Water

Jeremy P. Jacobs, E&E reporterGreenwire: Monday, July 11, 2016 America’s iconic Great Salt Lake is rapidly shrinking due to drought, climate change and misguided water management schemes. Utah is considering another major water diversion project that would further deplete the lake’s inflows. Photo by Jeremy P. Jacobs. Article updated at 5:18 p.m. EDT. SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – For a long time, the lake that lends its name to this city was taken for granted by most here and treated as a sewer by some of the nation’s biggest polluters. ...

Wild Irises in Spring Valley By Will Falk The Swamp Cedars in Spring Valley, Nevada have grown long memories. They stand on the valley floor under the bright Great Basin stars where the skies are still unspoiled by the encroaching glow of electricity. Beneath the trees’ branches, the blue petals of wild irises flutter in the breeze. All of them – the trees, the flowers, the stars – sway to the soft melodies played by the valley’s bubbling springs. ...

Max Wilbert, a long-time activist with Deep Green Resistance, has been working alongside indigenous peoples and other residents of eastern-central Nevada for the past few years as part of an effort to stop the theft of the land’s water. The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) wants to build a giant pipe to take water from these communities to fuel further expansion of the city of Las Vegas into otherwise uninhabitable desert. The project would cause destruction on many fronts, including to natural communities, to the life practices of indigenous inhabitants, to the economic livelihoods of other rural human communities, to the already dreadful air quality of Salt Lake City, and even to the pocketbooks of Las Vegas taxpayers as they subsidize a multi billion dollar giveaway to real estate “developers.” ...

Lierre Keith, Deep Green Resistance co-founder, recently wrote one of the most powerful articles that we have read in a long, long time. Her piece, titled The Girls and the Grasses, is like poetry. We invite you to read it here: Link: http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015/08/25/lierre-keith-the-girls-and-the-grasses/ – Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International writes about the colonial and racist origins of the “conservation” movement. His organization helps push an alternate perspective. ...

Against All Mining: The Kennecott Mine Must Be Stopped This is an excerpt from an early draft of a forthcoming book about how “green technology” and “renewable energy” will not save the planet. One of the largest copper mines in the world is the Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine, which is just outside Salt Lake City in the Oquirrh Mountains. Flying into the city, you can see the mine from a long way off: a 2.5 mile wide pit dug more than half a mile into the root of the mountains. ...

Editors note: this post comes from the folks at Save Nevada’s Water: Ban Fracking In Nevada. While the comment period for the BLM ends soon, public pressure and action against these projects can continue to be effective even afterwards. After all, these are supposed to be federal lands and federal agencies - we’re supposed to be in charge, not the corporations. For those of you that haven’t heard already, the Nevada BLM has put out an environmental assessment on 80,00 acres of land they are opening up for oil and gas lease sale only a few moments away from Mesquite, and the Virgin River that drains into Lake Mead. ...

By Susan Hyatt, Michael Carter, and Max Wilbert Storms chased us. Great, towering thunderstorms that came sweeping out of the west, lurking behind mountain ranges and flowing out across the valleys to drop great curtains of rain that soaked into the soil. That’s what this story is about: water. We came here, a group of us from many different places and backgrounds, to see the land that Nevada developers and Las Vegas real-estate moguls have been lusting after for twenty five years. But it’s not the land they want; it’s the water falling from these thunderstorms and melting off the fresh dusting of snow on the peaks, the water that soaks deep into stone and soil, forming basin aquifers. ...

These are the final details for the 2015 Sacred Water Tour. If you are interested in attending, please contact us! Note: these details supercede the previous details published here. White Pine County, Nev. – On Memorial Day weekend, a guided camping tour will travel the area to be affected by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) groundwater development project and existing fracking operations. Over three days, from May 23th to 25th, the eastern Nevada trip will highlight key fragile areas within the vast region, located on the ancestral lands of the Goshute and Shoshone people. ...

Stealing Water From the Desert? We Say No! Photo from 2014 Sacred Water Tour Join us this Memorial Day weekend for a tour of sacred lands threatened by unsustainable “development”. We will spend three days visiting the communities to be affected by the water grab, learning about the project and the threatened sacred lands and waters, and camping in some of these beautiful places. RSVP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/319801881551753 Date: Saturday, May 23rd - Monday, May 25th (Memorial Day weekend) ...

For Immediate Release Media Inquiries contact: Keala Kelly 808-265-0177 Email: sacredmaunakea@gmail.com Website: http://sacredmaunakea.wordpress.com/ Mauna Kea Protest Tuesday, October 7, 2014 – 7am to 2pm, Saddle Road at the entrance to the Mauna Kea Observatory Road Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians will gather for a peaceful protest against the Astronomy industry and the “State of Hawaii’s” ground- breaking ceremony for a thirty-meter telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea. CULTURAL ISSUES: Mauna Kea is sacred to the Hawaiian people, who maintain a deep connection and spiritual tradition there that goes back millennia. ...