by DGR News Service | Jun 6, 2020 | The Solution: Resistance
After 31 years of resistance including contributions from Deep Green Resistance, Las Vegas has abandoned a water extraction project on indigenous lands in Nevada.
By Max Wilbert
On May 21st, after a series of legal defeats stretching over years, the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) began to withdraw its remaining federal and state applications to build a $10 billion water pipeline.
For three decades, SNWA (the water agency for the Las Vegas area) has worked towards building a 300-mile pipeline and dozens of wells to pump vast amounts of groundwater from Goshute, Paiute, and Shoshone indigenous land in eastern Nevada.
For thirty-one years, the community has fought this project, organizing public events, meetings, public comment, protests, lawsuits, hearings, and beyond. The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, the Ely Shoshone, and the Duckwater Shoshone played a key role in this resistance, as have the Great Basin Water Network and local government efforts to oppose the project.
Deep Green Resistance began fighting the SNWA water grab in 2013, organizing a series of annual ecology and resistance gatherings in Spring Valley that continued through 2018, participating in lawsuits, elevating voices of the land, and supporting community organizers on the ground. We cannot and will not take credit for this victory, but we are happy today to see this news.
When I first visited the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation in 2013, the building bore a stark message: “SNWA: Sucks Native’s Water Away.” The tribe has stated that “SNWA’s groundwater development application is the biggest threat to the Goshute way of life since European settlers first arrived on Goshute lands more than 150 years ago.”
Life in the Great Basin’s valleys, human and otherwise, depends on shallow groundwater, springs, and creeks, which in turn depend on groundwater flows from rain and snow in mountain ranges. Water is life.
There is a place on the floor of the “Sacred Water Valley” or Bahsahwahbee, more commonly known as Spring Valley, where there grows an ecologically unique grove of Rocky Mountain Juniper Trees, where violets bloom and springs bubbling pure water from the Earth.
My friend Delaine Spilsbury, a board member of the Great Basin Water Network and Newe indigenous elder, writes:
“Bahsahwahbee is not just a piece of tribal history. It is American history and a harbinger of the future of indigenous communities. Military officials and vigilantes murdered Newe people there during three massacres between 1850 and 1900. Victims included women, children and elders whose bodies were viciously mutilated. Because it was such a violent event, the spirits of those desecrated are believed to remain in the shallow-rooted Rocky Mountain Juniper trees, referred to as Swamp Cedars. We Shoshone people still visit this location to show our respect for our Elders. To this day, Bahsahwahbee remains a place of mourning for my people.
My grandmother, Laurene Mamie Swallow, survived the Bahsahwahbee massacre of 1897. Oral histories that she and other tribal elders shared, along with documentation from military officials, have served as the historical basis for what we know about the site today.
Despite that information, it is important to note that Bahsahwahbee is more than a place in history. The Swamp Cedars would be lost forever if large-scale pumping were to occur at the site. And, therefore, the ability for indigenous people to practice their spiritual beliefs would be gone too.”
Today, the spirits in the Swamp Cedars can, perhaps, rest a bit easier. But only for now. There still remain countless threats to the Great Basin. Mining is devastating the region. The destruction of Pinyon-Juniper forests continues. Urban sprawl continues to metastasize into the desert, and countless species are on the brink of extinction. Nuclear waste continues to impact indigenous communities. As global warming melts snowpack in the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado River shrinks, cities like Las Vegas will continue to hunt for water—potentially leading to new water grab projects.
The pure springs of these valleys are not safe, and nor are the Swamp Cedars. While land protectors focus on climate change and the Amazon rainforest, countless other parts of our living planet face destruction without appreciation. We must protect all of this world, and that means challenging every water extraction project, every logging plan, every new mine, every factory—even to the fundamental pillars of industrial civilization itself.
For life on this planet to continue, industrial civilization must come to an end. So rejoice, because the water grab is dead. And then get back to the struggle.
Prayer walk for sacred water in the Mojave desert, home to numerous indigenous nations, a wide array of biodiversity, springs, wildflowers, ungulates, tortoises, lizards, birds, and some of the more remote lands in North America. The Mojave’s most serious threats come from the military, urban sprawl, and industrial solar development.
Max Wilbert is a third-generation political dissident, writer, and wilderness guide. He has been involved in grassroots organizing for nearly 20 years. His essays have been published in Earth Island Journal, Counterpunch, DGR News Service, and elsewhere, and have been translated into at least 6 languages. His second book, Bright Green Lies: The False Promises of Mainstream Environmentalism, will be released soon. Photos by the author.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 18, 2018 | Lobbying
Featured image: Great Basin National Park from Spring Valley, Nevada
by Great Basin Water Network
Ely, Nevada: A broad coalition of Nevadans committed to protecting the state’s water resources are declaring victory in their opposition to the SNWA groundwater pipeline. They applaud a ruling by the Nevada State Engineer denying all water rights applications for the project.
Great Basin Water Network and White Pine County say the decision is essentially a death-knell for the roughly 300-mile pipeline proposal. These groups oppose SNWA’s proposed groundwater export and pipeline project because it would cause catastrophic long term environmental harm to some of Nevada’s most pristine and treasured areas, and because it would cause long-term economic devastation to rural communities throughout eastern Nevada. Following favorable decisions in Nevada’s District and Supreme Courts, it appears that the Nevada State Engineer agrees.
“With the denial of these applications by the State Engineer, this ill-conceived multibillion dollar boondoggle is now dead in the water,” said Abigail Johnson of the Great Basin Water Network. “After a string of court victories, we have a decision showing that the water is not available for this project without hurting the area’s existing water rights and environment.”
“We welcome the State Engineer’s denial of SNWA’s applications, which clearly was required by Nevada water law, as the State District Court and Supreme Court have explained,” said the coalition’s attorney, Simeon Herskovits of Advocates for Community and Environment. “We do, however, disagree with the State Engineer’s gratuitous finding that SNWA’s monitoring, management and mitigation (or 3M) plan is adequate. Their slightly elaborated 3M plan remains as much of a sham as it always has been,” Herskovits added.
“White Pine County residents and rural Nevadans are glad that the limits of available groundwater resources have been acknowledged,” declared White Pine County Commissioner Gary Perea. “The denial of SNWA’s applications finally recognizes that, if allowed, the project would take more water than the system could bear, hurting existing water rights and the economies that depend on them.”
“We will continue to stand up and ensure that the State Engineer and SNWA follow the law, and protect our water rights and resources from overpumping and irreversible harm,” agreed another White Pine County Commissioner, Carol McKenzie, from Lund.
Kena Gloeckner, whose family has been ranching in Lincoln County’s Dry Lake Valley – a target of the project – for many generations, said “Not only would this groundwater project have jeopardized our family’s 150-year-old legacy and livelihood, but it would have also ended a way of life valued by local residents. Ranchers and farmers on the ground have long known that the aquifers in these rural valleys are interconnected and are at or near their limits – there is simply nowhere near the amount of water that SNWA wanted to take.”
Read more about the SNWA pipeline at DGR Southwest Coalition
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 23, 2016 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance
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.
Most of the Swamp Cedars’ memories are pleasant. Carried by glaciers to the valley floor sometime in the last two and a half million years, the Swamp Cedars remember when wooly mammoths plodded through the Great Basin. The wind through their leaves whispers of a time when the Swamp Cedars trembled under the shadow of great teraton birds who rode the skies with their 25-foot wingspans. When wild horses stop at the springs to share a drink with the Swamp Cedars, the trees tell stories of the fleet native horses and camels that once ran the open spaces of North America.
Dawn in Spring Valley still carries the hint of curiosity the Swamp Cedars felt on that morning so many thousands of years ago when they watched the first humans walk from the foothills to rest in the welcome shade the trees offered. They learned to expect the humans regularly as they gathered under the trees for sacred ceremonies. They listened as the humans called themselves “Newe” and the trees learned that the word meant, “people.”
The Newe returned often to the Swamp Cedars for their ceremonies and the trees took delight with the Newe as old friends embraced after several seasons apart, as young people became lovers, and as information was shared about the year’s pinyon pine nut harvest.
A few of the memories are extremely painful. The Swamp Cedars recall when a different kind of human first arrived in Spring Valley. These humans were pale of skin and rode what the trees recognized as horses though they were a different species of horse than the native horses that had long since been lost. At first, there were just a few of the pale humans, but the trickle turned into a flood. The Swamp Cedars wince as they relive their first experience of steel – the excruciating pain that came when the first ax drove deep into living Swamp Cedar wood.
Worst of all, the Swamp Cedars witnessed the Newe screaming as the blue-clad humans on horses rode them down, the puffs of white smoke that turned into a haze, and the sharp cracks of rifle fire. The Swamp Cedars still recoil from the taste of blood in the soil when the bubbling springs turned red.
***
Dr. Ronald Lanner, one of the foremost experts on Great Basin trees explains the Swamp Cedars’ uniqueness: “…within the borders of Nevada, Rocky Mountain juniper is found in 39 mountain ranges but in only one valley – Spring Valley.” The Swamp Cedars carry an aura of magic. In fact, they are not cedars at all. They are actually Rocky Mountain junipers (juniperus scopulorum) and Rocky Mountain junipers always grow on dry, rocky mountain slopes or in somewhat shaded canyons. Always – except for the Swamp Cedars. Mysteriously, the Swamp Cedars grow in valley bottom woodlands that are flooded part of the year.
The Swamp Cedars of Spring Valley are likely on their way to evolving into a distinct species. Lanner describes, “…it is very likely the swamp cedars comprise a distinct ecotype of Rocky Mountain juniper. An ecotype is a genetically differentiated population that has evolved in adaptation to a distinctively different environment than characterizes that of the main population of its species.”
The Swamp Cedars are sacred to the Shoshone (Newe in their own language) peoples. According to Shoshone elder Delaine Spilsbury, Nevada’s Native peoples were hunter-gatherers who roamed the region in small familial groups while they searched for food. The Swamp Cedars were centrally located in the Shoshone’s traditional territories and offered ample shade during the hot Great Basin summers. Beneath the trees are a series of springs. Water from the springs encouraged plants and animals to proliferate. The Shoshone found many game birds and animals, medicinal plants, and fish in the nearby streams and ponds. Not far away from the Swamp Cedars, pinyon pine forests grew bounties of pine nuts. With these conditions, the Swamp Cedars became the favorite gathering place for the Shoshone and a sacred ceremonial site.
The Swamp Cedars are a massacre site. Three times over. Spilsbury explains that two of the massacres are of official military record while the last massacre happened at the hands of vigilantes with no military record.
The first two massacres happened in the 1860s. In the first massacre, most of the Shoshone escaped when American cavalry horses became mired in the mud created by the valley’s springs. The second massacre was much worse and Spilsbury says the written reports “state that men’s penises were cut off and shoved into their mouths and tree branches were shoved into women’s vaginas.”
The third massacre happened in 1897. This massacre is only remembered because two little girls hid in a ditch and were not discovered by the white vigilantes who murdered everyone else. The two little girls walked south to the Swallow Ranch. One of the two survivors was named Mamie by the Swallow family. Later, she married one of the Swallows’ hired hands – a Paiute man from Shivits, Utah named Joe Joseph. Spilsbury is the granddaughter of Mamie and Joe Joseph and, therefore, a direct descendant of a survivor of the last Swamp Cedar massacre.
The massacres cursed the Swamp Cedars with a bloody historical significance, but the massacres also endowed the trees with a deep, spiritual significance. According to Spilsbury, “Newe believe that because of their violent deaths, the spirits of the victims remain in the Sacred Trees.”
***
The Swamp Cedars are under attack. Close to 300 miles south of Spring Valley, the City of Las Vegas sprang up in the desert. Las Vegas’ population continues to grow in an arid landscape and the city is running out of water. Instead of restricting development, Sin City encourages residents and businesses to move to the city promising them access to the water they’ll need.
In 1991, the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) was created through a cooperative agreement among seven water and wastewater agencies in Southern Nevada including Big Bend Water District, City of Boulder City, City of Henderson, City of Las Vegas, City of North Las Vegas, Clark County Water Reclamation District, and the Las Vegas Valley Water District.
From the SNWA website: “SNWA officials are charged with managing the region’s water resources and providing for Las Vegas Valley residents’ and businesses’ present and future water needs.” To do this, SNWA has proposed a “Groundwater Development Project.”
The bulk of this plan hinges on a large pipeline from Las Vegas to rural eastern Nevada. The main pipeline is estimated to include 263 miles of buried water pipelines while an estimated 96 to 254 miles of collector pipelines will feed water to the main pipeline. The entire pipeline will pump 27 billion gallons of water from the desert annually. Between 71 and 88 wells will have to be dug in fragile ecosystems while somewhere between 96 and 254 miles of overhead distribution power lines will be built in a region famous for wildfires. The water will be taken primarily from 4 desert valleys – Spring, Cave, Dry Lake, and Delamar Valleys.
In other words, SNWA’s Groundwater Development Plan would destroy much of the Great Basin, would destroy Spring Valley and would destroy the Swamp Cedars.
According to Dr. David Charlet, in his study “Effects of Interbasin Water Transport on Ecosystems of Spring Valley, White Pine County, Nevada,” “Ecosystems of Spring Valley, like most valleys in Nevada, are stressed. Overgrazing, particularly during the late 1800s, water diversion, and groundwater pumping have weakened the plant communities.”
This means human activities are already undermining life in the area.
Charlet makes horrifying predictions for the Swamp Cedars, writing, “The groundwater development proposed by the SNWA for the Spring Valley will doom the populations of swamp cedars. It is unlikely that they will live long past the first 20 yr [sic] of drawdown…” In fact, Charlet believes the Swamp Cedars will act as the canaries in the coal mine as he describes what he thinks will happen, “The swamp cedars will be the first plant species in the valley to become locally extinct, and I imagine that they would not be able to hang on for more than 50 yr. The next species to follow the swamp cedars will be the greasewood, followed shortly by big Great Basin sagebrush, and finally by rabbitbrush.”
Dr. Lanner agrees with Dr. Charlet in Lanner’s study “The Effect of Groundwater Pumping Proposed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority on the ‘Swamp Cedar’ of Spring Valley, Nevada.” He writes, “Despite the fact that the swamp cedars are not currently considered at risk of extinction by state or federal authorities, they are vulnerable to groundwater pumping leading to lowering of the water table and loss of surface flooding. The granting of pumping permits would make it logical, however, for such listing to be initiated.”
Even more terrifying than Charlet’s 20-year prediction, Lanner gives the Swamp Cedars 2 years. He explains, “Since the swamp cedars’ root systems are concentrated in the upper one foot of soil, and almost entirely in the upper two feet, drawdown of water from this part of the soil profile can be expected to be devastating to the trees. I would expect trees to die within no more than two years following the pumping of water from their root zone, even if there is ample rainfall to keep surface roots alive.”
***
What will the world lose if SNWA has its way?
Wild irises and Swamp Cedars, Spring Valley
There are the obvious answers. The world will lose the Swamp Cedars, Spring Valley’s ability to support life, and a place of cultural significance for a historically oppressed people. Las Vegas will swell and, as it gets bigger, will require ever more water to support itself. Eventually, the city will reach farther and farther to steal water destroying community after community until it cannot find enough. Then, it will collapse. Many of those who have been forced to rely on the city’s infrastructure for the necessities of life will perish. These will be grievous wounds, of course. And they give us all the reason we need to know that SNWA must be stopped.
There are wounds that strike even deeper than these, though. They are wounds that scrape our spirits. They are aimed at our souls. They erase our collective memory and chill our courage to resist. Understanding the Swamp Cedars, listening to their stories, and sharing their memories helps us to regain our own memories. Regaining our memories will enable us to see more clearly.
What will we see when we see clearly?
We will see that this culture’s pattern of abuse is not inevitable. Las Vegas’ water shortage is the result of a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts that both leads to and springs from the growth of cities. Cities are groups of people living in place in populations high enough to require the importation of the necessities of life like water. This is a way of life built on drawdown and can never be sustainable.
Contrast this to the hunter/gatherer culture practiced by the Shoshone – the people who will suffer the most from SNWA’s water grab. The Shoshone lived sustainably in places like Spring Valley for thousands of years without destroying the land. The dominant culture, on the other hand, has been in the area since the 1850s. And, already in this comparatively short time, the Great Basin is on the verge of collapse.
Central to Shoshone culture is the idea that the Swamp Cedars are sacred. As the Shoshone teach that the victims of the Swamp Cedars massacres remain in the trees, they ensure that the lessons of these massacres will never be forgotten so long as both the Shoshone and the Swamp Cedars survive.
It is in the Swamp Cedars’ sacredness that we find one of the prime motivations for the dominant culture’s destruction of the Swamp Cedars, for the destruction of indigenous peoples’ sacred places around the world, and ultimately for the annihilation of every last indigenous culture. In destroying the Swamp Cedars, in destroying sacred places, and in destroying indigenous cultures, the dominant culture destroys examples of true sustainability. The dominant culture wants to erase all memory that there are other, more beautiful ways to live.
For the vast majority of human history and in lands around the world, humans built cultures based on the notion that all living beings are sacred. Fish, birds, and animals were our kin. Mountains housed gods, rivers spoke the mysteries of existence, and spirits lived in the trees. When every living being is sacred, it is sacrilegious to destroy wantonly and the kind of total annihilation we face today is simply unthinkable.
When a small minority of human cultures banished the sacred to abstract sky gods or denied the possibility of the sacred in any form, they turned a living, speaking world into so much material to use. Surrounded, as this small minority was, by humans who still remembered the sacredness of all life, this small minority was incredibly insecure. To maintain the lies, they had to destroy the reminders. Natural community after natural community, species after species have fallen victim to this culture. The dominant culture operates as a serial killer. And, just like a serial killer, the dominant culture will destroy every last scrap of the evidence of its crimes if we let it.
The Swamp Cedars, by their sacredness to the Shoshone, by the memories they carry, by their very existence, betray the unspeakable evils committed by this culture. The dominant culture cannot afford for the Swamp Cedars to continue teaching the world about life. The Swamp Cedars must survive. We must stop the SNWA water grab and biocidal projects everywhere.
For more information about stopping the SNWA water grab, please see the Great Basin Water Network and Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition.
by DGR News Service | Apr 15, 2014 | Listening to the Land
By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
Ely, Nev. – A camping tour of the region that will be affected by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) groundwater development project is taking place over memorial day weekend – and you’re invited.
The trip, which will take place from May 24th to 26th, will begin at the north end of the water grab region, at the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation in Ibapah, Utah – a community which has been organizing to stop the groundwater project for years.
Trip organizer Max Wilbert says the goal is to get to know the land threatened by water extraction.
“These regions of eastern Nevada are some of the most beautiful, remote landscapes in the West,” Wilbert said. “Once you see that beauty, you want to fight to protect it.
Members of the Goshute and Shoshone tribes are holding the event in collaboration with community members from across the southwest (Tuscon, Moab, and Salt Lake City). Their goal is to raise awareness of the unique natural and cultural heritage of the region.
“My people have lived here sustainably for over 10,000 years,” said Rick Spilsbury, a Shoshone man and area-resident who is guiding the tour. “We want that for all of the Earth for another 10,000 years.”
SNWA is the organization that delivers water to Las Vegas and the surrounding area, and is planning a $15 billion project to extract groundwater out of mountain valleys in eastern Nevada.
Proponents of the project say that the water and pipeline is required to meet rising water demand in Las Vegas, especially as water levels in the Colorado River and Lake Mead continue to decline. Critics say the pipeline will decimate ecosystems and small farming, ranching, and indigenous communities, and that Las Vegas residents will be stuck with a massive bill.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 17, 2013 | Education, Mining & Drilling
By Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
It sounds like a bad business plan: Las Vegas is planning a $15 billion project to extract water from the driest places in the country. Ranchers, farmers, indigenous and rural communities, hunters, and
environmentalists are coming together to oppose the project, and clean air activists from Salt Lake City are worried that the project might cause major dust issues in the valley.
Join community organizers Saturday, January 11th at the downtown library in Salt Lake City to learn more about the so-called “Water Grab” – the project that is the epitome of unsustainable development and massive public subsidy to the rich. Despite a recent court ruling that deals a major blow to the project, opposition continues as SNWA will not give up on their desperate gamble.
Prepare to learn about the burden this project would put on taxpayers, the stunning natural places it would turn into deserts, the communities that would be impacted, and the political scheming going on in Las Vegas to make it happen.
Join us on January 11th to stand up for what is right. We say, “Stop the Water Grab!”
The event will take place at 3pm on Saturday, January 11th at the Downtown Salt Lake City library – 210 E 400 S, in Meeting Room A, downstairs in the main foyer of the library.
