For most of 25 years rural Nevada had been on the losing of court case after court case and bureaucratic ruling after bureaucratic ruling. And while the Snake Valley Festival last June tried to put on a brave face sometimes the festivities turned a little depressing as a celebration of a way of life headed toward extinction.
The pipeline’s approval was seen as such a foregone conclusion that radical environmentalists became attracted to the issue.
“The SNWA pipeline and other large infrastructure projects around the world are being pushed through by the rich and the powerful with no consideration for the poor, let alone for the health of the land,” said Max Wilbert of the Great Basin chapter of the Deep Green Resistance last May. “This project is an epic mistake, and you shouldn’t be surprised if you see resistance to this project – and many others like it – turning towards militant, by-any-means-necessary tactics. When people have there back up against the wall, and any option for peaceful resolution has been foreclosed, they will do what it takes.”
Proponents of Deep Green Resistance encourage strategies for social action that run the gamut from violent to nonviolent. DGR’s support for violent action all largely center around hard-hitting infrastructural vandalism, such as explosive dam removal, rather than any kind of personal violence.
But then just as sales of the Anarchist Cookbook began to climb in rural Nevada and Utah, rural Nevada won an amazing victory not in the court of public opinion but in a real live court.
In a stunningly strong decision, Senior Judge Robert Estes of the Seventh Judicial Court of Nevada declared the State Engineer’s decision “subjective, unscientific, arbitrary and capricious”, and “unfair to following generations of Nevadans” and “not in the public interest”.
Estes resoundingly rejected the Nevada State Engineer’s allocation of some 84,000 acre feet per year of groundwater in four rural valleys that the Southern Nevada Water Authority planned to pump and pipe to Las Vegas.
At that time Abby Johnson, President of the Baker, Nevada-based Great Basin Water Network said “I am ecstatic. This decision should send a clear message to SNWA and Nevada leaders that this project is doomed to fail and should be cancelled now in order to save Las Vegas ratepayers billions of wasted dollars”.
Estes’ ruling requires the State Engineer to recalculate reassess the water available for appropriation from Spring Valley to assure that “the basin will reach equilibrium between discharge and recharge within a reasonable time”, and to “recalculate the appropriations for Cave, Dry Lake, and Delamar Valleys to avoid over appropriations or conflicts with down-gradient, existing water rights”.
In addition to the Estes decision SNWA opponents scored a political victory of a sorts when Utah governor Gary Herbert, in an 11th hour decision reversed himself and said he would not sign a controversial water-sharing agreement with Nevada that was strongly supported by the SNWA and strongly opposed by Utah ranchers and more recently by the LDS church.
“At the end of the day, when it comes down to those people who have the most to lose — it’s their water, their lifestyle, their livelihood — I can’t in good conscience sign the agreement,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
Finally this past year and fresh off their big win in court, White Pine County, Great Basin Water Network, the Goshute and Shoshone Tribes, and their allies took the fight to a new level, requesting that the Federal District Court of Nevada “void the validity” of the Bureau of Land Management’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Record of Decision (ROD) and “suspend and enjoin any operation on the right-of-way” pending full compliance with federal environmental laws and trust obligations to the Tribal Plaintiffs. But the fight is not over.
So what used to be formerly known as the “Sacred Water Tour” is now renamed the “Sacred Water, Sacred Forests Camp”. Plans are for 2016 that the Sacred Water, Sacred Forests Camp will be this Memorial Day weekend, May 28 through 30, for a tour of basin and range country threatened by the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s proposed groundwater pipeline project.
This year’s event, will visit the region affected by the water grab to learn about the project and the affected lands and waters. For those who’d prefer not to spend the time driving, They’ll be holding workshops on the ecology and politics of the Great Basin at a basecamp at Cleve Creek campground in Spring Valley, including updates from our campaign to protect piñon-juniper forests.
The itinerary is not yet planned, so stay posted for more details. If you’re a local, or have worked on the issue and are interested in collaborating more closely, please contact us soon. The tour has greatly benefited in past years from Rick and Delaine Spilsbury’s leadership and knowledge and we’d love to have other pipeline opponents (and anyone else with knowledge of and love for the Great Basin) attend and present whatever information they’d like.
They hope you can join them. For more info go to: http://deepgreenresistancegreatbasin.org
Thanks Howard!