Watergrab Tour of Delamar Valley

There is a vast Joshua tree forest in Delamar Valley – the most spectacular in all of Nevada.

But this whole desert forest is at risk if the valley's groundwater is exported South. Joshua trees need groundwater. But because of Nevada Water Law; Joshua trees are what Nevada Water officials refer as “phreatophytes.” Which, cynically explained means; they are worthless and are wasting us humans' water. And Nevada Water Law essentially allows us to kill them all eventually – legally. Yes, there are protections in Nevada Water Law for the environment. But there was an attempt in the Special Session of the Nevada Legislature in 2015 to eliminate those protections. And why? Obviously; because somebody wants to kill this forest.

Someone already has killed the Joshua tree forest out at Meadview, Arizona. And Cadiz Inc. wants to drain the water out from under them in California.

Desert valley forests are the most threatened forests in the West. And there weren't many of them in the first place. What we could be witnessing here is the decline of an ecosystem – like the coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Southern Nevada has options.

One of those options is to improve Nevada Water Law. But that's not going to happen. Assembly Bill 298, introduced this 2017 Nevada Legislative session, had numerous changes that expedited taking every drop. They wanted to drastically weaken existing water rights and protections for the Environment. Essentially, they wanted to water mine. And they even wanted to be exempt from judicial review. Moreover, AB298 improperly prioritized “mitigation water” so that even more conflicts would have occurred. Which is compounded by the exemption from the permitting process to take water from some place else to use as mitigation water – which further propagates the exploitation to even more areas.

Southern Nevada has options.

Another one of those options is to build PV solar power facilities to trade solar power for desalinated water. The solar power could be generated on Lake Mead, to reduce evaporative losses. The solar power could be sent to California on Hoover Dam power lines. And the solar power could desalinate water on the Coast. This could provide Californians with desalinated water, which could be traded for more water for Southern Nevada from the Colorado River. No pipeline necessary. This idea even won an MIT award. And maybe most importantly; the authors claimed the SNWA customers could save eight billion dollars over the Watergrab.

Southern Nevada has options.

Another option is not to drive Southern Nevada to crisis by growing too fast. Which means being truthful to people developers want to move to Southern Nevada. And the truth is; with exponential growth, it's just a matter of time until there won't be enough to go around. However, the predictions of population growth that the SNWA uses show gradual linear population growth in Southern Nevada until 2055. Now think about how absurd that is. The rest of the population of the Earth is growing exponentially – just from people having babies. And on top of that; Southern Nevada developers want back explosive growth, like the “good old days” when thousands of people a month moved to Southern Nevada. But apparently, the only way they can pull that con off is to tell people there won't be explosive growth. That's lying; to sucker people to move to a place without enough water. Greed is driving Southern Nevada to crisis.

Somebody wants to “use” this water. Like somehow it isn't being used here.

Southern Nevada has options.

They don't have to pay billions to commit ecocide.