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Opinion
Feb. 14, 2008
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Lake Mead dry as a bone?

Despite doomsday predictions, it's unlikely to happen

For the better part of the past decade, the region's water authorities have attempted to manage the twin challenges of record drought and demand along the Colorado River. The sinking surface of Lake Mead underscores the urgency of long-term planning, conservation and construction to stretch finite supplies as far into the future as possible.

Water officials get plenty of other reminders to focus on the future. Every year or so, environmentalists come forward with research that predicts imminent doom for Lake Mead and the Colorado River basin. The latest study is "When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?" Scheduled for publication later this year in Water Resources Research, the piece places Vegas-style odds on the huge reservoir disappearing from the Clark County landscape.

The study, co-authored by Tim Barnett and David Pierce of the University of California-San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, lays even money on the lake running dry by 2021, even money that levels fall low enough to halt power generation at Hoover Dam by 2017, and 10-to-1 odds that Lake Mead goes dry in just six years.

"The point is this is coming in 10 years, not 20 or 30 or 40. We're looking it in the face now," Mr. Barnett says.

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    • The peer-reviewed science behind the study relies on worst-case-scenario assumptions regarding climate change. Essentially, the men are making the case that the cancer of mankind would bring about the slow death of Lake Mead, but global warming will act as a coup de grace.

    It's perfectly reasonable -- and responsible -- to point out that continued drought and increased demand will eventually leave Lake Mead useless as a reservoir and a recreation destination. And studies such as this one certainly keep an appropriate level of attention on the West's most critical issue.

    But these doomsday predictions are getting awfully tiresome. Environmentalists issue them for three reasons: to strike fear in the gullible, to raise money from their allies and to spur lawmakers and the courts to craft policies they agree with.

    Predictions such as these virtually never come true. From Thomas Malthus in the 1798 to Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s, the forecasters of famine, abandoned cities and desolated economies always look like fools in the end because they refuse to take into account the ingenuity and enterprise of the human race.

    Lake Mead go dry? The federal government and the states that depend on the reservoir simply won't let that happen. The stakes are too high. We'll wager that all the farms in California's Imperial Valley, which suck up the lion's share of river water, will go fallow before Lake Mead does.

    As Marc Reisner pointed out in "Cadillac Desert," the seminal work on Western water issues written more than 20 years ago, drought is, historically, a normal condition on the Colorado. The supply provided by the Colorado River likely isn't sustainable in the century ahead. These conclusions were made long before the bogeyman of human-caused global warming was invented by the greens to rein in capitalism, limit human prosperity and give governments even more regulatory powers.

    But we'd love to buy some action on the odds provided by Mr. Barnett and Mr. Pierce. They can name the amount at stake. Are they willing to put their money where their mouths are?



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    Willy wrote on February 18, 2008 08:55 AM: I have two words for "tom" and the rest of the "dump assclowns" that don't believe Lake Mead could go dry...
    Aral Sea...
    look it up.


    tom wrote on February 16, 2008 04:12 AM:

    amazing what dump assclowns
    are around here:

    Sharon Tinsley wrote on February 14, 2008 08:58 AM:
    Another Environment Whacko story from Liberals who know nothing other than doom and gloom. Yeah, the US is going to let Lake Mead dry up. Yeah, and I am the Queen of England too. Do you believe that?


    Bobbie wrote on February 15, 2008 09:12 PM: I keep wondering why “environmentalist” is such an emotionally negative word to so many. Who are these people?

    They are Republicans, Democrats and Independents. They come in all colors, ages, sizes, and all walks of life. They are united by a concern for the way people treat the environment. After all, without the environment, there is no food, no place to live, no clean air or water, and just about everything else humans need to live. We all live in the “environment.”

    As for Lake Mead going dry, maybe we’d better be listening and acting. Everyone should be very careful about how they use fresh water. It is in limited supply worldwide. Squandering this resource may not cause the current residents discomfort, but do we care about children, grandchildren, and the future? Conservation efforts by each and every citizen would make a tremendous difference.

    Then there is “the bogeyman of human-caused global warming.” Wow! While every respectable scientist who deals with the issue has come to the same conclusion that global warning is not only real, but close to being too late to do anything meaningful to correct, someone at the RJ has his head buried in the sand. I can only think he belongs to the school of thought that those undesirable things we don’t want to face will go away if we just ignore them.


    WaterSource wrote on February 15, 2008 06:38 AM: Nevada....look at a Source solution !

    The SNWA and the Bureau of Reclamation have been offered a new Source of fresh water that will yield ONE MILLION acre feet per year for Nevada and storage in Lake Mead !

    Development of the Source has been GUARANTEED not to damage the environment or the water rights of anyone, anywhere !

    For those of you who have read this claim before, please look at the numbers...

    The quagga mussel with its ability to lay a million eggs a year and reproduce 3 times faster than the zebra mussel in the Great Lakes, may very well render pumping from Lake Mead inoperative in as little as

    60 MONTHS !

    That's not much time to convince those in authority to investigate an alternative that can triple Nevada's current fresh water supply, save the SNWA as much as a billion dollars, and save your..... lifestyle.

    Nevada, realize what's at stake...

    Nevada can hope for a miracle cure or investigate a guaranteed Source solution.

    Wish in one hand and pour fresh water into the other...watch which one fills up the fastest !

    Ray Walker (Retired Water Rights Analyst) waterrdw@yahoo.com


    Bob B. wrote on February 14, 2008 07:23 PM: Tough titty, Boone -- who cares about the rest of Nevada that is dying anyway? Vegas rocks and screw everybody else!


    David Johann wrote on February 14, 2008 04:44 PM: Chin up, RJ -- when one door closes, another opens. So when Lake Mead dries up and your real estate advertising dollars blow away like so much desert dust, you can still make money in other ways like sponsoring rocket car races on Mead Dry Lake.


    Mark Schaffer wrote on February 14, 2008 04:38 PM: Before anyone believes the Global Warming denialists nutcases please read the actual IPCC reports, available online here:
    http://www.ipcc.ch

    And for the true intelligent scientific consensus see:

    http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm


    brett wrote on February 14, 2008 02:52 PM: Funny that they do this when some areas of the colorado basin are showing total precipitation of over 170%..

    please look at lake tahoe...they predict every 10 years or so that the lake will never recover...it still does...but takes a good snow fall(wet year to recover..


    Fafner wrote on February 14, 2008 01:54 PM: "worst-case scenario assumptions"?
    The study assumes that climate change didn't begin until 2007 -- a pretty conservative assumption, unless you maintain that there's been *no* climate change, irrespective of its cause.


    R. Boone wrote on February 14, 2008 12:21 PM: To rg:
    You, in Las Vegas, are the ones using up all Nevada's allocation from the Colorado River - not the folks in Central and Northern Nevada. So you "support SNWA piping water in from Northern Nevada." How utterly unselfish that is of you. "Yes, it will cost billions of dollars but there may not be another more viable choice." Really? Do some research. And, what about the people who live in the areas you feel is necessary to suck dry? Do they not count in this equation? In your opinion, they are expendable so long as you folks in Southern Nevada get your thirst quenched? What cost do you put on other people's lives?


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