NCCSP

GREAT BASIN - MOJAVE DESERT GROUNDWATER PROJECT 

FLASH: Recently released letter from 147 scientists and medical doctors calls on the governors of Nevada and Utah to act to protect rural livelihoods, groundwater aquifers, biodiversity, and the region's sustainability.

The Great Basin Desert is the largest desert in the United States.  It covers the arid region bordered by the Sierra Nevada Range on the west and the Rocky Mountains on the east, the Columbia Plateau to the north and the Mojave Desert to the south.  Many unique reptiles, mammals, birds, fish and amphibians have adapted and, in fact, thrive in the extreme arid conditions of these deserts.

Great Basin and Mojave Desert spring systems, although small and isolated, harbor a large proportion of the region’s biodiversity and a large number of the species found in the region’s springs and wetlands are found nowhere else in the world.  Unfortunately, many of these unique species are threatened or endangered with extinction.  Furthermore, because new species of snails have been discovered nearly every place they’ve been looked for and lots of places remain to be examined, scientists speculate that less than half of the wetland species unique to the region have even been discovered!

Southern Nevada Water Authority Proposal

Some of the most rapid human population growth in the United States is occurring in intermountain western and southwestern urban areas.  As a result, municipal water consumption is on the rise, and water from rural areas is being shifted toward municipal uses.  The almost inevitable social consequence is a loss of rural livelihood, and a human population shift toward urban areas.

One region experiencing this keen competition for water is southern Nevada, where water is scarce, human population growth is explosive, and conflicts over biodiversity and the human need for water have a long and litigious history. 

In 1989, the Las Vegas Valley Water District (now known as the Southern Nevada Water Authority, or SNWA) filed 147 applications for rights to about 200,000 acre-feet per year from a regional carbonate groundwater aquifer underlying much of the southern and eastern Great Basin and northern Mojave deserts and extending from the Great Salt Lake in Utah to Death Valley in California.  Officials from satellite communities around Las Vegas, Nevada, are pursuing rights to an additional 870,000 acre-feet per year from the same groundwater aquifer. 

Impacts and Options

Existing permits already appropriate 102% of the water the state engineer has determined is annually available from the regional groundwater aquifer over the long term.  If all pending groundwater applications are approved, over 270% of the so-called “perennial yield” would be appropriated.

A study, co-authored by researchers at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Trout Unlimited and the National Center’s Cindy Deacon Williams, examined the ecological impacts of the water proposal.  This study, recently published in the scientific journal BioScience, concluded that declines in the groundwater table, spring discharge, wetland area, and streamflow will be widespread and significant and will adversely affect at least:

• 20 threatened or endangered species
• 137 other water-dependent endemic species
• thousands of rural domestic and agricultural water users in the region

A new report by the Pacific Institute and Western Resource Advocates entitled "Hidden Oasis: Water Conservation and Efficiency in Las Vegas" highlights conservation options that are available.  Their analysis indicates that up to 40% of current Las Vegas water use could be saved in some sectors through improvements to indoor and outdoor water efficiency.  Clearly, society has the option of recognizing the direct connections between future water use and management decisions and conservation of the region's biodiversity.

The Decision

Under Nevada water law, the state engineer has a “continuing responsibility as a public trustee to allocate and supervise water rights so appropriations do not ‘substantially impair the public interest in the lands and waters remaining.”  The Nevada State Engineer will decide whether or not to grant the various pending applications for groundwater through a formal hearing process.  

To date, three separate water rights hearings have been held on applications from six of the 17 basins: 

• decisions have been rendered on three basins (Tikapoo, Three Lakes Valley, Spring Valley) granting about 50% of the water requested by SNWA
• decisions on three basins (Cave, Dry Lake, Delamar) pending
• hearings on applications in remaining 11 basins yet to be scheduled

In addition, the SNWA has applied to the Bureau of Land Management for rights-of-way to build hundreds of miles of pipelines and power lines as well as pumping stations, roads and other facilities across BLM Public Lands in three Nevada counties. In response to this proposal, the BLM is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement on the pipeline network. 

Recently 147 scientists and medical doctors from 25 states sent a letter dated March 18, 2009 to the governors of Nevada and Utah to express serious concerns about the fact that the decision-making process for the Southern Nevada Water Project has not included a comprehensive review and evaluation of the entire integrated project. These experts believe such a comprehensive evaluation almost certainly would conclude that the project will adversely impact rural livelihoods, substantially lower groundwater aquifers, reduce biodiversity, and will not be sustainable.

To follow these related issues more closely, please investigate the websites of the Great Basin Water Network, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, and Defenders of Wildlife.

NV Desert with old Model T: photo credit Terry Merasco

Spring in Spring Valley, Nev: photo credit Gretchen Baker

Devils Hole pupfish: photo credit Tom Baugh