The City That Wasn’t Supposed to Be - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 144

and dolomite aquifer allows groundwater to flow from valley to valley, for hundreds of
miles. Bredehoet and other experts believed that the hot playas above them have no
water to spare. What little water they do have is already spoken for, by ranchers, flora,
fauna—and, not incidentally, Utah. If water is mined from one valley, it will suck wa-
ter from other valleys, which could potentially destroy springs and creeks, kill off plants
and animals, and spark a border war between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.
But Katzer's idea had caught the eye of Pat Mulroy. In October 1989, the Las Vegas
Water District quietly filed applications with the state engineer for “unclaimed, unused”
groundwater in thirty basins in rural east-central Nevada, as an “insurance policy
against drought.” This represented about 840,000 acre-feet of water, an amount believed
to be the equivalent of half the unclaimed water in the state. It was the single biggest
groundwater claim in the history of Nevada.
Rural people had no idea that the city was laying claim to the water beneath their
ranches until the filings were announced in local newspapers. “It was a dirty trick!” state
senator Virgil Getto complained to the LasVegasSun.Critics of the plan began to or-
ganize protests.
Mulroy ignored them, and between 2006 and 2009 SNWA spent $78 million to buy
seven ranches in White Pine County, along with their water rights. In Nevada, water
rights are assigned for a purpose, in this case cattle ranching and alfalfa growing. To use
its new water supply, the SNWA had to go into ranching.
“Watching the city try to run four thousand sheep?” Dean Baker dead-panned.
“That'll be … interesting.”
SECRET WEAPONS
All of the water in Nevada is owned by the state (citizens purchase the right to use it):
if the state engineer grants the SNWA permits to build the pipeline, and Mulroy can
mollify her many critics and convince regulators that draining the valleys won't harm
endangered species, then, she says, it will take about ten to fifteen years to build her “in-
state groundwater project,” as she insists on calling the pipeline. The pipeline itself will
take only three years to build. The first leg will extend north from Las Vegas to Delamar
and Dry Lake Valleys, the first two “stepping-stone” basins from which groundwater
will be pumped. The pipe will then reach into Cave Valley, Spring Valley, and ultimately
up to Snake Valley, where Baker's ranch is. When the project is finished, the system of
pipes, pumps, and storage reservoirs will stretch about 300 miles and cost between $2
billion and $3.5 billion. Opponents say the project will cost far more and deliver far less
water than the SNWA claims.