WELC Victories - the Power of the Rule of Law!

Protecting citizens' rights in Nevada and forcing a federal agency
to account for climate change in New Mexico

The beauty of the approach of Western Environmental Law Center's legal advocacy is that it levels the playing field and gives western residents the opportunity to challenge powerful vested interests. Two recent WELC victories on critical issues in the West - water use and climate change - illustrate our success.

On January 28 the Nevada Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision holding unlawful the Nevada State Engineer's decision to delay hearings for 16 years and to deny impacted citizen's the right to be heard on the Southern Nevada Water Authority's 1989 applications to pump and pipe approximately 190,000 acre feet of water a year from rural Nevada to the City of Las Vegas.

WELC went to court to defend rural Nevada residents, ranchers, farmers, and conservation groups and to protect our western resources from the power play of one of the most powerful actors in the state - the agency charged with satisfying the unquenchable thirst of Las Vegas. 

The Court's ruling gives all residents who would be impacted by this water grab a chance to defend their water rights, their way of life, and for many species such as the water-dependent fish and wildlife of the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge and Great Basin National Park, the very lifeblood of their existence.  Learn more.

On February 9 a Federal Judge in New Mexico rejected an attempt by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to quiet the conservation community's voice on climate change. The Court rejected BLM's attempt to dismiss our pioneering lawsuit that seeks to safeguard the climate by requiring BLM to account for the climate change impacts of its oil and gas leasing decisions.

In particular, our lawsuit seeks to compel BLM to evaluate and require oil and gas companies to use cost-effective, proven technologies and practices that keep methane - a potent greenhouse gas at least 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide - out of the atmosphere and in the pipelines. Read the press release.

We now look forward to presenting our case that BLM's oil and gas leasing decisions have ignored and rejected common-sense climate and energy solutions.  Stay tuned. 

Photos: Great Basin National Park, National Park Service.  New Mexico landscape, Mike Redroncelli.

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