R-J graphic showing proposed land use changes.
Sometimes a story is most noteworthy for what it doesn’t say.
The morning newspaper reported on how the Southern Nevada Water Authority plans to supply water to a 39,000-acre tract of private development mostly south of Henderson should the federal government agree to release the land. The plan is to use conservation and recycling of water from Lake Mead.
Not one word was mentioned about piping groundwater from Lincoln, Nye and White Pine counties. The current plan is to pump 84,000 acre-feet of groundwater a year to Las Vegas at a cost of $15 billion for the infrastructure alone.
A year ago a federal judge heard arguments from proponents and opponents of the proposed project, which was first broached in 1989.
The judge refused to halt the project but ruled that the Bureau of Land Management must conduct further environmental review of the effects of the project and identify what can be done to mitigate them. According to an AP account, the judge characterized the fixes he ordered as “narrow deficiencies” in environmental impact statements.
Both sides interpreted the ruling as favorable to their side.
But today’s news story on supplying water to the proposed private development makes no mention of the groundwater from the north, even though the valley has maxed out its 300,000 acre-foot annual allotment from Lake Mead.
“The one-page document calls on far-flung developments to discourage or outright ban things like man-made lakes, water-cooled power plants and decorative turf,” the story relates. “Those developments should return their treated wastewater to Lake Mead whenever feasible or reuse enough of it on-site to ‘displace the need for SNWA water resources,’ the policy states.”
Protesters oppose Clark County taking rural Nevada groundwater.
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