Las Vegas water grab sounds a lot like L.A.’s

I have been following the Review-Journal’s articles about the taking of rural Nevada’s water supplies by the Southern Nevada Water Authority. I am a former resident of Bishop, Calif., in the Owens Valley.

The Owens Valley at the turn of the 20th century was a verdant valley full of orchards, truck farms and cattle ranches. At that time, Los Angeles was starting to grow. It hired William Mulholland to find new water sources for them. He went to the Owens Valley and tried to buy up the land to pump the water. The farmers and ranchers resisted until he offered exorbitant prices for the land. Some of the landowners saw the dollar signs and sold.

Then Mr. Mulholland built the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1923 and started pumping the wells and diverting the runoff from the eastern Sierra to deliver to L.A. Soon the other landowners’ wells started going dry because the water table dropped. They went to Mr. Mulholland and asked him if he still wanted to buy their land, because no water meant no livelihood. He then stole their land for 10 cents on the dollar. The rest is history.

The Owens Valley is now a desert, and to this day Mr. Mulholland and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are pariahs in the Owens Valley.

Think this can’t happen to rural Nevada? Just remember what L.A. and William Mulholland did to the Owens Valley. Politicians will promise otherwise, but just remember that politicians come and go, but the land stays forever.

Kenneth Griffin

Mohave Valley, Ariz.

Job numbers

To the editors:

A new report claims that monthly rent payments remain out of reach for minimum wage workers in Nevada ("Rent here? Who can afford it?," Thursday Review-Journal). This is misleading.

New research out of the University of Nevada, Reno shows that very few minimum wage earners are the primary or sole breadwinner in their households. For instance, the vast majority of adult minimum wage earners with children have a spouse who also works and earns far more than the minimum — 63 percent of these spouses make more than $30,000 a year, with nearly half earning more than $40,000 a year.

Very few adult minimum wage earners lack other sources of income (and those who do have access to government benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit).

Paradoxically, raising the minimum wage in an attempt to help this small subset of workers can actually harm them. Decades of economic research show that artificially raising the cost to hire and train these employees may force employers to replace their job with an automated, self-service alternative.

Michael Saltsman

Washington, D.C.

The writer is a research fellow at the Employment Policies Institute.

Bad beat

To the editor:

The quivering coming out of Washington, D.C., is once again as amusing as a stage production in one of our fine resort theaters. Our elected officials cower behind their posh office desks, pondering: "Oh dear, what should I do, what should I do?"

Millions of American voters enjoy playing online poker yet, once again, the Obama administration is attacking that activity, the very essence of Las Vegas. The decision to support President Obama or Las Vegas is in the balance.

Recent developments suggest that Las Vegas is again set up to be the loser. Although President Obama has not specifically suggested (again) that Americans stay away from Las Vegas, his henchmen have taken a more subtle approach by chastising a traditional Las Vegas activity. So because Las Vegans once again stand to lose revenue, we will sink lower into the Obama economic sinkhole.

In the meantime, Nevada’s congressional delegation is shivering in their Nevada taxpayer-supplied shorts.

Suggestion: Support Nevada or get out!

Jim Andreas

Las Vegas

Green folly

To the editor:

Solar panels sound so warm and fuzzy, but people should consider the most important thing: the cost.

The panels are too expensive to buy, install and maintain. They can’t compete with the current cost of power. They also lose efficiency from dust. (Good thing Las Vegas isn’t dusty.) They also have a life span and need to be replaced down the road.

Wind power sounds good, too — until you read about the case of the turbines on the East Coast that are so noisy that they shut them off when the wind reaches 23 mph.

What if there’s no wind on a July day in Las Vegas?

Anyone who has driven past a coal-fired power plant knows it’s not an evil people killer. The same people who claim that secondhand smoke kills 50,000 people a year also claim we’ll pay the savings from coal-powered electricity in health care costs. That’s great, but who really believes it?

Finally, how many people in this country don’t pay any income tax (including me). That means we don’t have the money.

Our economy right now is so fragile that any additional expense for the average family is destructive.

RICHARD SANTA MARIA

LAS VEGAS