BLM Approves Right-Of-Way For Pipeline From Rural NV To Las Vegas - Final Administrative Ruling

[hatrack]

The federal Bureau of Land Management signed off Thursday on a massive pipeline project to carry billions of gallons of water to Las Vegas from rural counties along the Nevada-Utah line.

The record of decision, signed by Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, authorizes the BLM to issue a right of way to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for the 263-mile pipeline that would stretch from the rural areas to the desert gambling metropolis that is home to some 2 million people and attracts 40 million visitors annually.

"This is a huge milestone for Southern Nevada," said Pat Mulroy, the water authority's general manager. She said being able to "draw upon a portion of our own state's renewable groundwater supplies reduces our dependence on the drought-prone Colorado River and provides a critical safety net."

EDIT

The BLM's decision follows findings made in November by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the project would not significantly affect about a dozen threatened or endangered species. Environmentalists say otherwise. "Some of Nevada's rarest, most unique species rely on wetlands and springs," said Rob Mrowka with the Center for Biological Diversity. "The Las Vegas water grab could undo all that and drive them extinct in the blink of any eye."

EDIT

http://www.lvrj.com/news/blm-approves-las-vegas-water-pipeline-project-184948361.html

[kestrel91316]

1. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

Fuck you FUCKING BASTARDS!!!!!





Say goodbye to a large swath of Great Basin ecosystems (including Great Basin National Park) and actual real life human communities and culture. For the sake of propping up a dying megalopolis.

FUCKING BASTARDS.

My uncle warned me THIRTY YEARS AGO that Las Vegas money interests were trying to steal the water out from under his ranch and many others (and many rural communities) and I laughed. I thought that was absurd.

Well now we know they are dead serious, and Uncle Sam is going to let the bastards do it. AND IT'S ALL FOR THE SAKE OF CORPORATE PROFITS (growing the city bigger, lining the pockets of developers).

[sagetea]

2. I agree with you, FUCK,FUCK,FUCK!

I happen to live in this area, so much for my hot springs. Not to mention that they are starting to frack for oil around my little oasis.

I hate feeling this way, so fucking helpless.

sage

[hatrack]

3. I'm to the point where I'm not really surprised anymore

The name of the game is economic growth.

Growth at all costs, growth until the end of time, growth without stint or limit, growth without even the faintest acknowledgement that we're just as subject to entropy and overshoot and physical limits as any cactus or mountain lion or slime mold or subspecies of squid. The system (sorry, The System) doesn't work any other way.

It's a ratchet, and there's only one positive direction - up. Up means money and profits and stuff and contented voters and more people and more demand for more money and profits and stuff. Down means less money and profits and stuff, and discontented voters, and more demand for simple answers, enemies and revenge for the stuff we didn't get and the prosperity we didnt' enjoy.

Democratic? Republican? Doesn't matter - growth is still the goal. Growth for the well-connected, growth for donors and "players". If some of that growth happens to trickle down to the benefit of Just Plain Folks like us, that's cool, since it does grease the skids for the next election cycle, but that isn't the main goal.

Democratic administrations might try and create a few cosmetic speed bumps, and Republican administrations might try and remove them, but that's the only real difference in matters of energy, environment and entropy. Why is this? Because they don't care.

Let me repeat that. They. Don't. Care. They don't care because they're just as blind and capable of self-inflicted blindness and denial as any gun/pearl-clutching Tea-Clown or any addict. They don't care, because they'll be taken care of - by their money, their alliances, their contacts, their gated worldview. (They won't, of course, but that's another story - this is the bit about illusions).

We're cooking the world, and everybody knows it, and no one will admit it, and even if they did, they'd never admit what needs to be done to ensure a quasi-habitable planet 100 years down the road. What needs to be done is wrenching, economically damaging and politically suicidal, and that's the opposite of more money and more stuff and more time at the top. Not good.

There's also no guarantee that even wrenching, economically damaging and politically suicidal actions would work at this late date. It might be that even drastically reducing fossil fuel use, either by fiat or incentive, would do very little to help. We'd then find ourselves in a situation in which we'd involuntarily impoverished ourselves, and things still continued to get worse. Think people get pissed off in a recession? Try envisioning what I've outlined here taking place to no visible effect, and then imagine how pissed off residents of The Shining City On The Hill would be.

"We will keep on doing what we do until we can't, and then we won't." I wish I'd said it, but I have to credit Kunstler with that particular quote. What it implies is chilling, however - no voluntary measures, no embrace of simplicity, no self-restraint will suffice. We will eat through everything. We will take it all. We will use everything up.

Then, we'll sit down on the fractured remnants, with salt and acid fracking fluid in the drinking water, with CO2 at 500ppm or more, with WV reduced to the ultimate theme park for extreme ORV drivers, with the Amazon in ashes and with the Statue of Liberty up to her ankles in the ocean, and bitch about how no one warned us.

[Nihil]

10. That should be an OP in its own right.

Every word is truth.

Tragic but true.

[CRH]

11. Excellent post hatrack, ...

right down to description of our socioeconomic entropy that will likely be our destruction.

[hunter]

4. I've really nothing more to say.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK is exactly right.

[NoOneMan]

5. "For the sake of propping up a dying megalopolis"

And prop it up they will until there is no where left to retreat to when it crumbles. Our modern economy grows by cultivating or destroying all of the wilds to impose a new form of dependent feudalism; it isn't that a law will prevent us from hunting on a King's land, but there will be nothing to hunt for. We will be reduced to begging and slaving to the state and corporations for the means to exist.

Not quite the Star Trek future we've all been told about.

[NickB79]

6. "renewable groundwater supplies" What. The. Fuck?

Seriously? They were able to say that with a straight face?

[hatrack]

8. Just in case anybody was wondering what will die so that the Bellagio might live . . . .

Like me, I'm sure you'll agree that no sacrifice is too great . . .

[NickB79]

9. Well, I'm convinced

Fuck those elk and pronghorns, Daddy wants to be a high-roller!

[XemaSab]

7. .