The City That Wasn’t Supposed to Be - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 152

no appetite in the water community to even consider charging what the water is worth,
or charging higher rates to … water wasters.”
Pat Mulroy contends that her pipeline is designed not to expand Las Vegas but to
protect Clark County from extended drought. Her defenders say that she is not pro-
growth, nor is she a policymaker; she is merely a civil servant whose job is to provide
Las Vegas with water. Blame politicians or developers for the state's water woes, they say,
but don't blame Pat Mulroy.
But this is disingenuous. Pat Mulroy is the highest-profile water manager in the
nation, with influence that extends throughout Nevada, the six other Colorado Basin
states, Mexico, and into the US Senate. Every time she argues for low water rates, pur-
chases rural water rights, funds controversial pipelines, and avoids discussion of the en-
vironmental impact of her ideas, she is making policy—if not in name, then in fact. Her
larger message is that Las Vegas will use whatever legal means it can to ensure a plen-
tiful supply of affordable water in coming years. Plainly, if that policy is not linked to
restrictions on development, it will only encourage growth.
She is shrewd and not to be underestimated, but even Pat Mulroy can't have it both
ways forever. Unless she adjusts her actions to match her rhetoric about the realities of
the New West, then her greatest strength—her ability to get the water she wants, regard-
less of the consequences—may lead to her undoing and, in a worst-case scenario, to the
undoing of “the city that wasn't supposed to be.”
As controversial as water pipelines have been, the damming of rivers is an equally, if
not more, emotionally charged subject. By the turn of the twenty-first century, few of
the world's rivers remained undammed. According to a study by WaterAlternatives,an
academic journal, there were forty-ive thousand large-scale dams in 2010 , which, des-
pite their many benefits—hydropower, flood control, water storage, recreation, and the
like—had displaced some 40 to 80 million people, altered natural river flows, disrupted
aquatic ecosystems, and led to a buildup of silt and the release of greenhouse gases.
Although dam building in the United States has been greatly curtailed because of
these concerns, it has not been stopped. As I discovered in California, dam building re-
mains a potent symbol of mankind's ability to harness nature to his needs, and a polit-
ical tool that tends to pit farmers of the Old West against the cities and industries of the
New West. The debate has swung wildly back and forth, with billions of dollars in the
balance.