Posted on 09/25/2009 6:31:24 PM PDT by Saije
In 1991, facing obvious limits to growth from meager water resources, Las Vegas power brokers decided to bring the drama of high stakes gambling from the casinos to the board room of the Southern Nevada Water Authority headed by the Bernie Madoff of Western water, Pat Mulroy.
The strategy was even proudly Ballyhooed in public. Las Vegas would just keep building beyond the capacity of its Colorado River allocation and dare other states or the federal government to stop them.
At the time, a spokesman for Nevada's Colorado River Commission even announced, "The federal government will never let Nevada go dry."
Thus was born the MGM Grand daddy of ideas: a giant straw to suck rural Nevada and western Utah dry and unload it on an all-you-can-squander Riviera of golf courses, desert sprawl and fire hoses synchronized to Frank Sinatra. The idea is worthy of Caesar himself at a Stratospheric cost of only $4 billion...
...the only Utah residents who need to be concerned are those who breathe. Apparently Mulroy figures that if Utah can't have gambling we can at least enjoy casino-like air quality.
The SNWA pumping project will result in likely irreversible loss of critical native vegetation covering a desert expanse equal in size to the state of Vermont. Where water diversion projects like this have been done before in California and other parts of the world, the result has been exactly what was predicted: more dust, more pollution and more disease.
For example, a water diversion project in Uzbekistan has turned 90 percent of the Aral Sea into a gigantic dust bowl. The resultant increase in diseases like cancer has dropped the life expectancy of the affected population an incredible four years.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
Some say that the next World War will be fought over water and not oil.
As I sit in the Great Lakes Region, I just want y’all to know that we CITIZENS are locked and loaded. But, nevermind...our RAT Government will sell us down the river. Any river. As long as it gets them re-elected.
B@stards.
Some have said that Ms Mulroy should be Sec of Interior.
No doubt about it. It's already causing a civil war in Nevada. The SNWA (and Harry Reid) want to take the water from the gorgeous Steptoe Valley (I track and tag sage grouse there) near Ely and pump it to Vegas. It will destroy this part of Nevada and put ranchers and farmers out of work.
But here's the good part. The environmentalists are up in arms over this water grab too. White Pine County is God's Country, and everyone from the far Left to the far Right despises Harry Reid. You can't drive through Ely (or McGill) without seeing huge signs which read:
Vote for anyone BUTT Harry Reid.
Seems to be working. Harry's poll numbers are plummeting and it looks like a Republican (probably Danny Tarkanian, the son of legendary UNLV basketball coach Jerry) will win.
So the water war will at least produce something good. LOL!
Mayor Daley.
Let that roll around in your head for a bit.
L
For the western States, the best way to get water might be to take it from the air. Here’s an idea.
On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, there is an extinct volcano. The side of the volcano facing the predominant wind collapsed a very long time ago, turning the volcano into a humidity “catcher’s mitt”. It now is the most rainy place in the world.
In the western States, the wind if usually much drier, most of the year, except for brief times when a humid wind blows up from Mexico, bringing a little rain, but mostly just high humidity.
While there are no East-West mountains that are high enough to catch the rain from the South, the North-South mountains in California do draw out most of the moisture on the California side.
But the mountains facing South are high enough to at least raise the humidity near their top. So why not “farm” this moisture?
The way this could be done is to mine very large tunnel openings in the top of the mountains, with tunnels snaking downward. Large windmill fans would draw the moist air into the tunnels, then cooling coils inside the tunnels could lower the temperature until the water condenses.
Most of the year, a solar farm on the mountain could store the energy for perhaps just a month of higher humidity, to run the giant fans and the cooling coils.
“Harry’s poll numbers are plummeting and it looks like a Republican (probably Danny Tarkanian, the son of legendary UNLV basketball coach Jerry) will win.”
Prayer up for THAT! :)
He’s a bootlegger...doesn’t matter the liquid. ;)
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