MX, nukes and the Vegas pipeline's origin
Plus groundwater overuse across the U.S. and a Great Salt Lake lawsuit.
Hi all: The last few weeks have been busy so apologies for not writing as often. But between all the discourse on Oppenheimer this summer and reading about efforts to expand downwinder compensation, I’ve been thinking a lot about the legacy of the atomic West. That, in addition to some book research, inspired this post about the MX Project and its connection to water.
If you appreciate this work, please consider sharing this post and passing it along to friends or colleagues who might be interested! I don’t have any incentives (maybe a fun sticker one day down the line), but you will have my gratitude and thanks if you can convince a friend (or two) to subscribe. Hope everyone has a restful weekend as seasons start to change. Cheers, Daniel
It is hard to capture in words what the building of the MX missile project would have meant for Nevada, Utah and the Great Basin as a whole. Reading accounts about MX, four decades later, I’m struck at the scope and costs of the $30 billion plan. It is mind-numbing, a product of a Cold War establishment that saw doomsdays on the horizon.
And of course, it was given an eerie name: The “Peacekeeper” missile.
The MX project (MX stands for “Missile Experimental”) sought to site 200 new land-based missiles in the heart of the Great Basin. Each missile would carry 10 warheads and could launch at several sites, with the military moving these weapons around in a complex system of underground shelters, and at a time, through a “racetrack.” It was met with fierce opposition from Indigenous activists, politicians, environmentalists rural communities across the Great Basin. The Mormon Church came out against it.
When it was first seriously discussed at the end of the Carter Administration in 1979, Republican governors in Utah and Nevada both cited water as a significant concern.
The idea was to add an element of surprise, making it hard for the Soviet Union to know precisely where the missiles were located. It would also have made the Great Basin the nation’s “nuclear sponge,” a sacrifice zone to absorb an offensive strike.
The MX plan died, yet its legacy lived on in a surprising — perhaps fitting — way for the nation’s driest state. Investigations conducted as part of MX gave way to interest in groundwater, specifically how much sat invisibly untapped below the Great Basin.
As the federal government looked to site the MX project in Nevada and Utah, the U.S. Geological Survey drilled dozens of wells across the region. Some of these wells were almost mythically productive. Policymakers took note. By 1985, the state Legislature, with interest from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, wanted to know more about it.
With MX off the table, one idea was that water could supplement a thirsty Las Vegas. In 1985, the Las Vegas Valley Water District, the Desert Research Institute and others testified in favor of funding further research into the quality and quantity of the water.
“One of the fallouts of the MX proposal,” Assemblyman Bryon Bilyeu told colleagues that year, “was we found that in this arid waterless state that we had the potential for a vast amount of water underground. We have been afforded the opportunity with matching federal funds to begin to map and tap that resources. It is an opportunity that this state, which is so water deprived, cannot, in fact, afford to lose.”
Four years later, in 1989, the Las Vegas Valley Water District filed blanket claims for unappropriated groundwater across the eastern part of the state — what would be the start of a three decade effort to ship groundwater from eastern Nevada to Las Vegas.
What happened next is another post for another time, but it’s worth noting the way in which MX continued to echo as Las Vegas sought to pursue its pipeline. Many of the same forces that defeated the MX project (Tribes, ranchers, environmentalists, rural governments, the Mormon church) came together to oppose and challenge Las Vegas.
We don’t hear much about MX today. But it is a through-line to our present. The MX wells are still around, although under different ownership in many cases. In the world of Great Basin water, hydrologists often still cite data collected at MX wells. And forty years later, there remain developers looking to tap into this underground water source.
The MX siting coincided with a time when there was increasing pressure to study and develop underground water — with so much of the West’s rivers already apportioned (and in many cases, over-appropriated). This was not only a trend in the Great Basin.
The New York Times recently published a phenomenal data project that revealed the extent of groundwater overuse in the U.S., and how water levels have dropped since the 1980s. In many places, there was not as much water to go around as many hoped.
What the New York Times article found:
“The investigation reveals how America’s life-giving resource is being exhausted in much of the country, and in many cases it won’t come back. Huge industrial farms and sprawling cities are draining aquifers that could take centuries or millenniums to replenish themselves if they recover at all.”
It’s definitely worth checking out. Lots more to write on this topic soon…
Does the state of Utah have an affirmative duty to protect the Great Salt Lake? The answer is yes, according to a coalition of environmental groups suing the state for not protecting the lake as a public trust resource. The public trust doctrine is a legal tenet stating that governments, as the trustees of natural resources, have an affirmative duty to protect water from degradation on behalf of the public. In the 1980s, it was applied to protect Mono Lake in California’s eastern Sierra from diversions by Los Angeles.
Now, on the other side of the Great Basin, the plaintiffs in the Utah case argue that the state must take action to protect a shrinking Great Salt Lake — the largest saline lake in North America — that depends on inflows from water upstream. The case not only cites the state’s trust duty as it relates to the ecological protection of the lake, but also the threat a shrinking lake poses for the economy and public health. The state of Utah, the lawsuit argues, is uniquely positioned to ensure water makes it to the lake.
Here’s a good article about the lawsuit from The Salt Lake Tribune.
Hoping to write more about this. It’s going to be an important case to watch.
The L.A. Times reported on some pretty big news and a potentially unlikely alliance in efforts to decommission Glen Canyon Dam. Two California farmers, who operate large farms in the Imperial Valley (the single largest users of the Colorado River), told the U.S. government to consider the proposal long championed by environmentalists.
The Mississippi pipeline might be a pipe dream. But that doesn’t stop people from talking about it — or take proactive steps to stop it from happening, via the AP.
“It’s going to be really exciting once the dam removals are underway. The Tribe is really looking forward to seeing an ecological difference, improved water quality, and hopefully more water to increase salmon’s resilience to disease.” An interesting Q&A in the Public Policy Institute of California’s blog with an attorney for the Kurok Tribe.
California is looking to ban some water-guzzling decorative turf, via the L.A. Times.
More water projects on the Colorado? “As states negotiate future water cuts, some officials are looking to build new dams and reservoirs in the Upper Basin of the overallocated Colorado River to use more water.” InsideClimateNews has more.
The Department of Interior releases comment letters about how to mange the Colorado River in a drier and more arid future. Here’s a link… to a lot of reading.
California puts $300 million into groundwater infrastructure (Courthouse News)
One of the wilder stories I’ve covered in Nevada: A private blockchain technology company wants state lawmakers to effectively give it its own local government. It has the land but needs more water, and spends $35 million on faraway rights. The plan is withdrawn in 2021, but the water rights remain a subject of litigation in state district court. I wrote about what happened to those costly water rights, three years later.