WATER WARS: Water needs increasingly divide urban areas like Las Vegas and its rural neighbors.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/David_Vasquez
BAKER, Nev.—Denys Koyle parked an 8-foot bucket on the lot in front of her small motel, here on a lonely stretch of pavement crossing the Utah-Nevada line. A sign on the bucket reads: "Don't Let Las Vegas Destroy Nevada. Stop the Water Pipeline."
Koyle is an unlikely activist. She's quick to point out that she's no tree-hugger. But as she bustles between the Border Inn's grill and gas station, she complains about the long reach and powerful thirst of Las Vegas. These are problems she thinks will put her area, Snake Valley, at risk.
"It's a hundred-years' war," she says. "It's exhausting."
She and her neighbors, settled on either side of U.S. Route 50, are all stirred up by an aggressive pipeline proposal from a city nearly 300 miles away. In many parts of the world, cities are on the forefront of preparing for a climate-changed future. Here it is happening with a peculiar twist: Las Vegas wants the water beneath their feet, and residents scattered through White Pine County and other targeted rural areas aren't budging.
This battle has been raging for two decades with no end in sight.
On the front lines is the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), with its proposal to draw water from five faraway basins, including the Snake Valley, which straddles the Utah border. The multibillion-dollar project would help supply 2 million residents of the sprawling Las Vegas area, but could have severe impacts on the rural valleys.
Its outcome will set the tone for future rural-urban relations in Nevada and other Southwestern states where drought-parched cities want more water. Smaller water pipeline proposals are under scrutiny in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.
Critical milestones loom just ahead.
First, the Nevada state engineer will decide by March whether to give the water authority all, none or part of the water rights it has requested in four of the five targeted basins. (Snake Valley rights will be addressed in a later round of hearings.)
Separately, a final environmental study is expected in summer 2012 from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The federal agency must decide whether to approve rights of way for the pipeline over BLM-managed lands.
These actions will determine who has the upper hand as the remaining regulatory and legal skirmishes play out.
Compromise is not on the horizon. "It's not a conciliatory attitude from any of the parties," said Susan Lynn, coordinator of the Great Basin Water Network, an all-volunteer nonprofit opposed to the pipeline.
Dependable water remains a mirage
The facts of the dispute are not comforting. Las Vegas needs a more diverse water supply. Last decade, Vegas' population grew by more than a fifth, up to 584,000 in city limits (about 2 million in the area). Economic recession has slowed growth, but planners say they need a more stable water supply even to sustain the current population for the long term.
The city gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River reservoir of Lake Mead. But the source has proved unpredictable during a recent decade-long drought. The Colorado finally saw relief thanks to healthy precipitation and snowpack levels in 2011.
"We had one good year after 10 bad ones," said SNWA spokesman J.C. Davis. "What if that was just intermission, and next year we start the second wave of a drought?" Davis has observed Lake Mead's fluctuations throughout his 14 years with the water authority.
Of the seven states dependent on the Colorado's water, Nevada gets the slimmest share -- 4 percent -- as determined by a 1922 agreement. Nobody has the stomach for the massive interstate negotiations that would have to take place to reallocate the river, said John Entsminger, senior deputy general manager at SNWA.
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18 Comments
Add CommentAnother chapter added to the continuing saga of "Cadillac Desert" (Marc Reisner, 1986).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVoting for clean bills DO help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFind better ways to clean water and make it drinkable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaking people accountable for the harm they have caused maybe the only way to change the trend to pollute without consequences.
Vote these people OUT.
Let them drink piss... Use the sun to evaporate the waste water for reuse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLas Vegas should get to tap their water ONLY when conservation measures have been maximized in the city proper. That means putting in landscaping that actually has a chance of survival on its own in Las Vegas' climate instead of having to be nursed almost daily by water coming in from hundreds of miles away. This also means closing most of the golf courses in the area as they are HUGE water wasters. Or, the least we could do is take the dimples off the golf balls so that a par 4 hole is only 200 yards long instead of 400. That's half the water consumption of golf courses right there only because we want to boost golfers' egos? Yeah, the people in White Pine county are going to get their water taken away because each golf course HAS to be 300+ acres...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLow-flow shower heads and toilets should be MANDATORY as well as waterless urinals and water-saving appliances. And please, stop using perfectly good water to fill up the Bellagio Fountain! After all these improvements, Las Vegas can pipe in more water (if they still need it at all).
This story represented both sides well, but failed to mention two very important (and factual!) points. One is that with the relatively pain-free conservation measures already in place, Las Vegas (my town!) uses just two-thirds of its allocation from the Colorado River, and even if there were to be significant drought or climate-related reducations, we have a huge buffer. (More conservation, which is opposed by SNWA, would only make us more secure.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecondly, and of a more nefarious nature, the SNWA has invested many millions in the development and promotion of a $200-billion "new town" in the desert called Coyote Springs. (Why a municipal agency would generously contribute to such an effort should be the subject of more investigation.) Coyote Springs, an hour's drive north of Las Vegas in what is now virgin desert, was designed to have 159,000 homes and would be the second-largest city in Nevada. And according to the SNWA boss Pat Mulroy, it cannot exist without the pipeline. The water is irrelevent except as an excuse to build the pipeline. The developer would essentially rent space in the pipeline to move his water around hundreds of miles of the state to support this project, which I believe is the worst example of leapfrog development in the country.
So that's some insight into the ugly sausage factory that is water policy in the West.
It does not require any real expertise in the area of hydrology to estimate the amount of time needed to complete a water gathering and transport project such as this. Given this thought, it would not be a stretch to further estimate the number of dead individuals here today who are promising "no worries". These ever optimistic persons who will not be around to see the havoc wreaked by this project should; first acknowledge that they will no longer be around to witness the results of their efforts and second, having done so should sign away all rights for any of their descendants to have a life. All of these descendants should know that regardless of the passage of time, as soon as it becomes known that the trespasses of their forefathers/mothers is destroying innocent lives/livings that theirs is forfeit. Hopefully by wiping out whole genealogical lines of environmental terrorist we may save the earth yet. We can do with out Las Vegas......if not move it to Michigan lock stock and barrel....they have the room, the water and they need the jobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI fear that this story is indicative of the dilemmas that face the entire human race in the rather near future. We can do all manner of mental somersaults, back-flips and rationalizations but the bottom line is that if we as a species cannot arrest our compulsion to multiply without restraint, nature will damned well do it for us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRancher Anderson got it right about who is going to raise the cows to put the prime rib on the tables at the casinos, or even at our local groceries. This global experiment that we have pushed far beyond our ability to control, climate change, will play out now beyond our ability to stop it.
We can conserve all that we can manage and desalinize the entire oceans but we will, in the end, kill the planet as a habitable place for advanced life forms -- unless we can achieve a steady state with the Earth's resources and survive the centuries, even millennia, needed to reach a new equilibrium.
Las Vegas may be proud of recycling 25,000 acre-feet of water over several years, but it is pathetic pissing in the ocean.
These grandiose Chamber of Commerce schemes for harvesting distant resources can only succeed for a matter of decades before they fail leaving long term ruin as their legacy.
Mark Twain had it right: "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over." Unless we take a very long term approach to water, energy and management of all non-renewable resources we are doomed unless we abandon the perpetual growth model which our race has embraced since the very beginning of the industrial revolution. The discovery of The New World has only given us a reprieve of a few centuries fellow humans.
What no one in the US seems to know is that there now exists a solution to this problem. A new design of SOLAR FLASH EVAPORATOR CALLED FLOSTIL (see website SOLAQUA.INFO)was invented in 2010.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis solar driven plant will desalinate the salt ground water that exists in many areas of the US provided it can be pumped and it is in a hot sunny place.
PLEASE TELL EVERYONE YOU CAN ABOUT THIS BECAUSE I'M TIRED OF TELLING PEOPLE IN THE STATES. All the contact information is on the website.
I'm sure that clever, efficient solar means of distilling saline water from either the ocean or saline aquifers can be devised and to some extent exists now. However, there are still problems. One is: can it be scaled up to the demands of a major metropolis, agriculture and the superfluity of golf courses that have been built in the last few decades? Another serious problem which can only be swept under the rug for a few decades is: what do we do with all the salt?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe will eventually be forced to live within the means of our damaged planet and let's hope we don't crap it up beyond repair.
No. You may *not* have a pipeline from Lake Michigan to Las Vegas! Not as long as you have 21 golf courses and the abomination of the Fountains of Bellagio!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou got too many people -- send some home. Turn off the fountain and admit grass doesn't belong in the desert.
Then we'll talk. About bottled water at $2 per bottle,
We conserve. Now, it's your turn.
It's funny but sad-here on our small and damp island on the east side of the Atlantic, we have similar problems-the overpopulated,rich South relies on decreasing aquifers,and yet in the North we are,as usual at this time of year,up to our ankles in flood water!Simples-don't expand your towns or cities if there aren't the resources to support them.In perspective our local city(York)has been coping with these problems for the best part of the last 2000(YES 2000)years!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToo right,Quinn, the waste of potable water in western civilisation is appaling
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook, Las Vegas can afford to pay California to build a desal plant(s), and the pipe(s) to get it to them...and by the way West Texas better think about doing the same thing from the gulf. Then, what to do about Arizona and New Mexico...who knows....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFLOSTIL is made up of stainless steel and borosilicate modules bolted together in such a way that it makes any amount of fresh water desired.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe basic plant makes 1,000 tons a day.
The plant costs about the same as a large windmill power generator.
FLOSTIL could transform any hot desert coastline by converting ocean water to fresh in huge quantities.
The plant has no moving parts and is very rugged with an expected maintenance free life of more than 30 years.
The basic plant covers the same area as a football pitch and saves the salt as a dry product for sale.
Look at SOLAQUA.INFO for more information. The world could have a new green belt occupying what is now desert coastline in California, Texas, Mexico, Florida, North Africa, Middle East, India, China, Australia, South Africa. These places could become the grain basket for the world.
The FLOSTIL plant saves the salt as a dry product for sale on the world market.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUSA and Canada import 2 million tons of salt every year and pay about $100 a ton just to throw on the roads each winter. In the spring this salt is washed into the earth where it used to be millions of years ago before it was washed to the oceans by rivers.
YES The Flostil design will give practically unlimited yields. The flostil design is totally modular, made of ''forever'' materials stainless steel and glass and new modular lines can be added at any time to give as much fresh water as is desired. We can turn the grand canyon into a boating lake if you want!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you realise that all the rivers and lakes in the world only contain 0.1% of the worlds water it gives an idea of the vast resource available to us.(97% is in the oceans,2.7% is in the ice caps and 0.2% is underground.)
One of the great new features of the Flostil design is that it saves the salt as a dry product! This can be shipped to the northern states and Canada for winter road use. In the spring the rain washes the salt into the ground where it was millions of years ago before it was washed to the sea.
USA and Canada spend $2 billion on salt imports every year for the roads.
Any more questions ? I would be delighted to answer them personally.
Look at SOLAQUA.INFO for all contact details or email me barrycoots@gmail.com
The design was done in response to the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN EARTH 3 ISSUE IN 2009 which said ''The person who invented a way of desalinating seawater at little or no cost could become the world's richest person and be forever enshrined''.
I applied to their competition but I don't live in any of the 50 states so my entry was rejected.
Luckily the OXFORD UNIVERSITY VENTUREFEST awarded me the silver medal for the best invention of the year.
FLOSTIL saves the salt as a dry product so it can be swept under the carpet should you wish to do so but better spread on the roads in northern USA and Canada (salt to the value of $2 billion is imported each year for this).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpring rains wash the salt into the ground where it was millions of years ago before rivers took it to the ocean.
A basic FLOSTIL plant covers an area about the same as a football pitch because it uses DIRECT SOLAR GAIN and gives 1,000 tons a day.
It is completely modular and can be scaled up at any time to yield any amount of fresh water you like.
You can see lots of detail on my website solaqua.info
There are millions of children in Africa that die every year from drinking shitty water.
I have a single line design that is fed manually using a six fold tandem.
The boys of the village pedal at night to fill the header tanks and the women of the village control the plant during the day.
These poor mothers have to take a ten mile hike in the fierce sun for two gallons of shitty water to give the children.
It doesn't have to be like this.