Nevada Empress on PBS

I turn on the TV last night and there's Patricia Mulroy, The Water Empress. Only the News Hour with Jim Lehrer calls her the Water Czar.  The first, more accurate title, was bestowed by High Country News in 2001.  It is more in keeping with her vampiric ageless stature.

Nevada is a bell weather for New Mexico and they have lots in common.   We have written and thought much about Nevada's  socio-political construct. 

Mulroy got her own little segment in the show and didn't have to answer silly questions on the panel about whether growth was good or bad.   She even got to bash planning in a sentence they used as her opening. 

PAT MULROY:  From a planning perspective, we're assuming the worst.   

I hear disgust in her voice - like she's saying she always assumes the worst from planning. But I'm touchy, I know.

RAY SUAREZ: Pat Mulroy is called the water czar of Las Vegas.

Empress!  She's the Water Empress!  I yell at the TV jumping around trying not to spill the cab.  Big dog sighs.

She describes why farming and ranching must die.  And how its a natural thing.   She's saving Vegas from drought, afterall.   She looks like  a tough cookie.  If I were drought, I wouldn't want to mess with her.

(...)  PAT MULROY: We have to protect this community from that drought, and there's only one way to do it, and that's develop a water supply that is hydrologically separate and apart and not connected in any way to the Colorado River.

So that project is not driven by growth; that project is being driven by what we see the consequences of climate change are on the Colorado River Basin.

RAY SUAREZ: Mulroy argues Las Vegas actually uses only about 10 percent of the state's water, compared to nearly 80 percent consumed by ranchers and farmers up north. And while she says she doesn't want to compromise the food that's grown in the region, it may be time to rethink whether it makes sense to have so many irrigated farms in areas that are naturally so dry.

PAT MULROY: It's the culture of the west, and a lot of what we're talking about here is cultural. You have, what, fifth-, sixth-generation families that have grown up on farms and have lived on farms and on ranches, and you're changing their reality.

And it will be difficult for them to envision it in a different way. I think there's a natural evolution already occurring where some of the less profitable, more difficult to ranch areas are already selling out.

RAY SUAREZ: Those are fighting words to ranchers.

CECIL GARLAND: We're not down there trying to Las Vegas' water. They're up here trying to take our water. That's the simple truth of it. And the point is that in the southwest, with an ever-exploding growing human population, it's on a collision course with the amount of water.

Those people down there are going to have to learn to conserve, have to live within the limits of their own ability to grow, and they have to recognize that. So far as I can tell, they're not willing to do that yet.

The panel talked about growth without ever defining it.  There is population growth, gross receipts tax growth, gross national product growth.  Regional, state or local measures of the economy - like job and income growth can be measured.  And then there is growth in the number of developed acres.  Building growth.  Sprawl growth and redevelopment types of building growth.  18 hole golf course growth. 

But Noooooo.   Its all lumped together.    Tree ring growth is the same as new casinos, is the same as 5000 new people a month.  Growth is growth.  It all needs lots of water and power.

Is the growth good or bad?  The inane question begs the question.  Is it cancerous?   

The closing sentence bugged me too - something about how "city planners" say  stunting growth will cost everyone.   He didn't interview any city planners as far as I saw.  Everybody but Moses was on the panel, but no city planner.  A city planner might have said that sustainability depends on how you build to accommodate growth.  You have to talk about the quality of growth, not just the amount.

Comments

[Noah]

Empress Mulwray: “Hollis seems to think you’re an innocent planner.”
Coco Gittes: “Well, I’ve been accused of a lot of things before, Ms. Mulroy, but never that.”

[Maggie]

Shame on Ray Suarez; I'd have expected more from him. But then again, I've never seen a legitimate planning perspective from any mainstream media journalist, so why him? That's really too bad.