There’s nothing like the feel of a packed committee room at the legislature before a heated bill hearing. It’s very close. The air is stale, warm, a little moist. Only quiet talking. The lobbyists in the hot seat are glistening with flop sweat. The bill presenters are fidgeting nervously. It’s a very visceral experience at the legislature. You can feel the power of the people as they raise the roof in favor of or opposed to a bill. This whole democracy by Zoom business feels kind of like dog and pony show. I’m not clamoring to go back to living in a cheap hotel in Carson City, but I am concerned about the permanent degradation of democratic institutions in the wake of the pandemic.
On to the news…
Water Disaster
Since I last fired off an edition of this missive, first committee passage deadline day came and went at the Nevada legislature. This is a key milestone at the legislature, as it is a great winnowing of bills which just weren’t going to make it. Hundreds of bills died on deadline day, including the majority of all water legislation. You know three months ago everyone was thinking it was going to be a sleepy session on water. Now that the pipeline is dead and we don’t have to continue having proxy wars over it at the legislative building, the thinking went, we can finally have a session where we don’t have a three-ring circus at the Natural Resources Committees with an angry mob of water users armed with torches and pitchforks.
But oh, how wrong we were. The State Engineer’s office brought bill after unpopular bill making significant changes to how we manage and fight over water in this state. And one by one, they were assailed in testimony at hearings, and then nearly every bill died on deadline day without a work session.
AB5 would have limited aggrieved parties’ ability to appeal State Engineer decisions.
SB155 would have removed the requirement that the State Engineer actually be an engineer.
AB354 and AB356 would have set up a water banking and conservation credit swapping system, respectively, potentially leading to a massive influx of Wall Street investors and water speculators into Nevada.
Two other bills didn’t even get a hearing:
AB15 would have installed the State Engineer on the state’s Colorado River Commission, something we hear SNWA wasn’t too keen on.
SJR1 would have cut the state’s local district courts out of water litigation, having cases go directly to the Supreme Court.
The sum of these bills would have been to enhance the power of the State Engineer and the Division, while limiting the ability of affected parties to intervene and fight against bad decisions.
Some thought that those strange bedfellows that so uniquely define water politics in Nevada and were united by the pipeline in days of yore now had less reason to be united and could splinter apart. The doubters were proven wrong. In the end, the State Engineer had functionally zero support from any water users – conservation, agriculture, mining, rural counties, municipal providers, hell even the developers – for literally any of their bills.
One certainly must recognize the work of Kyle Roerink at the Great Basin Water Network for keeping cohesion to the unwieldy group of stakeholders. I am institutionally biased of course, being on the Network’s board of directors. Mr. Roerink easily moves between the worlds of rural water users and the conservation movement, and has become a statewide leader in both realms.
If every single affected constituency opposes every move an agency makes, the agency obviously needs to try something new. Because now we’ve had three consecutive Democratic majority legislative sessions where the Division has pushed disastrous water legislation which resulted in pissing off the whole state, creating a circus sideshow at the legislature, and everyone walking away empty handed.
Epilogue: The Best Water Bill of the Session
I should correct myself – not everyone is walking away empty handed. If anyone was looking forward to a sleepy session on water, one would assume it would have been the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The center of the water maelstrom in the 2017 and 2019 sessions, due to bills which may have enabled the pipeline whipping up controversy each time, one would have thought SNWA might sit this one out. And indeed, it appeared that way until SNWA orchestrated one of the more dramatic moments I’ve seen in the natural resources committees at the legislature in my three sessions.
It was the hearing for AB356, the water conservation credit bill. The hearing had gone poorly for the State Engineer - not a single supporter spoke in favor of their bill, and opponents filled their 20-minute slot for opposition with a dozen or more left waiting on the line. Then we get to neutral testimony. Andy Belanger from SNWA says they’re neutral on AB356, but then proposes to completely gut the bill and replace it with… a ban on non-functional ornamental turf in the Las Vegas Valley.
This was highly unorthodox. You don’t just elbow in on someone else’s bill and propose gutting it and replacing it with your own prerogative in neutral testimony at the bill hearing! Honestly if we’d been in the committee room in Carson City, the gasps would have been audible.
And then, doubling down on the shock value, both the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Home Builders Association give neutral testimony, also advocating for a gut-and-replace with the non-functional turf ban. Followed by lobbyists for the City of Henderson and the City of North Las Vegas saying the same. This was madness. SNWA orchestrated this whole show during neutral testimony, hijacking the State Engineer’s bill and lining up the most powerful players in the state to support them doing it.
It just so happens that it is also a really good policy they are proposing. There are thousands of acres of non-functional ornamental turf in the Valley – grass that nobody walks on except the guy pushing the lawnmower. This is turf at traffic lights, in medians, next to sidewalks, in turning circles, in front of businesses. It sucks down billions and billions of gallons of Colorado River water each year – water that is fully consumed and SNWA does not get return flow credits for. It amounts to some 10% of our Colorado River allotment, just for these patches of non-functional turf. It would be a huge conservation victory if SNWA was able to pull this off, and could set a precedent for other Colorado River states to follow.
And to be honest, you’ve just got to sit back and marvel at the sheer chutzpah this maneuver took. Not only to hijack the bill at the last moment literally during the hearing, but to have all these huge players immediately back you doing it. It was a fascinating display of the power dynamics around water in this state. With a former SNWA Board President in the governor’s mansion, and the vast majority of legislators hailing from places where outfits like the Las Vegas Metro Chamber have serious pull, it’s unsurprising that they have more weight to throw around in Carson City than the State Engineer. Nonetheless, this whole thing is setting up to be one of the more audacious plays I’ve ever seen in my time in politics. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but kudos to SNWA.
Read more in Associated Press, Las Vegas Sun, The Nevada Independent, hell even the UK’s Independent. The Las Vegas Sun editorialized in favor of the measure. You can also take action today with our action alert – urge the Assembly to vote yes on AB356 (action alert only works for Nevadans).
Flowers and Bees
We filed another lawsuit on behalf of Nevada’s endangered species last week – this one to compel US Fish and Wildlife Service to reach final endangered species listing status determinations for 9 species and final critical habitat determinations for 10 species. Included in the lawsuit were two species we have petitioned for endangered species listing in Nevada – the Las Vegas bearpoppy (Arctomecon californica) and the Mojave poppy bee (Perdita meconis). We submitted petitions to protect these rare species under the Endangered Species Act in 2018 and 2019 respectively, primarily authored by my colleague Dr. Tara Cornelisse. The Mojave poppy bee is an obligate pollinator of the Las Vegas bearpoppy – the species evolved together over time and now the poppy bee can only pollinate the bearpoppy and needs it to survive. The bearpoppy apparently doesn’t feel the same way about the poppy bee that it feels about the bearpoppy because the bearpoppy is not obligately pollinated by the poppy bee, and will accept numerous pollinators. Nonetheless, we are fairly certain this is the first time someone has petitioned for Endangered Species Act protections for both a flower and its pollinator. Pretty neat!
The bearpoppy is a gypsophile plant, meaning it is specially adapted to thrive in gypsum-rich soils, which are abundant across the northern Mojave Desert in Clark County. In particular, at a time, the bearpoppy grew all across the Las Vegas Valley. Now, nearly extirpated from the Valley, it holds on at about 10 locations across Clark County, as well as in Mohave County, Arizona. The poppy bee holds on at just 7 of those locations. BLM is supposed to protect these species but we know that’s a farce – they permitted a mine to destroy hundreds of acres of suitable habitat in 2018. Unmanaged recreation in the Rainbow Gardens area is also destroying bearpoppy habitat (see below for more). In short, these species are under threat of extinction and need the Endangered Species Act to survive..
Fish and Wildlife Service is under statutory deadlines to respond to petitions. They must respond in 90 days with a determination as to whether evaluation of a petition is “warranted” based on evidence presented in the petition. Both of these species received positive 90-day findings in 2019 and 2020 respectively. The 90-day findings took about a year each, incidentally. But the Service is also statutorily obligated to produce a 12-month finding after a year. And the 12-month finding, the full evaluation of the species’ status and proposed rule as to whether it will be declared endangered or threatened or not, never came. Thus our lawsuit. These species can’t wait for the Service to get around to them in good time, they need protections now.
Read more in the Review-Journal or in our press release about the 19 species in the lawsuit.
Another Lands Proposal
I want to point out an interesting new proposal for protection on public lands in Southern Nevada. The Senate Natural Resources Committee recently heard SJR10, a resolution urging Congress to protect certain areas of public lands surrounding Frenchman Mountain and Rainbow Gardens as a national conservation area, national recreation area, or national monument. Frenchman Mountain is a highly visible landmark in the Las Vegas Valley, bordering Sunrise Manor on the northeast side of town. It boasts probably the best view of urban Las Vegas from its lofty antennae-studded summit. It also is the site of a large exposure of a geological phenomenon called the Great Unconformity – one of the most accessible places in the southwest where this geological event appears in the strata. South and east of Frenchman Mountain is a wonderland of colorful rocks and gypsiferous soils called Rainbow Gardens. And to the east of there, near the Pabco gypsum plant, is a prehistoric site called Gypsum Cave.
The area currently suffers badly from unmanaged overuse. People dump trash, and much worse things than trash, in the area; there’s recreational shooting, there’s off-road vehicle use, there’s the huge freaking gypsum mine and drywall plant, of course. It’s a bit of a mess. Nonetheless we are strong supporters of the permanent protection of the area. Why? Because Rainbow Gardens and environs are home to over 50% of the remaining Las Vegas bearpoppies in the world. It is, far and away, the most important and most intact remaining habitat for this rare wildflower, and Rainbow Gardens urgently needs stronger protections to ensure resources there aren’t permanently degraded and the bearpoppy isn’t put into a worse situation than it’s already in.
SJR10 is sponsored by Senator James Ohrenschall, reported favorably out of committee, and was unanimously passed by the Senate on April 6th. It now heads to the Assembly side. Read more from Fox 5 Las Vegas.
More Emerging Corporate Dystopias
As if Blockchainistan wasn’t absurd enough, now comes Senator Ben Kieckhefer with SB298, a proposal to dramatically expand the powers of inland port authorities and the GOED in their ability to designate and promote inland ports. What the heck is an inland port? It’s just a dumb marketing gimmick for a multimodal shipping and logistics center that gets favorable tax treatment. The Center has a long-running battle against an inland port proposal in Utah, a campaign called Stop the Polluting Port, led by my wonderful colleague Deeda Seed. SB298 had completely flown under the radar until it was picked up on a google alert by our Utah counterparts who alerted us to it. It had a hearing on deadline day in Senate Committee on Government Affairs, and I hastily prepared a comment letter and delivered verbal testimony at the hearing. I was the only opponent to the bill. April Corbin has some excellent background information on the history of the inland port concept in Nevada and the origin of this bill in this Nevada Current article.
Brother From Another Mother
Louis Sahagun wrote a delightful piece in the LA Times on the rare black toad (Anaxyrus exsul) which lives only at springs in the remote Deep Springs Valley of far eastern Inyo County, California. The black toad is a cousin of other similar toad species at isolated springs across the Great Basin, including our favorite, the Dixie Valley toad. The black toad actually seems to be doing OK. Deep Springs Valley is quite remote, and parts of it are protected as wilderness, and the only “extractive use” per se is the educationally focused ranch operated by the small college located there – Deep Springs College.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service actually proposed listing the toad under the ESA in 1977, but withdrew the proposed rule in 1980 for unknown reasons, and it remains unprotected to this day. I’m glad the Deep Springs College folks are taking care of the toads to some degree, but the Endangered Species Act forms an important backstop to ensure that voluntary conservation activities aren’t the only thing standing between a species and extinction. Too bad it wasn’t listed a generation ago when the opportunity came up. It seems unlikely, given FWS’s current interpretation of statute and regulation, that the toad would be listed if so petitioned today. The Center is not about to do so, that’s not the intent of bringing this up, it’s just an interesting side note to a good story.
Even When It’s Not About the Buckwheat, It’s About the Buckwheat
A minor bit of news on the Tiehm’s buckwheat/Rhyolite Ridge Mine front. Ioneer, the mining outfit pushing this disaster, has applied for a Water Pollution Control Permit (WPCP) from the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP). This permit outlines the types of pollutants the mine will discharge, as well as the situation regarding the pit lake that will inevitably form in their open-pit once they stop dewatering. I will leave the gory details about this for a future newsletter, but just know that the impacts to Tiehm’s buckwheat are not the only issue with this mine. We are going to be engaging on the WPCP, working with a hydrologist and allies to submit comments before the deadline on April 30th. As you’re aware, water is not our primary concern with this mine, it’s the buckwheat. But as I said in the last newsletter with regards to the ACEC petition, we are fighting with every tool at our disposal, and that includes pushing back on the WPCP. Read more in the Elko Daily.
Quick Hits
Remember a couple of summers ago when a freak swarm of grasshoppers descended on Las Vegas for a couple of weeks and they were thick enough to blot out the lights of the Strip? Totally bizarre. Well it turns out it wasn’t the hand of God delivering a plague on Sin City. It was actually the massive amounts of light pollution coming from the Las Vegas Strip. The valley may be the most light polluted place on earth, and surprise! That totally messes with insects. Read more in the New York Times.
This Deseret News article on the fight against Thacker Pass Mine by Sofia Jeremias is beautifully written and features gorgeous and moving photography of the protagonists in this saga. Highly recommended read.
Our friends at WildLands Defense had a major win in court recently, overturning a grazing program BLM had cooked up with some ranchers and The Nature Conservancy to give the ranchers more “flexibility,” ostensibly to improve habitat. This so-called “outcome-based grazing” has been critiqued as a ruse to allow ranchers to run wild across the landscape, while giving cover to the whole anti-sage-grouse-listing “good for the bird, good for the herd” industrial complex. A court seems to agree. Kudos to WildLands Defense for their rigorous work on this issue informed by a deep knowledge and sense of place for these landscapes.
Here’s a nice write up from Deborah Wall in the RJ about birding at my favorite National Wildlife Refuge in the country, Ash Meadows. Things are just starting to really green up along the alkali riparian corridors of the Amargosa River as the honey mesquite leaf out and the marsh grasses bounce back from their winter senescence.
And a similar piece, also in the RJ, about Corn Creek, the visitor center and headquarters at Desert National Wildlife Refuge, and a delightful place to visit just twenty minutes northwest of Las Vegas on the 95.
In other bird-related news, BLM continues their work on a large-scale tamarisk removal project along the Virgin River near Mesquite. This is important habitat for the southwest willow flycatcher, a bird protected by the Endangered Species Act, who prefer native willows to invasive tamarisk (though they are known to nest in the tamarisk when it’s all that’s available.) The battle against tamarisk on a west-wide scale may be a losing one, but targeted interventions on behalf of species in key locales are effective at least in the short-to-mid-term, assuming proper time and resources are allocated for follow-up treatments.
This tour-de-force article looking at the early roots of the environmental justice movement by the Washington Post’s Darryl Fears and Brady Dennis is a must-read. Environmental justice is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days, and it risks being turned into a platitude, but its roots are deeply embedded in the struggles of people of color against systemic racism and oppression. Great historical look at the issue here.
It’s always useful to hear about what the guys on the other side of the aisle are thinking, and Senator Pete Goicoechea doesn’t disappoint in his remarks from Nevada Newsmakers in this Ray Hagar article in the Nevada Appeal. Pete G. pontificates on water politics and says some stuff I agree with. I do take exception with this kind of conspiracy theory going around that the Lower White River Flow System proceedings are just a ruse to turn Nevada into one big metaphorical pipeline to siphon paper water around these super basins while actually depleting aquifers. But useful to hear what the good Senator, and de facto spokesperson for rural perspectives on water, is thinking.
This scathing polemic from Christopher Ketcham in Harper’s is absolutely worth a read. Ketcham is both invoking and channeling Abbey, but he goes much deeper, exposing the corporate roots of the tourism industrial complex at our National Parks. He advocates for abolishing the National Park Service, banning cars from parks, and reimagining their management without an agency “so invested in profaning sacred ground.” This piece will challenge you and it’s absolutely worth your time.
You made it. As always, feel free to drop me a line with tips, suggestions, feedback, complaints, or summonses. Keep on down that long and dusty trail,
-Patrick