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The battle over rural Nevada water resources is really a battle over vision pity the flashy glitzy south against the stubborn north for the future of the state.
And given just enough time the rural north may just pull off the biggest upset since David best Goliath.
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For over 50 years casino dominated southern Nevada ignored the rural north and for the most part rural Nevada was happy to be ignored.
Las Vegas was and still is a land of an ever changing skyline, instant gratification and built on the millions of get rich quick dreams of small dreamers that more often than not failed to come true.
While small time dreamers often arrived to Las Vegas in a car and left in a bus, the city was golden to the big dreamers from the 1940’s to the 1990’s no plan for Las Vegas seemed too ambitious or too fantastic to be achieved. Las Vegas dreamers not only rebuilt built Rome, Egypt, Paris and New York, their versions were often more opulent and came with a free dinner buffet with a one night’s stay.
While Las Vegas was growing in leaps and bounds, rural Nevada at least relative to Las Vegas was moving at a snail’s pace. It was not that there was no economic growth in the 80 percent of the state north of the Clark County line, indeed the north growth even the rural north’s growth for the latter half of the 20th century would have been the story in any other state. But while the north was often bright it never out shined the super nova that was Las Vegas.
There seemed to be no limit to Las Vegas’ growth except for one little detail- water. Cities of a more than a million people need water, cities whose major industry is tourism need more and desert cities of more than a million based on tourism need the most. And by the 1980’s it became clear to the movers and shakers that created Las Vegas that their ever growing ever thirstier city would need even more than its share of the Colorado river if to keep pace with the sprawl.
Rebuffed by its partners in the river, Las Vegas for the first time in 50 years looked north and liked what it saw. The solution to its forecasted water problem could be easily solved by building the largest most expensive system of pipelines that would bring northern water south. It was and still is the largest ever aqua engineering project in the history of human civilization but for a city that built a copy of Paris in six short months anything seemed possible.
Southern Nevada brashness meet northern Nevada orneriness.
It has been 25 years since the project was first put together in secret and over 22 plus years since the Southern Nevada Water Authority made its first move and not an inch of pipe has been laid or a shovel full of dirt turned.
In fact the only real successes the SNWA can claim is this March’s ruling by State engineer that gave water rights to the authority originally filed for in 1990.
The SNWA should not however pop the champagne just yet.
More than 300 local governments, Indian tribes, ranchers, farmers, businesses, environmental groups, and families and individuals from across Nevada and Utah filed petitions for judicial review appealing the Nevada State Engineer’s decision.
“We are definitely in this for the long haul,” said Abby Johnson a Board Member of the Great Basin Water Network. “We are appealing the ruling and depending on the EIS (environmental Impact statement) we could appeal that finding. If anything we in rural Nevada are more united, more ready to fight than we ever were.”
Last weekend Snake Valley Festival held in Baker, Nevada appears to back up Johnson’s words. Only in its fourth year of existence the festival raised closed to $10,000. Perhaps a meager sum in Las Vegas but enough to keep lawyers filing appeal after appeal and seeking injunction after injunction for years if not decades into the future.
“I really don’t think the SNWA realized who they were dealing with back in 1990.” Johnson said. “These are ranchers who have lived here for seven or eight generation, tribes who have been here thousands of years We can’t lose this fight because if they take our water we lose our homes our livelihoods. It is a question of survival.”
The SNWA has tried just about everything to get the rurals to back down. Running the gamut from vinegar to honey back to vinegar, the rural north has refused to budge and according to legal experts the fight has at least another 10 years and probably double that in the various courts before the SNWA could even think about declaring victory let alone actually winning it.
In the twenty plus years since the first filing a major plank of Las Vegas’ argument was shattered by the Great Recession. Four years after the economic downturn hit the Las Vegas economy has still not recovered, unemployment is still in the double digits whole neighborhoods are still empty and the exponential growth and unquenchable thirst are still on time out.
“The downturn proved our point,” Johnson added. “The line that Las Vegas was always going to grow was proven wrong.”
The downturn for Las Vegas also raised the serious question of whether the city could actually afford the $15 billion project or muster the political will to raise water rates to pay for it.
“$15 billion is a lot of money even for Las Vegas,” Johnson said.
And that sum is just an estimate if the foes of the water grab continue to delay those costs may increase beyond reach.
Time also works against Las Vegas in a much more subtle way. After well over two decades the salaried original planners of the water grab from Clark County are becoming a bit long in tooth and close to retirement.
Whether the next generation will have the will and the wherewithal to continue the fight is an open question.
Water grab opponents on the other are raising the next generation of hydro warriors who are if anything more devoted to the cause than their parents were.
“For them its a job, for us its a way of life,” said Denise Coyle owner of the Baker’s Border Inn. “You have people here who have survived every hardship you can imagine and have prospered. We are ready to fight this forever is the SNWA?”