Piping Water from Rural Counties to Fuel Growth in Las Vegas, Nevada: Water Transfer Risks in the Arid USA West

The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) plans to build a 300-mile pipeline to transfer groundwater from five rural basins in north-eastern Nevada south to the greater Las Vegas metropolitan area. Relying on the path dependence literature, we trace the policy choices and legal battles that have led to southern Nevada’s proposed Groundwater Development Project. We find that policy decisions over time, often initiated by powerful water policy entrepreneurs, have fuelled southern Nevada’s rapid growth and development. After emphasising water demand management for more than two decades, SNWA has revived its controversial plans to increase water supplies by importing water from rural areas. Using semi-structured key-informant interviews and document analysis of water right hearing transcripts, public comments, and hearing rulings, we examine the risks and uncertainties involved in SNWA’s Groundwater Development Project. SNWA and the protestors of the project experience different aspects of risk and uncertainty. SNWA believes the Groundwater Development Project is an essential addition to its current water strategy to reduce the political and economic risks from Colorado River shortages that could endanger southern Nevada’s longer-term economic survival. Protestors believe the uncertainty of SNWA’s mitigation and management plans are inadequate to protect rural basins from the long-term ecological and hydrological risks and uncertainties associated with SNWA’s pumping and export of groundwater from their areas. Our analysis reveals a much deeper and longer path dependence trajectory in the USA West of overpopulating an arid region, subsidising decades of infrastructure development to promote economic development, and creating dependencies on increasingly scarce water supplies. A paradigm shift much larger than water demand management is required to reverse this trajectory and deal with the dilemmas of unabated growth in desert metropolitan areas dependent on distant water sources

Cache Water District: Risks and Opportunities: Research and Policy Analysis Report on Formation of a Water Conservancy District in Cache County, Utah

In the November 2016 election, Cache County residents will vote on Proposition #11, Formation of the Cache Water District. The question before voters is: Should the Cache Water District be created? Voters can respond “yes” or “no.” The Cache County Water Master Plan was released in 2013. Discussion and analysis conducted through that planning effort suggested that a water conservancy district would be the best organizational structure for Cache County and its municipalities to collectively and cooperatively manage water. Cache County created the Bridgerland Water Conservancy Work Group (BWC Work Group) to draft a purpose statement and bylaws for the district so that voters would have a better understanding of the district’s proposed structure and what it could do. The BWC Work Group chose to have 11 members on the Board of Trustees, 10 elected in non-partisan elections and 1 appointed by the Cache County Council to represent agricultural interests. If approved, the Cache Water District will be the first water conservancy district with an elected board in the state of Utah

Interdisciplinary natural resource and environmental policy program at Utah State University

The Natural Resource and Environmental Policy Program at Utah State University (USU) is an interdisciplinary, graduate, educational program that has been developed since the fall of 1991. The program administers and awards a graduate certificate, sponsors invited speakers, oversees student policy presentations, and facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration. The program has earned broad, campus-wide support and participation. All eight colleges at USU supported approval of the certificate program in 1994. At present, sixteen academic units are represented on its Faculty Advisory Committee, which oversees and makes decisions about the program. Fifty graduate students from fourteen academic units have pursued the Interdisciplinary Certificate in Natural Resource and Environmental Policy, eight students have received the certificate, and sixty-three faculty representing twenty academic units are affiliated with the program. The graduate certificate program appears to be enhancing students\u27 employment options in applied resource management and coordination roles. This paper reviews program development efforts, describes the program, analyzes some of the challenges and opportunities that have confronted program developers, and offers a preliminary assessment of outcomes

Linkages to Public Land Framework: Toward Embedding Humans in Ecosystem Analyses by Using “Inside-Out Social Assessment

This article presents the ‘‘Linkages to Public Land’’ (LPL) Framework, a general but comprehensive data-gathering and analysis approach aimed at informing citizen and agency decision making about the social environment of public land. This social assessment and planning approach identifies and categorizes various types of linkages that people have to public land and guides the tasks of finding and using information on people in those linkages. Linkages are defined as the ‘‘coupling mechanisms’’ that explain how and why humans interact with ecosystems, while linkage analyses are empirical investigations contextualized both temporally and geographically. The conceptual, legal, and theoretical underpinnings of five basic linkage categories (tribal, use, interest, neighboring land, and decision making) and further refinement into subcategories are explained. These categories are based upon the complex property and decision-making regimes governing public land. Applying an ‘‘inside-out’’ analytic perspective, the LPL Framework assesses the social environment inside public land units and traces linkages out into the larger social environment, instead of assessing the outside social environment (communities or stakeholders) and assuming linkages exist between the social entities and public lands, as is generally done in social assessments. The LPL Framework can be utilized in management activities such as assessing baseline conditions and designing monitoring protocols, planning and evaluating management alternatives, analyzing impacts of decisions, structuring public involvement and conflict management efforts, and conducting collaborative learning and stewardship activities. The framework enhances understanding of human dimensions of ecosystem management by providing a conceptual map of human linkages to public land and a stepwise process for focusing and contextualizing social analyses. The framework facilitates analysis of the compatibilities, conflicts, and trade-offs between various linkages, and between cumulative human linkages and capabilities of public land to sustain them. While the LPL Framework was developed for use in planning for U.S. National Forests, it could be applied to other types of public land in the United States and adapted and extended to public lands and common property areas in other countries

Hydrologic Interdependencies and Human Cooperation: The Process of Adapting to Droughts

The Bear River Basin, which includes portions of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming in the United States, has a dynamic history of human hydrologic adaptations in relation to a highly variable water supply. These adaptations are embedded in a geographical setting highly influenced by the legal, policy, and institutional contexts that govern allocation of water in this generally arid region. In response to several years of drought and a historically low water year in 2004, water users in the Bear River Basin tested the efficacy of the “law of the river” and innovative agreements that they had negotiated in recent years to help mitigate impacts related to water shortages. Three innovations were identified as being key to a successful response to the 2004 drought: 1) a precedent-setting voluntary settlement agreement, 2) technical work in river modeling and instrumentation, and 3) extraordinary communication strategies employed throughout the drought. Based on case study research and utilizing a “ways of knowing” theoretical framework, the authors report on an unfolding contemporary history of how people in the Bear River Basin have learned to deal with uncertainties and risks associated with both droughts and floods. Their story has important implications for the understanding of conflict and cooperation in water systems, management of transboundary waters, and the promotion of sustainable water resource governance. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009WCAS1009.1?prevSearch=&searchHistoryKey

Dynamics of Utah\u27s Agricultural Landscapes in Response to Urbanization: A Comparison Between Irrigated and Non-Irrigated Agricultural Lands

In the literature on how urbanization affects agricultural landscapes, little attention has been focused on differentiating and comparing the changes in irrigated agricultural landscapes to non-irrigated agricultural landscapes. Additionally, there have been few applications of landscape metrics for understanding agricultural landscape changes. The objectives of this study were to:(1) analyze and compare the changes of both irrigated and non-irrigated agricultural lands in a rapidly growing region; (2) identify the spatial patterns and hotspots of these changes; and,(3) examine the spatial relationships between changes in agricultural landscapes and urban development. We adopted landscape metrics and gradient analysis to assess where and how agricultural landscape changes occurred in northern Utah over the past 30 years. A revised urban gradient was also developed to detect the changes of agricultural landscapes in relation to new urban development. We found that irrigated agricultural lands were more affected by urban development than non-irrigated agricultural lands, with evidence of more patches, more irregular patch shapes, and less connectivity among patches. This study contributes not only to the existing literature on the dynamics of both irrigated and non-irrigated agricultural lands in relation to urban development, but also helps fill the gap of scant applications of landscape metrics and urban gradient analysis in agricultural areas. Most importantly, such a comprehensive examination of Utah\u27s agricultural landscapes will serve as part of the scientific foundation for informing land use policy in the region, as well as provide lessons for other places that are facing similar agricultural land conversion challenges

Justice and Immigrant Latino Recreation Geography in Cache Valley, Utah

Latinos are the largest U.S. non-mainstreamed ethnic group, and social and environmental justice considerations dictate recreation professionals and researchers meet their recreation needs. This study reconceptualizes this diverse group’s recreation patterns, looking at where immigrant Latino individuals in Cache Valley, Utah do recreate rather than where they do not. Through qualitative interviews and interactive mapping, thirty participants discussed what recreation means to them and explained their recreation site choices. Findings suggest that recreation as an activity done outside the home, for fun with others, leads participants to seek spaces with certain characteristics. Reconceiving recreation more broadly and framing it from the perspective of participants’ choices can facilitate clearer understanding of differences and promote greater justice in resource provision and management

Utah\u27s Rural Communities: Planning for the Future

Two of the biggest concerns facing rural communities in the Intermountain West today are the contrasting problems of rapid growth and development as opposed to economic decline and stagnation

Water-smart growth planning: linking water and land in the arid urbanizing American West

Linking water and land is essential in planning for the future of the western United States. We propose the concept of ‘water-smart growth’ and explore its implications through incorporating water considerations into the SLEUTH land-use model. The urban growth trajectory in Cache County, Utah, is modeled from 2007 to 2030 under four different scenarios: current trend; smart growth; water-smart growth with moderate implementation; and water-smart growth with full implementation. Comparisons of simulation results illustrate the extent and ways in which water-smart growth would alter current established land-use growth patterns. The approach represents an initial step to better integrate land and water in urban growth modeling and planning. This study\u27s purposes are to provide improved understanding and representation of linkages between water and land in urbanizing environments, offer insights from a set of modeled options, and demonstrate the significance of integrating land and water in planning practices