Today, the Nevada Assembly passed legislation that urges President Trump and the Congress to sign off on a federal plan to create urban sprawl from the Las Vegas Valley to Primm by selling off tens of thousands of acres of…
Water Warriors, Legislation backed by publicly traded water developer Vidler could move through the Nevada Legislature without your assistance. Today is a major deadline day, and we need this bill to perish. Help us by sending a message to…
AB419, a proposal backed by private water developers like Vidler and other interests who want to fast-track water rights approvals for deep-pocketed entities is having a hearing today. This bill poses major issues about the ability of protestants to protect…
Sprawl unites politicians unlike other topics in the nation’s driest state.
In the past month, Democrats and Republicans in the Nevada congressional delegation introduced legislation to sell off large tracts of public lands in rural and urban counties throughout the state.…
Among the poorly conceived water bills in the Nevada Legislature this session is a proposal to prevent local governments from prohibiting businesses that use evaporative cooling.
Think of AB385 as a prohibition on a moratorium from the bill sponsor, Republican Assemblymember…
Bill proposals this year in Nevada and Utah have sparked a conversation about the regulation of pumping brines that exist deep in the earth’s crust. This conversation comes as companies now have drilling and processing techniques that allow machines to…
Today, Nevada’s senior U.S. Senator re-introduced legislation to sell off public lands in Southern Nevada, placating a long-running demand from real estate interests, President Trump, and Governor Lombardo. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto's bill, the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation…
Last week GBWN got a copy of a letter authored by the top water managers in the Lower Basin advocating for the new administration to study and consider the major threats looming at Glen Canyon Dam. This is an unprecedented…
As we revealed a few weeks ago, there were many efforts underway by the State of Utah to exert more control on the Colorado River. And we are here to report that one of those efforts in the statehouse is…
When we are not working to defeat dangerous proposals in legislative sessions, we are working to pass laws that work for rural communities, ecosystems, and water users. That is our conservation trifecta, and we believe we have that with AB9…
New email records between federal officials and contractors for the Central Iron County Water District show that there are major plans in the works to re-start the water-stealing Cedar City Pipeline and Water Grab. The 343 pages of documents reveal…
Federal regulators moved to deny a key request from rPlus Hydro’s White Pine Water Power, delaying project permitting for nearly two years and rebuffing a request to expedite the hydrologic review for the project that would forever alter Steptoe Valley.…
Our dearest friend at the Water Network, Simeon Herskovits, passed away last week at the age of 61. For all of us at GBWN, Simeon was the legendary, almost immortal attorney whose principled legal strategies compelled judges, lawmakers, and the…
The new administration in Washington D.C. gutted the regulations overseeing the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, a key function for public participation and community protection on major actions proposed for federal lands.
The action, announced this week, poses many questions…
Next week there will be hearings on AB104 and AB9, two bills where GBWN has invested significant time on collaboration with water users and stakeholders.
AB104 deals with a management framework for retiring water rights via buybacks. When federal COVID money gushed…
Nothing says “Utah” like an effort to subvert federal authority on matters relating to land or water. Take for example HJR9, the latest gesture by Beehive State lawmakers to force their will upon those pesky requirements of the Colorado River…
After hearing from the concerned public, Assemblymember Selena La Rue-Hatch introduced AB109 to ensure that all industrial uses of water in Nevada undergo a review by the state’s top water regulator and receive a permit for their use.
Currently, certain industries…
Data centers are grabbing lots of headlines. And for good reason. The necessary cooling sucks up lots of water. The energy demands are hefty. The power necessary to sustain them requires large amounts of natural gas — which is a…
Keep a close eye on these bills working their way through the statehouses in the nation's driest states. In Nevada, watch AB109, AB134, AB9 and AB104. These are the efforts that will focus on conserving and protecting the…
During the first few days of the new Administration, policy wonks across all sectors read the spate of Executive Orders with varying degrees of confusion, outrage, joy, indifference, or uncertainty. For actions related to energy, there were two major orders…