The Stewards of a Broken Climate — UNLV

SECTION: RESEARCH

The Stewards of a Broken Climate — UNLV Magazine

Confronted in our desert backyard by the inescapable effects of a deteriorating environment, these UNLV researchers, professors, and activists are fighting to mitigate the effects of climate change on scientific, legal, and sociological fronts.

When UNLV research professor and climate resilience specialist Kristen Averyt recalls the summer family vacations of her youth spent water skiing on Lake Mead, you can almost feel the spray cooling the desert breeze.

Much has changed since those not-so-distant days. When family members returned to the lake last year, the water line had receded so far that they couldn’t launch their boat.

The vast reservoir created with the completion of Hoover Dam became a symbol of the modern West; a tamed Colorado River bestowing abundant water and endless potential.

Now, devastated by the worst drought in 12 centuries, Lake Mead’s “bathtub ring” marks a previously robust water line, and has come to illustrate a West imperiled by climate change.

In June 2021, Lake Mead registered its lowest water level since the reservoir’s inception in the 1930s, and in August the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation issued a water shortage declaration for the river. The designation triggers cuts to annual water allocations in the system beginning in 2022. That translates into an approximately 7 billion gallon cut from Southern Nevada’s annual 300,000-acre feet.

By March of this year, water levels had declined more than 164 feet and were expected to drop another 30-plus feet by 2024. Power generation for Hoover Dam, which provides electricity for 20 million people, is in peril.

Severely stressed by thinning snow packs in the Rocky Mountains and decreased runoff in the Colorado River Basin, coupled with dramatic increases in use, the crisis on the Colorado is reflected in staggering declines in Mead and Lake Powell. In total, the river storage system, which provides water to more than 40 million people, is at a third of capacity.

The 20-year “megadrought,” as it’s being called, shows little sign of abating as average temperatures continue to rise, dramatic weather events are more frequent. In Nevada, already the driest state, the effects are extreme with 100 percent of the state under severe conditions and more than 43 percent under an extreme or exceptional designation, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. So far in 2022, the state is on course to suffer its driest 12 months in the past 128 years.

What the Tragedy In Las Vegas Says About Who America Should Fear — TIME Magazine

IDEAS

BY JOHN L. SMITH

OCTOBER 12, 2017 3:40 PM EDT

Smith is journalist based in Las Vegas.

If you’re looking for a little high-caliber action in Las Vegas, baby, you won’t have to travel far from the Strip to find it.

Locked and loaded, the scantily-clad shooting-range amazon stares down from an outdoor billboard while fondling an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle, or something even longer and harder. Careful, big boy, it’s only an advertisement.

As it has with so many American vices and obsessions, Las Vegas years ago found a way to profit off America’s gun fascination by marketing indoor shooting ranges to tourists like so many Second Amendment porno shops and using gun shows to help fill its vast casino-resort convention halls. They’re popular not only with gun enthusiasts, but also with the curious Peeping Tom types visiting from nations not awash in weaponry, gun violence, and senseless gore.

I don’t expect they’ll be padlocked, or even lose much business, in the wake of the slaughter at a Strip country music concert. Las Vegas has at least temporarily become synonymous with record gun violence, but those who want to view it as something other than the house-of-mirrors reflection of modern America are kidding themselves.

No city gets the Puritan scold’s finger as often as Las Vegas, and perhaps none deserves it more, but to reduce retired CPA Stephen Paddock’s grisly assault on innocent people to a green-felt morality play does a disservice to the murdered and maimed and misses a more nuanced story. Beneath its audacious marketing, Las Vegas is an entertainment factory town, and today it weeps and mourns. Although like modern America itself the motto here should be “Whatever the traffic will bear,” for more than 40 million visitors a year it produces a lot of good times.

Our nation’s nihilistic gun obsession and Las Vegas’ own image as the Western World’s hedonistic messaging places large logistical challenges in a place that relies so heavily on big crowds and the feel of footloose freedom. Local police and fire departments prepare endlessly for large-scale terrorist attacks and mass-casualty incidents.

The White Whale — Nevada Public Radio

Desert Companion

By John L. Smith

Published October 26, 2016 at 7:12 PM PDT

The law has pursued sports bettor Billy Walters for more than 25 years. Is the gambler’s uncanny luck about to run out?

IN HIS DARK SLACKS and a red golf shirt, Billy Walters looked like he might have just finished a round at his flashy Bali Hai course on the south Strip. But he wasn’t strolling toward the clubhouse on May 19. He was seated, under arrest, amid a row of less impeccably dressed defendants, all waiting their turn to hear their charges read in U.S. Magistrate Judge George Foley Jr.’s packed courtroom. The confidence and color drained from his face, his white hair disheveled, Walters appeared to have taken a punch in the stomach. It was a pain in the gut he’d felt before.

Walters appeared almost lost as his friend and longtime defense attorney Richard Wright stood nearby. Walters couldn’t be blamed for feeling a sense of déjà vu, as he had faced plenty of previous charges in his life. But those had all stemmed from his uncanny success as a professional sports bettor, and he had beaten every one of them while gleefully embarrassing his enemies in the process.

This time, it’s different. Walters is accused of cheating in America’s biggest league of gambling — Wall Street. In a case brought by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Walters is charged with insider trading violations in connection with the alleged manipulation of stock in Dallas-based Dean Foods. Also charged is Dean Foods board member Thomas C. Davis, who pleaded guilty to 12 felonies and has agreed to cooperate with federal authorities.

Charges against Walters include securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud. He faces the prospect of millions in forfeiture and seized assets, and has also been hit with civil sanctions by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In June, Walters pleaded not guilty to the 10 felony counts against him. Golfer Phil Mickelson, a high-profile inside player in the alleged scheme, escaped indictment in the criminal case, but was fined more than $1 million by the SEC based on ill-gotten profits he made trading on stock after receiving insider tips from Walters. One of the world’s greatest golfers, Mickelson became heavily indebted to Walters in the scheme, according to authorities.

Wright, who walked into the Lloyd D. George U.S. Courthouse that spring 2016 afternoon with a $100,000 check to free Walters from custody, listened as Magistrate Foley explained the process. In a matter of legal formality, Walters gained an expedited release from custody and left the courthouse through a side gate — away from public scrutiny — within a few hours.

“Those who know me best know that it is preposterous to think that I would involve myself in insider trading,” Walters told the press the previous year when the criminal allegations first surfaced. But those who have followed his career know he has made millions of dollars with incredibly accurate information while rising in stature as an uncommonly prescient political insider. Local professional gamblers speak with affection and admiration about Walters’ relentless pursuit of the “best of it” — that is, the smart bettor’s inside edge that comes from information, insight and experience. But when it comes to Wall Street, an inside edge can come dangerously close to insider trading.

Local and federal law enforcement agents were also in court that day. Some were merely curious, while others had been examining Walters’ proximity to lucrative business deals with local government officials. Some had participated in his arrest at the fusion-fare Cili restaurant he owns at Bail Hai, known for its power lunches and “discreet wait staff.” In their world, Walters’ uncanny success in gambling and business was similar to the story arc of now-fallen powerhouse lobbyist Harvey Whittemore, who was convicted in 2014 on federal campaign contribution violations, but was suspected of facilitating much deeper corruption.