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Piping Water From Rural Counties To Fuel Growth In Las Vegas, Nevada: Water Transfer Risks In The Arid Usa West, Lisa Welsh, Joanna Endter-Wada

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

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 …