Dry irrigation ditch

Thanks! It was part of a proposed agricultural development that was halted when the groundwater overdrafts were curtailed:
www.fws.gov/refuge/Ash_Meadows/History_of_Ash_Meadows.html
Don Barrett has a landscape pic of the general area:
www.ipernity.com/doc/donbrr/21212573/in/group/394757

Isn't Clark county still working at getting water from the Amargosa valley? Wouldn't that affect the area?

I don't know for sure, but I expect Amargosa Valley is off limits because the drainage basin is partly in California--and that makes the politics _much_ more difficult. It pretty much takes an act of Congress to move water across state lines at this point! Vegas's proposed water grabs, AFAIK, are directed toward valleys wholly within Nevada. A few years back Reno was trying to get water from the Honey Lake basin, from the end that pokes into Nevada northwest of Pyramid Lake, and the project was squelched (for now, anyway) because subsurface water would flow in from California. (I had a class on environmental geology do a project on this in the late 90s.)

Thankfully water doesn't follow state lines very well. California's early history on this isn't good, but at least now its a force to be reckoned with on these things. Unfortunately, the efforts to draw down Spring Valley in Lincoln County, don't get that protection.

John W. Powell (the Colorado River explorer, and one of the founding fathers of the USGS) said that state lines in the mountain West should be drawn along watershed boundaries. He said something to the effect of, "You can make work for surveyors, or you can make work for lawyers." Well, of course Congress made work for lawyers. This is America, after all! ;)

Thanks, Les!

Exceptional capture!

Admired in:
www.ipernity.com/group/tolerance