly limit future growth and development” in the three valleys, all in central Lincoln County. But before any water is pumped, Taylor wants to see more biological and hydrologic studies. He also said that pumping will be halted or modified if it proves “detrimental to the public interest or is found to not be environmentally sound.”
Allen Biaggi, the state’s conservation-natural resources chief and Taylor’s boss, said the ruling shows “the strength of Nevada’s water law in balancing the needs of its citizens, protecting existing water rights and protecting Nevada’s natural resources.”
Kay Brothers, SNWA’s deputy general manager, said the water authority recognized the state engineer’s “somewhat conservative” approach to water management in Nevada, the nation’s most arid state, and wouldn’t challenge his decision. “We respect the way he manages the state’s water basins,” Brothers said. “If that’s what he’s comfortable with, so are we.”
So far, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has filed for 125,742 acre-feet, but has only been granted 58,755 acre-feet per year; it is the difference between supplying 428,000 homes and 200,000 homes. However, instead of seeing the pipeline has half-empty, SNWA officials see it as half-full in this article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Brothers said the authority’s resource plan for the next 50 years was built on the assumption that the agency would not get all the groundwater it applied for in eastern Nevada. “Our planning horizon has always looked at a range, and what we’ve seen so far is in that range,” she said.
By as early as 2013, the authority hopes to start delivering rural groundwater to the Las Vegas Valley through a pipeline that is expected to stretch more than 250 miles and cost between $2 billion and $3.5 billion. Authority officials see the project as a way to supply water for growth in the Las Vegas Valley and insulate the community from drought on the Colorado River, which provides 90 percent of the valley’s drinking water.
Critics argue that large-scale groundwater pumping in the arid valleys of eastern Nevada threatens the region’s wildlife and the livelihoods of its ranchers and farmers.
Wednesday’s ruling drew a tepid response from those most opposed to the project. “We think the decision was sort of a mixed bag,” said Simeon Herskovits, a New Mexico-based attorney representing stakeholders who have protested the authority’s plans to the state. Herskovits said Taylor agreed with some of the concerns raised by the opposition and “didn’t bite” on some of the authority’s more speculative arguments. But, he said, the state engineer failed to address the long-term problems with pumping so much water, though the authority is “locking it in as a permanent supply.”
“There are some things to be pleased about” in the ruling, Herskovits said, “but overall, we are concerned that the outcome was too much water permitted to the Southern Nevada Water Authority.”
… while opponents are shut out of upcoming Snake Valley hearings
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 10, 2008 at 5:21 amAlong with the news of granting water to Las Vegas from the Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar Valleys, Nevada Engineer Tracy Taylor also denied “interested persons” status to several opposition groups, as well as Utah & Nevada officials in the upcoming Snake Valley hearings, as noted in this San Diego Union-Tribune article:
In a related case involving SNWA’s application to pump 16 billion gallons of water a year from Snake Valley, on the Nevada-Utah border in White Pine County, Taylor rejected bids by three Indian tribes, local government entities in Nevada and Utah and others for “interested persons” status in those proceedings.
That ruling, which restricts participation in the Snake Valley hearings scheduled to start on Tuesday, went against the Great Basin Water Network, the Wells Band Te-Moak Tribe, Ely Shoshone Tribe and Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation.
Taylor also rejected the status for Salt Lake and Utah counties in Utah, Trout Unlimited, Water Keepers, the North Snake Valley Water Association and Central Nevada Regional Water Authority, representing six Nevada counties.
The decision sparked editorials published in neighboring Utah papers, such as the Salt Lake Tribune:
Water makes life possible in the desert. If you remove a vast amount of water and take it hundreds of miles away, the loss will have far-reaching effects on arid land, plants, wildlife and the livelihoods of its human inhabitants.
This is a simple law of nature that the Southern Nevada Water Authority wants Utahns to ignore when thirsty Nevada is doing the taking. SNWA officials want us to believe that if they pump 80,000 acre-feet of water per year from an aquifer on the Nevada/Utah line and pipe it 285 miles to Las Vegas, only the Snake Valley area, home to 600 people, would be affected, and only a little bit.
That belief is either naive or grossly self-serving. In either case, Utah officials, including Gov. Jon Huntsman, have a responsibility to see it for the water grab it is and stop it before it starts.
To keep Utah from throwing sand on the project, Southern Nevada water officials successfully lobbied their state engineer to deny the “interested party” status requested by Salt Lake and Utah counties, three Native American bands, the Central Nevada Water Authority, conservation groups, businesses and residents of the valleys. This decision to exclude legitimate stakeholders is troubling.
SNWA argued that these groups should have protested in 1989 when it first applied for the project. But much has changed in 19 years, including knowledge about hydrology and drought. We now know the dangers of what then seemed to be a fairly innocuous idea that may never be implemented anyway.
The Deseret News had this to say:
Nevada’s state engineer needs to give opponents their due. They deserve to have their respective points of view heard in this matter. Aside from sorting out legal claim to this water, conservationists, the National Congress of American Indians and other interested parties have deep-seated interests in the physical, economic, cultural and spiritual well-being of this area. The key to all of these concerns is sufficient water resources.
SNWA, for its part, says its application has been mischaracterized as a water grab. Rather, a SNWA spokesman has said, the authority seeks to draw upon a resource no one is using.
Area ranchers say the underground aquifer holds in check a polluted aquifer beneath the salt desert. Any force that reduces that water pressure — such as pumping significant amounts of fresh water from the aquifer — could subject the remaining freshwater supply to contamination.
Most of those denied “interested party” status are not planning to appeal, reports the Salt Lake Tribune:
Taylor’s other ruling, which Huntley said was relatively insignificant to Las Vegas, means the Wasatch Front counties won’t be granted “interested person” status during upcoming hearings on the SNWA pipeline proposal.
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. “Not only was [our knowledge] lacking, but the EPA requirements have become much more stringent,” Ober said.
Water experts say that the 285-mile, $3.5 billion Las Vegas pipeline could cause the basin’s water table to drop far enough to kill off the vegetation that now holds the soil in place. That could cause dust storms to reach the Wasatch Front and further damage the already-degraded air quality.
The counties don’t plan to appeal Taylor’s ruling. A conservation group, however, may challenge the denial of its interested party application, said Steve Erickson, spokesman for the Great Basin Water Network. Erickson said Taylor’s ruling on the water SNWA can draw from the three Lincoln County valleys overestimates the perennial yield and recharge in the nation’s driest region.
Utah officials had this to say in this Salt Lake Weekly article:
“We’re downwind,” says Salt Lake County Councilman Jim Bradley who brought the issue to fellow council members in June. “I think there is a good chance that taking water out of the Snake Valley over there is going to have an air-quality detriment to Salt Lake County.”
Ann Ober, environmental policy coordinator for Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, says Salt Lake Valley shares an air corridor with the Snake Valley in Utah’s west desert. “If they de-water the Snake Valley, we can expect an increase in particulate matter that will impact the valley’s air quality,” she says. In addition to participation in Nevada’s water hearings, Ober says Salt Lake County has petitioned for a seat at the table as federal officials work on an environmental impact statement for the Las Vegas pumping plan.
Salt Lake County and Utah County each are asking to bring experts to testify at the July hearings, held by the Nevada State Engineer. After the hearings the engineer will decide how much, if any, water Las Vegas gets to take from Snake Valley. The Southern Nevada Water Authority has filed on 16 billion gallons per year.
Snake Valley’s ranchers have complained for years about the plan, saying when Nevada sticks pipes on its side of the border, water will be sucked from under Utah crops. Southern Nevada Water Authority’s response has been that there is plenty of water to go around. The authority acknowledges its pumping might drop the Utah water table, but says Utah’s ranchers will just have to drill deeper wells.
That argument doesn’t hold water, says Mark Ward, an attorney with the Utah Association of Counties, which will represent Salt Lake County in the Nevada hearings. A Utah state scientist has estimated pumping in the Snake Valley could drop underground water levels by 10 feet, below the root system of the greasewood scrub brush that holds the desert floor together. “The groundwater dependant vegetation loss could be vast,” says Ward, noting that, from the 1900s to the 1970s, when Los Angeles pumped water away from surrounding ranching valleys in California, the result was the largest dust source in the world.
BREAKING NEWS: Nevada State Engineer issues ruling on Cave, Dry Lake, and Delamar Valleys: Ruling grants Southern Nevada Water Authority 18,755 acre-feet annually of 34,752 acre-feet requested
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 9, 2008 at 11:43 amFrom the Nevada Department of Conservation & Natural Resources:
Nevada’s State Engineer Tracy Taylor released his ruling today on the Cave Valley, Dry Lake Valley and Delamar Valley water right applications filed by the Las Vegas Valley Water District. The applications are now held by the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Taylor’s ruling grants to SNWA 18,755 acre-feet of water annually. LVVWD applied for 34,752 acre-feet annually in applications that were originally filed in 1989.
Today’s ruling comes after a hearing held in February.
Allen Biaggi, director of the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said that the State Engineer’s ruling demonstrates the strength of Nevada’s water law in balancing the needs of its citizens, protecting existing water rights and protecting Nevada’s natural resources.
“Taylor’s ruling is consistent with state law, is based on the best available science, and it allows for mitigation should environmental impacts occur in these basins as a result of pumping ground water,” he said.
Taylor previously ruled on ground-water withdrawals from Spring Valley and the first day of hearing is scheduled for Snake Valley on July 15.
Read the full text of the news release from the Nevada State Engineer by clicking here.