The Southern Nevada Water Authority board has signed off on a deal with several other Western states that could bring more water to the fast-growing Las Vegas Valley. The agreement has new rules for dealing with the current drought, including the operation of Lake Mead and Lake Powell during long dry spells. It also requires Nevada to pay for a new reservoir in California that would store Colorado River water that would otherwise go to Mexico. The 200-million-dollar reservoir would supply at least 400-thousand-acre-feet of water to Southern Nevada. In addition, the water authority would be able to build a pipeline to bring rural Nevada groundwater to the Las Vegas area. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is expected to sign the agreement in Las Vegas on December 13th. It will cover Nevada, California and the five other Colorado River states. Water Authority chief Pat Mulroy says the additional supplies will not lessen the need for further conservation efforts in Southern Nevada.

What someone should do is force California to change its laws that require greenery planted at industrial parks and other commercial properties. In the middle of a drought in the middle of a desert, it is totally Californian to require a lawn at a warehouse and totally irresponsible. The "big one" can't come soon enough for the rest of the country to save us from "Californication."

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has announced a more aggressive plan to conserve water in the Las Vegas Valley. (Water Authority Steps up Valley's Conservation Efforts in 2008)

Kay Brother, the deputy general manager of the water authority, identified four areas where the valley can save a significant amount of water. Brothers says the focus of conservation next year will rest with businesses, schools, technology, and upgrading water fixtures.

Brothers said, "We all need to realize that we are living in a desert."

And I thought it was a tropical paradise in the middle of a big brown spot. Actually, I think of it as more of a slice of Hell come to the surface and worshipped. We have a valley of rampamt corruption, uncontrolled growth, and all of it littered with handouts of nearly naked women. And after 20 years of Lake Mead turning into a pond, now something is to be done. Guess what! It's too late.

By early next year, Federal officials are expected to have in place a series of specific steps to take if Lake Mead water levels continue to drop.

This is a plan where Nevada could actually lose about seven percent of the water it is allowed to draw from Lake Mead under the worst of drought circumstances.

And southern Nevada irresponsibly continues to grant building permits to developers so that eventually the Las Vegas valley can be paved from smog shrouded mountain to smog shrouded mountain, gambling that somehow the drought is going to magically vanish and we can water the tourists and watch them grow.

At the same time that the lake is vanishing, the Park Service has announced that part of the boat ramp at the lake is closed over the next few weeks while a new concrete ramp is completed aimed at reaching the receding waterline. This is at the same place where part of the marina has already been moved because the basin is shrinking too far and fast to keep the marina in place. Will this be a $6.5 million boat ramp to nowhere?

Utah lawmakers want Congress to spend more than $6 million to examine the proposed Las Vegas water pipeline, fearing it could lead to dust storms in the highly populated Salt Lake valley.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority wants to pipe groundwater from northern Nevada to Las Vegas, and in April, Nevada State Engineer Tracy Taylor authorized the Southern Nevada Water Authority to take up to 40,000 acre-feet of water annually from the aquifer west of Great Basin National Park.

One problem is that some of these aquifers just don't sit conveniently under one state but straddle those pesky boundary lines. Same thing with individual ranchers already sitting over the aquifers--if someone next to you starts taking water from under their property, and if they take enough (like trying to water the lawns in Las Vegas) the level of the whole aquifer goes down if it can't be replenished. So southern Nevada could be taking water which affects aquifer levels in Utah. I remember reading how a town in Texas took so much water from the aquifer under it that the whole town dropped several feet as the aquifer emptied. Of course, Texas has a cowboy attitude toward water rights--he who can get it, can have it, even if his neighbor loses the water in his well. It might not take much for the wells of ranchers in Nevada or Utah to run dry if the aquifer level lowers. So who to appease...a few measly ranchers and the state of Utah, or Sin City, a glorious citadel of conservation and productivity.