The City That Wasn’t Supposed to Be - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 149

and oppressively,” Robison wrote. Allowing such significant withdrawals requires “spe-
cific empirical data,” he wrote, but Taylor was “simply hoping for the best while com-
mitting to undo his decision if the worst occurs.” The SNWA countercharged that Judge
Robison, who lives in rural Nevada, was “flat-out wrong” and was biased against the
city: “We believe the judge ignored the evidence and improperly substituted his opin-
ion.”
In late January 2010, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Tracy
Taylor and state engineers who preceded him had violated the due-process rights of
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Great Basin residents. When Las Vegas filed applica-
tions for rural water rights in 1989, more than eight hundred “interested persons” had
filed protests. But the number of protesters had risen to over three thousand by 1990,
when the protest period closed. In 2005, the state engineer denied the protesters' re-
quest to reopen the protest period, and the pipeline's critics, represented by Simeon Her-
skovits, took the matter to the state supreme court. In January 2010, the court ruled for
the protesters , throwing the future of Las Vegas's pipeline into question. Utah suspen-
ded its water-sharing agreement with Nevada “indefinitely,” saying that the ruling “sig-
nificantly changes the landscape.”
Although the pipeline project did not die, the January 2010 reversal was its most
stunning setback yet. Pat Mulroy, who had staked her considerable reputation on the
pipeline and had already spent an estimated $180 million to develop it, called the su-
preme court's decision “disappointing.” The SNWA said it would ask the court to recon-
sider “because we believe the justices may not fully appreciate the far-reaching ramific-
ations of their decision.”
Up in White Pine County, opponents cheered the latest twist in the saga. In 2010,
the SNWA's request for another hearing was scheduled to be returned to Judge Robison.
The Nevada legislature, which was struggling with budget shortfalls, said it would not
have time to focus on the pipeline until its 2011 session.
“THE WORLD HAS CHANGED”
In February 2009, Lake Mead was at 46 percent of capacity : the water level had dropped
5 feet lower than a year earlier and 118 feet below its high point a decade earlier. In
February 2010, heavy rains swept across the West, which decreased demand for irrig-
ation water in California and Arizona and helped to raise Lake Mead by more than a
foot. The Bureau of Reclamation declared 2010 a “normal” water delivery year, which
gave the impression that the decade-long drought was about to end. But that was not
the case. The more important indicator—snowpack levels in the Utah mountains that