Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
“Although the Southern Nevada Water Authority assures Utahans
that won't happen here, we live on this land; we use the water,”
Anderson says. “We see how it responds to the recharge and the
weather, and we would prefer it not be turned into a dust bowl by
reducing water levels to the point where the vegetation can't sur-
vive out here,” he says.
Anderson doesn't believe there is a sustainable resource at
the level Las Vegas is seeking. “We're going from one of the wet-
test periods in history to drying out,” he says. “Every chart I have
of our water levels shows us losing groundwater every year. In the
long term—75 years—this water isn't going to be here for anyone's
use. They will have taken more than can be sustained, and they'll
be without the resource.”
The Snake Valley is a shared basin, and “how much of that water
will be available for Utah use and how much for Nevada use is really
the crux of the issue,” says Southern Nevada Water Authority's Mulroy.
“What has historically happened in the West—and the most poi-
gnant example of that is along the California border—is that water
was simply available for the taking. As a result, California has de-
watered many of the shared basins between Nevada and California.
So I have no problem with the notion that we have an obligation to
environmental stewardship and that many issues must be addressed
in Snake Valley,” she adds.
As an example of those issues, Mulroy points to Spring Valley,
where the Southern Nevada Water Authority owns groundwater
rights. It has fi led for unused perennial groundwater in that val-
ley and, to protect the environment, has agreed to co-manage
the basin with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of
Land Management, the National Park Service, and the Nature
Conservancy.
“The only reason we bought that Spring Valley water was not to
export it but to take that surface water as it comes in the spring
melt and artifi cially recharge the groundwater basin there,” says
Mulroy. “We bought ranches close to springs. . . . Ranching isn't our
objective. Our objective is to use those ranching water resources to
manage the ecosystems.”
There's a reason that
groundwater
is a single word, adds Anderson.
“You can't separate the ground and the water, and I think that's an
