After two weeks, on 15 February 2008 the hearings ended on the Southern Nevada Water Authority's (SNWA) plan to pump more ground water from beneath rural Nevada. I've got more details in my 4 February 2008 post.
I'm behind on this because I was writing a proposal to NOAA, and then headed to Reno for a Great Basin Environmental Program Workshop, where I floated my idea to do a "thinking about the unthinkable" study about what would happen if the Southwest went dry.
You can imagine the reaction. Huh?
One thing I've noticed: people who oppose the SNWA's "water grab" usually report the pumpage figures in millions or billons of gallons per day or year, which results in huge numbers. Supporters of the SNWA "water plan" typically report withdrawals in acre-feet per year, which produces much smaller numbers. Doesn't 13 billion gallons per year sound like a lot more (and a lot worse!) than 40,000 acre-feet per year? They're both about the same amount. Go figure.
It's like calling the Yucca Mountain site a "nuclear waste disposal site" or a "nuclear waste dump".
Okay, back to the SNWA water plan hearings.
Here is what the Lahontan Valley News said:
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — State hearings into a plan to pump billions of gallons of rural Nevada water to Las Vegas ended Friday with proponents saying they’re entitled to the water and opponents warning that the pumping could have a catastrophic impact.
State Engineer Tracy Taylor will review the testimony and voluminous paperwork submitted during two weeks of hearings and issue a ruling at a later date on the Southern Nevada Water Authority pumping plan. A final decision isn’t likely for several months.
Paul Taggart, attorney for SNWA which wants to draw more than 11.3 billion gallons of groundwater a year from Delamar, Dry Lake and Cave valleys, argued that the water authority met all requirements for the pumping and critics’ disaster scenarios are unfounded.
Simeon Herskovits, attorney for the Great Basin Water Network which opposes the plan, countered that 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.
The article concluded:
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.
The valleys are all in central Lincoln County, which initially opposed the plan but reached an agreement with the water authority on which groundwater basins can developed. The agreement also allows for use of SNWA’s pipeline, for a price, by the county.
The agency hopes to begin delivering rural groundwater to Las Vegas by 2015. Its 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 200-mile-long pipeline project has been estimated at anywhere from $2 billion to $3.5 billion.
It is interesting to note that Lincoln County is on board. But not Gov. Jim Gibbons, trained as a geologist. Check out this story by Phoebe Sweet from the 21 February 2008 edition of the Las Vegas Sun:
Gov. Jim Gibbons is again saying he opposes Southern Nevada’s plan to get water from rural Nevada.
On Tuesday [19 February 2008], Gibbons told the Fallon Rotary Club that the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has proposed a multibillion-dollar pipeline to eastern Nevada to supply Las Vegas with a backup source of drinking water, should instead build a desalination plant in California and trade that plant’s water for some of California’s allocation of the Colorado River, according to the Lahontan Valley News.
During his nearly 45-minute speech Tuesday, which focused mostly on the state budget crisis, Gibbons pitched the desalination proposal as “a better plan than what Clark County has,” according to reporter Christy Lattin.
On Wednesday Melissa Subbotin, a spokeswoman for the governor, confirmed that Gibbons “wants to bring water to Southern Nevada without taking it straight from Northern Nevada.”
Subbotin said the governor has made no formal proposal of an alternative to the pipeline, but thinks Southern Nevada could meet its water needs “utilizing water from the Colorado River and a desalination plant.”
Okay. The article concluded:
Last February, during a closed-door meeting with environmentalists, Gibbons questioned the need for the pipeline. Scot Rutledge, executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, told the Sun Gibbons prefaced his statement with: “The Southern Nevada Water Authority is not going to like what I’m about to say.”
A week later, an aide for the governor said Gibbons’ comments were only theoretical and had been misinterpreted. Steve Robinson, who was deputy chief of staff and natural resources adviser to the governor at the time, said: “He knows the reality is that the pipeline is the way Southern Nevada is going to have to go to get water.”
And speaking of desal, check out this piece in the 17 February 2008 Nevada Appeal (Carson City) by general contractor Fred Kessler. He wants to run pipelines to northern and southern Nevada from Pacific Coast desal plants.
Later this year, once we elect the next occupant of the White House, we may finally make some progress upon the primary national security issue facing the United States —global climate change — which the Bush administration has been neglecting.
Here in Nevada, the effects of global climate change to date have been both noticeable and costly, but not yet catastrophic. These effects will, however, increase over time and grow in severity. What is obvious, is that precipitation will diminish, and evaporation will increase. The current condition of Lake Mead and Walker Lake are ominous predictors of what Nevada can expect its future water supply to look like.
In populated areas the groundwater supply is rapidly diminishing, as evidenced by dropping water tables, which is good for the well-drilling industry, but bad for municipal water districts, home owners, farmers, ranchers, etc. We all know that there is no more precious commodity than potable water for the people of Nevada. Not gold, not silver, not tourism. If we are to survive as a population, we all must have sustainable reliable potable water supplies, or be blown away by the winds of global climate change.
Given the impending effects of global climate change, the time has come to plan for Nevada’s future water needs, which will be substantial given the past three decade’s population growth. In Roman times when emperors did not have to run for re-election it was much easier to finance, design and construct large-scale public works projects than it is today, when politicians are more concerned with short-term political gain than long-term societal goals affecting future generations.
What is needed is an independent public water authority with a nine-member board to take charge of the situation. The governor, Assembly and Senate should each appoint a single member, and three members should be elected at-large from Southern Nevada and three members from Northern Nevada. This will ensure both equal representation and accountability to all of the people of Nevada. Once constituted, the independent public water authority should be relatively immune from political interference and be able to focus upon long-term intergenerational solutions to Nevada’s future water needs.
The water authority will have to begin the process of raising capital from (1) federal funds, (2) state funds and (3) private capital markets through the sale of public bonds for design, acquisition of land and right-of-way, and construction of public water works projects. The water authority should be a wholesaler of potable water selling to local municipal and private water districts, charging and collecting user fees for the water that they provide. These fees will be the revenue source from which to pay bond holders. The water authority bonds will range from 30 to 50 years in term depending upon financing requirements. User fees also will pay for ongoing operations, maintenance and administrative costs.
The water authority will need to develop vast uninterruptible supplies of drinking water to feed the growing Nevada population. The closest supply to both Northern and Southern Nevada of raw material from which to process potable water is of course the Pacific Ocean. Desalinization plants on the Pacific coast, cross-country pipelines and pumping stations across California and Nevada can produce a steady supply of potable water that is limited only by the maximum flow rate of the system. A northern leg running from the Pacific along the I-80 corridor to service the northwestern Nevada counties, and a southern leg running from the Pacific coast across California to service Clark County will provide potable water to Nevada’s main population centers.
These north and south water authority systems must have at least a 200-year design life with provisions for future technological upgrades as they become available. Luckily, the technology for sea water desalinization has improved dramatically over the past three decades and has now reached a level of efficiency that makes it cost effective to use. There are a number of new desalinization plants around the globe producing potable water.
Moving large quantities of processed water up and over mountain ranges will require substantial quantities of electricity to power the pumps. However, there are recently developed magnetic levitation motors that use substantially less power to perform the same amount of work. As an example of technological innovation these “Mag-Lev” motors use magnetic fields to suspend motor shafts in space creating “frictionless” bearings thereby reducing energy usage. Additionally, the incorporation of wind and solar power generating equipment into the overall design should help mitigate power costs. On down hill slopes, hydroelectric turbines could be used to produce electric power as well.
Hopefully, sufficient quantities of potable water can be delivered to municipal water districts to allow them to stop pumping from local aquifers. This will allow the aquifers to recharge themselves over time from either natural means and/or the collection of storm water that can be injected down recharging wells.
The cost of these water authority desalination plants and pipeline systems will be many billions. It will take more than one decade to raise the capital, acquire plant sites and right-of-way, design the systems and construct them. This will truly be an intergenerational effort on a grand scale and, given that Nevada currently has two U.S. Senators sitting on the Senate Appropriations Committee, now is the time to get the ball rolling while we still have their clout in Washington.
The Romans were smart enough to figure out how to effectively solve the water supply issues of their day. Hopefully, Nevadans will rise to the occasion as well.
The man's a big thinker.
And remember the old MX missile plan from the 1970s? The USA was going to put land-based ICBMs on "racetracks" in desert valleys so that the Soviets would have a hard time targeting them. Well, MX is back, but in not quite the same way. This story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports on SNWA's use of data from 40 MX wells drilled in rural Nevada. What goes around, comes around.
Do you realize that Pat Mulroy has not been mentioned once in this post?
"There have always been people who have wanted to put things here that other people won't put up with in other places." -- Louis Benezet, rural Nevada resident
It's always a controversy that isn't easy to settle.
The water needs to go where the people are located and, yet, sometimes it's at the expense of farmland which needs water to feed the people.
I think Gov. Gibbons proposal has merit. There's always more than one solution to a "problem."
Posted by: Chuck "homesforsalelahontan" Harmon | Tuesday, 05 May 2009 at 09:23 AM
Hey, Aqua Blog Maven!
Looks like water flows to money, or something like that. Or perhaps just "money talks".
I am going to buy some land outside Kingman and will get rich when those 300,000 homes go in!
Ray, you must be talking about "produced water". What's the quality like? We had some of that in NM, and you'd have been hard-pressed to drive a Hummer through it!
Posted by: Michael | Sunday, 24 February 2008 at 06:29 AM
STRANGE....Nevada has been offered a NEW fresh water Source that will yield ONE MILLION acre feet a year for ALL of Nevada.
That's TRIPLE Nevada's allocation from the Colorado River.
Nevada and the SNWA have been guaranteed that development of the Source will not damage the environment or the water rights of anyone, anywhere.
Delivery of water from the Source is not affected by the quagga mussel, which is more than can be said about present deliveries from Lake Mead.
The SNWA has also been assured that development of the NEW Source will not damage their pipeline plans.
STRANGE...that Governor Gibbons seems unaware of this new Source.
STRANGE...that casino executives, developers and union representatives in Las Vegas have not been told about the Source.
STRANGE....that the Bureau of Reclamation has no desire to use the Source to keep Lake Mead reasonably full for power generation or use releases for restoration of the Colorado River Delta.
STRANGE...Environmental Defense has no interest in restoring the Colorado River Delta.
STRANGE....Nevada doesn't want to investigate such a vast natural resource.
STRANGE...that Launce Rake and the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada have refused to mention the Source as a remedy in their complaints against SNWA.
STRANGE...that the SNWA doesn't want an insurance Source in case their well field idea is denied or rendered inoperative, if damage to the environment or others occurs.
STRANGE...that the Governor's office does not want to communicate ....
Ray Walker (Retired Water Rights Analyst) [email protected]
Posted by: WaterSource | Sunday, 24 February 2008 at 02:40 AM
Regarding Lincoln County's approval of the pipeline, here's what I believe happened:
Harvey Whittemore is a really rich guy who is developing Coyote Springs, a 150,000 home development with at least six golf courses located about 60 miles north of Las Vegas in Lincoln County. There are some groundwater resources - the most productive MX well was in the area, but not enough to service the whole thing. His development was originally approved on the agreement that he would not use SNWA water supplies.
No problem, he's got money, so he went out and bought himself some water rights, only now he has to get it there, and the only way to get it there is - you guessed it - the SNWA pipeline.
Now, any county in Nevada that isn't Clark County is basically unpopulated (except for Washoe & Douglas counties up north - Reno Carson City area) so Lincoln County wants to have the property taxes that the Coyote Springs development will bring. So when SNWA came for approval of the pipeline, Lincoln County said OK, as long as you bring Mr. Whittemore's water to him. His water gets to come down your pipe, at least that's what's got to happen for us to approve it, so they said OK.
Harvey gets his water, builds his new homes in the desert, complete with required golf courses, and his bank account gets massively bigger.
Pretty sweet deal, eh?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven | Saturday, 23 February 2008 at 06:45 AM