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How insane are the Southwest water wars?

Bob Morris, on Mar 4, 2009, 2:33 pm

The Nevada Water Authority wants to divert Mississippi River flood waters into aquifers so they can grab some of it. I’m guessing the response from the Midwest will be “over our dead bodies.”

Another possibility is to rethink having large cities that permit air conditioned sidewalks when the temperature is 105 and are mostly clueless about conservation in the middle of deserts with no appreciable native water supply nearby.

Tags: | Category: News | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)

  • Steve

    I’m from Las Vegas. This is better than pumping ground water from our eastern (rural) counties north of Clark County, which is what they have been trying to do for years. I mean, we live in a desert, get just several inches of water a year. You know how long it would take nature to replenish the aquifer at that rate.

    The ‘Best solution’ would be for Southern Nevada to invest in desalinization plants in Souther California and then Clark County can swap California’s allocated Colorado water for water from the desalinization plants.

    But, that would then be to logical and scientific, and we all know what the politicans think of science the last decade.

    • http://polizeros.com Bob Morris

      Your water head, who appears super competent (and aggro!) says desal isn’t enough, more is needed.

      Of course, much of what I said about Vegas also applies to L.A.

  • Steve

    Well, they were prepared to spend 2 billion dollars on purchasing water rights and pipelines. That use to seem like a lot of money, so now maybe it is just a ‘drop in the bucket’ (pun intended).

    One thing Las Vegas is doing right; They have pushed desert landscaping pretty hard, which is good. But now Las Vegas is conserving so much water that the water authority is ‘worried’ about their revenue decline. It seems we are using less and less water, if we keep that up, which just might not need to steal water from anybody.

    • http://polizeros.com Bob Morris

      One insane part of California water is farmers in the Central Valley pay way less for it than people in the cities.

  • http://www.asymptoticlife.com DJ

    Las Vegas is also trying to push through a water grab from southern Utah– the second driest state in the nation behind Arizona. They’re not making friends here!

  • http://www.kurland.me ifyouwillit

    I agree the water crisis is a lot bigger than people think…but don’t worry, if the icecaps melt, there’ll be plenty of water for everyone! :(