The article "Las Vegas bets on desert water pipeline as Nevada drinks itself dry" by Suzanne Goldenburg discusses how the city of Las Vegas is using more water than the Lake Mead reservoir can produce. According to the article, Las Vegas "could run out of drinking water in 20 years". This has brought on plans to manufacture a 300 mile long pipeline from the Utah/Nevada border to pump water to the Las Vegas area. This has a lot of people that live in that area concerned. Dean Baker and his 3 sons have grazing rights for his cattle spanning 160,000 hectacres across the Utah/Nevada border says that this pipeline "will devastate this part of the state". He is convinced that the pipeline project will dry up the natural springs that his cattle drink, and is the source of water for his hay and alfalfa fields and some federal scientists have made similar predictions. Not only does this affect Dean Baker and his three sons, but local Indian Reservations say that this pipeline will "destroy their ancestral lands", as well as jeopardizing the Mormon large-scale beef operations in the area. What would seem to be more important? Who has the rights to that water?
The city of Las Vegas claims that it would not make plans to install a pipeline until the city is in dire need of water, but is using no other method of water conservation like other desert cities have done. This arouses some concern with the opposers of the pipeline project: "Once the spigot is turned on, once the preponderance of water comes out of a pipeline instead of the Colorado river, do you think for one minute it will ever be turned off?" says Kevin Phillips, chairman of the operating committee of the Delamar Valley Cattle Company, which is owned by the Mormon church. However, if millions of people are in need of drinking water, should it be more of a priority to get it to them rather than an environmental concern? Las Vegas is also a major economic hot spot in the country, would it be worth the environmental degradation to keep the city alive?
All the questions you bring up before the block quote are very intriguing. Who does own the rights to the water? What should we be putting that water toward? Some interesting points to ponder.
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