Posted: February 24, 2010     Author: Simeon Herskovits Advocates for Community and Environment

Correcting the Misinformation about the NV Supreme Court Ruling

Correcting the Misinformation about the NV Supreme Court Ruling ...

The Great Basin Water Network wants you to know that much misinformation is circulating about the recent Supreme Court ruling on water.

---UPDATE: See how to protest http://greatbasinwater.net ---

There is no consensus whatsoever on the need for or appropriateness of any legislative intervention in this case before it is completed by the Court and before its scope is made clear.

It is absolutely clear that the recent Nevada Supreme Court decision expressly relates only to a very limited set of applications, not any vast, open-ended class of water rights applications.

In addition, the decision does not prevent SNWA from pressing forward with this unnecessary Pipeline Project. It simply forces SNWA and the State Engineer to do what the US Constitution and statutory law required all along. That is to provide a fair opportunity for meaningful participation by all concerned water rights holders and members of the public with the right to protest SNWA’s applications for this unprecedented Water Project.

At SNWA’s behest, its applications were left dormant for the better part of two decades. Then SNWA rushed to push the State Engineer to make decisions on those applications in a hasty time frame, seemingly to prevent the protestants and concerned public from participating effectively, and to avoid having the Project genuinely and thoroughly vetted. Why? SNWA’s big Pipeline Project is a monumental boondoggle that is not based on sound science or sound economics. It will not be sustainable, and will permanently devastate the vast groundwater system that serves as the lifeblood of the communities and environment of rural Nevada, western Utah, and southeastern California. That’s a set of realities that SNWA’s management, who are not elected, nor accountable to the public, and are increasingly desperate, do not want to come to light.

Finally, this case has nothing to do with southern Nevada’s current financial hardships. Southern Nevada’s severe financial crisis is the direct result of an unsound, one-dimensional approach to economic development that the big development interests have pursued for too long at the expense of sound urban planning and balanced growth management. Heedless of the fact that its proposed Pipeline Project ultimately would lead to massive environmental, social and economic harm for eastern Nevada, it still leaves southern Nevada high and dry. Unsustainable groundwater mining will create those problems. SNWA and its allies want everyone to focus on an unrealistic, short-term approach that focuses the whole State’s resources and future solely on shoring up their short-term gain. To do so would be to repeat the very same mistakes that led to southern Nevada’s current economic woes.

The sky is NOT falling and a fix is not needed.

Furthermore, the courts have not completed their business. It is inappropriate for the Executive or the Legislative Branches to fix or undo what the Judicial Branch has not completed. Legislation would be premature.

http://greatbasinwater.net