Watergrab Tour Pony Springs

Across the valley from Pony Springs is a huge pinion/juniper “restoration” site. It's plain to see that all that water from all that clear-cut logged forest ended up on that farm downhill.

Now, as a society, we may choose to do these things and accept the tradeoffs. But I don't remember voting on it. This is happening all over the West. Millions of trees are being killed. And what's the perpetrators stated reason? To save the Sage Grouse. But they don't have much evidence that clear-cut logging actually works. Yes, sage grouse like to nest in more open areas. But that doesn't prove there are more sage grouse. The population data is inconclusive. Think about it; if sage grouse populations increased because of pinion juniper “restoration,” they would have told us years ago. Which means the obvious, millions of trees are being killed for some other reason. And that reason is obviously water.

In the valley to the West, Cave Valley, there are no farms or ranches downstream of the pinion/juniper clear-cut sites. There is just the proposed SNWA watergrab pipeline. The SNWA has publicly supported pinion/juniper “restoration.” So, is pinion/juniper clear-cut logging just to export more water, or is it to kill off the forests before the Watergrab – so that there won't be any dried up forests to take pictures of? 

Cave Valley before "restoration"

 

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.

Water Taker Fail #3

There will be an effort to gut Nevada water law in the Nevada Legislature... again.

Water Taker Fail #2

There is a better option.
Here's why:

Water Taker Fail #1

Expect another attempt in the Nevada Legislature to gut Nevada water law so that speculators and watergrabbers can soak Nevadans.

Trash to Treasure Fabrication Facility

The Ely Shoshone Tribe (EST) needs to focus on projects that promote self reliance, sustainability, adaptive potential, and profit potential.

There is a world-wide “maker” movement developing a set of fabrication processes that help on all of these issues. However, most makers are individuals, without the time to fully realize all of the possible potential of a small factory.

I recommend that the EST consider helping start a facility utilizing a number of small, relatively inexpensive tools together to create a fabrication facility for custom and small factory output.

The parts built could be made of various plastics, aluminum, copper, brass, silver, gold, and other low melting temperature metals.

Consider this:

80% of the plastic made today does not get recycled.

Which means there is a huge potential free feedstock for recycled plastic components.

Those components could be cast, milled, or 3D printed – and castings made from them can be used to cast metal parts. (Moreover, the aluminum parts could be made from aluminum scrap.) Home-built tool designs exist online that inexpensively accomplish these tasks.

As it may sound; this is too big a project for any individual to handle on their own. It should be done as a cooperative.

I can help.

I am willing to purchase a LulzBot TAZ 6 3D printer (cost $2500) as part of my buy-in to the cooperative.

But I need a facility, help collecting recycled plastic, help building the plastic recycling tools, resources to build those tools, and help operating the facility.

This should not be a substantial burden on the EST. But I need the help of Tribal members and/or students to realize this dream.

If there is an interest, please let me know.

Rick Spilsbury

Preliminary Technical Overview

I would like to see this project function as a cooperative. So, rather than tell you what to do, I'd prefer to point out the issues and we can work them out together.

1. First things first; a fabrication shop needs needs a location. I think one of the buildings behind the Charter School would be ideal. In part, because we could work together with the students.

2. A fab shop needs something to fabricate. And used plastic is free. If we could explain what we were doing to the school, the students might be willing to bring us their waste plastic for recycling – and help us sort it by putting each type of plastic in its respective box.

3. The plastic needs to be processed for storage and use – shred. That means we need a shredder. The website PreciousPlastic.com has plans for building a thermoplastic shredder. The design is rather straightforward, but welding skills and fab shop tools are temporarily required. I believe someone in town has a plasma cutting table. So, cutting the components is something that can be outsourced. I can help by sourcing components and assembling the shredder assembly. Or, we could buy a shredder at retail price from Filabot.com for $4200.

4. At this point, we pretty much have to figure out what we want to make first. PreciousPlastic.com also has instructions for building a compressor oven, an injection molder, and an extruder.

a. A compressor oven works best on large and more solid objects. Additionally, those solid objects could be later carved into masterpieces in a CNC milling machine.

b. Injection molding can create many complex parts quickly, but require molds. One option is for a CNC milling machine to cut these molds from aluminum. The other option is to “lost wax” cast the molds from hand-carved foam, CNC milled wax, or 3D printed PLA plastic. This gives us an option to save money. We can make complex injection molds with either a CNC milling machine or a 3D printer. Initially, we don't need both.

c. An extruder could make filament for 3D printers – which might make us money the quickest and/or save us a lot of money on our own 3D prints. But we would have to buy a spooler. A spooler from Filabot.com costs $1200. And if we don't want to build our own extruder, its retail cost is $2500.

5. Now it's time to brainstorm. What would you like to build?

I would like to build:

• an aluminum bracket to mount a ski to the front fork of a fat mountain bike (combined with an electric hub motor, this would be a hybrid human powered snowmobile).
• aluminum bicycle, kickbike, and scooter lugs (that could be glued to any tube material to make custom fitted rides right in a retailer's store)
• Custom designed jewelry
• lego/puzzle designed plastic components to construct custom recycled plastic furniture (bookcases, desks, drawers, and cabinets)
• custom shoe soles
• aluminum components of suspensions attached to frames of a hybrid human powered ATV
• brass and recycled plastic belt buckles
• hollow translucent greenhouse bricks

Your turn.

Go ahead and be artsy.

For instance; melted aluminum can be poured into the cracks of wood to make beautiful furniture, picture frames, etc.

Remember:

• The people who buy recycled plastics often want to show it off.
• Some plastics can be used in place of wood.
• Existing physical shapes can be 3D scanned.
• Anything designed with CAD software will be easier to modify.

and...

• Some 3D printed designs cannot be replicated in castings.
• Anything 3D printed or CNC milled will take significantly longer to produce.
• Neither the recycled plastics nor the recycled aluminum will be as strong as materials specifically made for the item. (Which means they will have to be designed slightly heavier.)
• Anything cast from metal will require a kiln.

6. Which brings us to the subject of how to fire the castings and melt the metals. I think a kiln in the far back end of the parking lot behind the buildings behind the School is a great location. Far away enough to not be dangerous, but close enough to conveniently utilize in school projects. It would be fired by propane. But I have seen wood fired rocket stoves online. (And maybe someday we could make our own hydrogen to fire it.) A kiln could also be used to fire pottery. (If someone local has experience with kilns, that would sure be nice.)

7. Components can be designed on anyone's computer with free CAD software. Which means build requests could come in from anywhere. Moreover, many designs are available for download.

8. By having the capacity to construct our own components gives us the capacity to build our own machines. OpenSourceEcology.org has collected what they call a “Global Village Construction Set” - a set of easy fabrication DIY plans for 50 low cost industrial machines. They are sharing these designs online for free – with the hopes that we can build small, sustainable civilizations with modern comforts.

Proposed Business Structure

As with most businesses, there will be no income initially. Tools will need to be purchased. Work will need to be done. And on top of that, we will need to organize into a functional group.

Unlike most businesses, cooperatives are democratic institutions. Which means, without someone to order us around, we need to write by-laws before we can start. But of course, that means there has to be a “we.”

If EST tribal members are interested in forming a limited liability corporation manufacturing cooperative, please call me, Rick Spilsbury, at 775-235-7557.

I hope to run the Fabrication Shop something like a library. Use of the shop will be shared amongst cooperative members. Non-members can pay rent to use the Fab Shop. Contracted work will have to be figured out as needed.

As with most cooperatives, there will be a buy-in fee to provide the cooperative with start-up funds. And as with most cooperatives, you don't have to be a member to help out. But if you help out enough, your labor counts towards your membership fee.

The ultimate pay off for this project should be self-sufficiency and respectable long-term earnings. But initially, we will need help from the EST. We have no money for rent. And building the machines to recycle plastic and cast aluminum will take money – even though we will be making them from “junkyard” parts.

If there are talented people in the EST who want to help with the welding and construction of the machines and kiln, we're set. But if not, we will have to either find others willing to help, or pay others willing to help.

I estimate initial costs will run in the low thousands – depending upon what tools we invest in. To make complex parts, we will need either a 3D printer or a CNC milling machine. However, initially; we could carve simple parts out of wax or foam by hand – and then use lost wax casting techniques to make molds.

Which means; with a little help and a lot of participation we could be fabricating parts and arts up to a little bigger than a basketball – out of plastics and low melting temperature metals. The profits will be shared fairly. And not only will some EST members be employed, but they may also receive on the job training.

This project will promote self-reliance by setting up manufacturing on Tribal land.

This project will promote sustainability by recycling unused plastic and aluminum waste.

This project will assist our adaptive potential by providing tools to build most anything solid (within it's size and material limits).

And this project will assist profit potential for artists, mechanics, inventors, and manufacturers.

We can turn trash into treasure, make money, and maybe even export goods from White Pine County. The technology to do this is now affordable. The skills required to draw a CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) description of your part are not that hard to learn. And moreover, we can have fun making things we cannot buy.

the oil companies own our asses because we keep giving them money

The United States has become a banana republic. The mainstream media won't report it. But there is a pattern to the disintegration of our democracy. This has happened four times now since the year 2000 – where the frontrunner Presidential candidate, who had committed to do something about Climate Change, has lost due to cheating (such as gerrymandering, poll closures in poor communities, purging of voter rolls, likely remote control of vote counting, and essentially every other dirty trick in the book). Those unfortunate candidates were Al Gore, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders, and now Hillary Clinton.

Allow me to quote the Palmer Report about the 2016 election:

“In order to believe that the official vote tallies are legitimate, you have to accept that all of the above legitimately happened: African-Americans in the south went from turning out in droves for Hillary Clinton in the primary to not caring if she won the general election. Donald Trump got sixty-something percent of the same-day voting in Florida. The polling averages were wrong for the first time in modern history. Trump beat his poll numbers despite having spent the primary season tending to fall below them. Clinton fell below her poll numbers despite having spent the primary season tending to beat them. In every state where Trump pulled off a shocking upset victory, he just happened to do it with one percent of the vote. And in an election that everyone cared particularly deeply about, no one really turned out to vote at all. I can accept any one of the above things happening as an isolated fluke. I cannot accept all the above happening. And so for once in my evidence-driven career, I’m left to believe that the conspiracy theorists are right: the vote tallies are rigged.”

Want to know who's behind all of this? Follow the money. What giant industry has the most to gain by electing Climate Change denying Republicans? We all know the oil companies have pumped huge sums of money into the elections. We all know the oil companies spend huge sums of money advertising on mass media (obviously to manipulate our news). And we all should know that this is our money being used against us. 

 

They now have the capacity to steal a landslide election. And they may have had that ability for quite a few years now. Maybe that's why Obama's energy policy pretty much up until the end of his second term has been “all of the above.” Maybe that's why pro-renewable Energy Czar Van Jones stepped down without a fight. Maybe Obama suspected that there was literally no way he would ever win an election if he tried to do something about Climate Change – no matter how many people voted for him.

It's now blatantly obvious that the oil companies care more about keeping their multi-billion dollar income streams than the truth, our democracy, or even the future of life on the planet.

A recent study, published in Science (Advances) has concluded that if carbon dioxide emissions continue on their current trajectory, the U.S. West will have a greater than 90% probability of a megadrought. This is very serious. A megadrought decimated the Anasazi civilization – and there are millions more people now living in the Western States. Need I remind you that the most recent drought death toll for trees in California now is over 100 million trees. 

 

Twenty years ago, everyone (Republican and Democrat) agreed that we had to do something about Global warming. Yet today, with the scientists' most dire climate predictions literally coming true (or worse); there is controversy. It's so blatantly obvious that money, not common sense, has changed the politicians minds.

As former President Jimmy Carter recently said; America has become an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”

• Subsidies and tax breaks are the only reason fossil fuels are still competitive with renewable energy – and there is no end in sight for these subsidies – no matter how many billions the oil companies make.
• Fracking is essentially trading fresh water for oil and gas.
• Deep water oil drilling is so risky we're practically guaranteed more big spills.
• And going to war over oil hasn't made us safer. It has only driven us further into debt.

Nonetheless, for another four years, we can expect a repeat of Bush/Cheney oil politics. Which means there will likely be even more war.

(There has recently been a revolution in biology, and for the first time in history there may soon be biblically effective biological weapons. Which means that the election cheaters have likely given an obvious racist access to weapons that might be able to kill off whole races of people.

But do the oil companies care? The First World burns most of the gas. So, if the poor of the world were to die off, that would just mean the First World could burn more gas.

I'm not saying that a biowar is inevitable. But the destruction of our democracy is well under way. And the consequences of that could be far worse than we ever imagined.)

We now know that government really is the problem – so long as it is a puppet of the fossil fuel industries.

Fortunately, we can do something about the destruction of our democracy, the addictive dependence of our economy on oil, and the mass extinctions already happening in our Environment. This too, is obvious. We can stop buying oil products. That's it. Without as much money, they won't be nearly as powerful. Stop feeding the beasts!

This won't be easy. But the alternative appears to be living in a fascist state with a failing economy due to a collapsing Environment – or worse.

I already drive as little as possible, keep my earth-bermed house below 60 degrees in the Winter, installed solar panels, and grow a garden so I won't have to import all my vegetables from the other side of the planet… But that just isn't enough.

So I've decided to do this:

(Will it be enough? Of course not, but I've got to do something.)

I'm designing an electric scooter – that will hopefully replace some (maybe even many) cars soon. It will be different from all the scooters now available – especially how it will be marketed. I hope to start a local cooperative to help in making components for it from recycled materials. And then I plan to provide custom frame kits that can be assembled right in the local bike shop. I'm convinced that this fair marketing concept could provide promotable value to local manufacturers and independent bicycle retailers. We might even change Capitalism a little...

More on this later.