Pat Mulroy, Las Vegas, Nevada's Water Empress*, is featured in the NYTimes Green Blog.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority is in the news a lot lately - putting on a full court press for positive public opinion on the pipeline.
Experts from the Congressional, nonprofit and regulatory arenas see Ms. Mulroy, 57, whose back has been to the wall for most of the past two decades — first because of the area’s rapid growth, then because of the water’s disappearance — as a clear-eyed, practical leader for the new world of scarcity. Others in the world of western water seem impressed yet a bit unnerved by her.
Count me as unnerved.
Her closing quote about the need to alter priority rights is revealing.
“Nevada’s problem has become everyone’s problem,” she said. “The last thing that everyone needs is for a city that relies 90 percent on that water to not meet its needs.”
“If this is the new normal,” she said of the drought, “we’ve got to change a lot of things on the Colorado River.”
Change what? Change the law and the river and the consumption patterns and the intake values and the landscape of northern Nevada. Change everything but the assumption of growth. Altering Vegas sprawl is not on Mulroy's list.
* The Times author calls her a Czar, but I prefer the Empress title bestowed years ago by High Country Times News (yikes.)
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