Las Vegas wants 65 billion gallons of Utah water annually

The Salt Lake City Tribune says no, as does The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Sierra Club. Southern Nevada Water Authority chief Pat Mulroy is known for hardball tactics in her desperate attempts to grab / steal water from wherever possible for a city in the desert with little water of its own where temperatures can easily be 115 in the summer. Las Vegas’ lack of foresight and planning should not be the concern of other states.

SNWA Director Pat Mulroy has tried everything from wheedling to threatening to get Utah to agree to sacrifice its water to support growth in Las Vegas. But when she failed to convince judges in her own state, her tactics lost momentum. We can only hope that the courts and attorneys, who are already arguing over definitions in prehearings, will slow the process enough for opponents to gather even more convincing evidence that the answer to Las Vegas’ water problems shouldn’t be solved by destroying ecosystems hundreds of miles away.

Water wars in the American southwest and west are about as brass-knuckled as politics gets.