From Las Vegas Review Journal;

"CAVERS & CRITTERS: New cave species have been identified at Great Basin National Park -- Discovery sharpens worries about plans to pump water from Snake Valley (LVRJ)"

written by HENRY BREAN

"The mouth of Model Cave slopes downward into the fractured limestone face of Nevada's second tallest mountain range.

To get inside, Gretchen Baker and Ben Roberts must slither headfirst through an angled chute that forces their left shoulders down into powdery dust. Their coveralls scrape across the rock as their headlamps light the way into the blackness.

It's the first day of fall at Great Basin National Park, and the changing aspens have painted the flanks of Wheeler Peak with veins of yellow and orange and red.

The change of seasons goes mostly unnoticed underground, as two of the park service's resident cave explorers cover about 500 feet in 90 minutes, much of it through tight passages that require them to crawl or scoot along on their bellies.

The purpose of today's trip is to check conditions in the cave and retrieve small devices called dataloggers, which record temperature and moisture levels.

While they're at it, Baker and Roberts discover what might just be a new species of cave critter no one has ever seen before.

It isn't the first time, either.

In the past two years alone, staff members have identified at least seven possible new cave species at Nevada's only national park, about 300 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

So far only two of the tiny animals have been officially described and given scientific names, but Baker and Roberts expect at least one more of their discoveries to become official this year with the publication of a scientific paper on the critter.

Several others are either in the process of being described or are awaiting the collection of additional specimens.

"Every trip you go in you can find something new, which is one of the really interesting things about caving," says Roberts, who is the park's natural resource program manager.

Recent finds include two varieties of tiny shrimp and two new kinds of all-white cave millipedes.

One of the millipedes was discovered in the unlikeliest of places: crawling its way across a concrete walkway frequented by tourists at the park's most-visited attraction, Lehman Caves.

This literal unearthing of new critters at Great Basin could do more than thrill entomologists and amateur bug enthusiasts. It could sharpen anxiety about the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plans to pump billions of gallons of groundwater a year from Snake Valley, just east of the park.

At the very least, the flurry of discoveries provides opponents with one more argument against a project already painted by its critics as a threat to rural residents, native plants and air quality from Ely to Salt Lake City.

Great Basin Superintendent Andy Ferguson voiced some of his concerns during the authority's Aug. 20 meeting on the controversial pipeline.

"I wanted the Southern Nevada Water Authority to be aware that Great Basin National Park is a national treasure, and anything that would impact on this national treasure is something that's going to be felt throughout the country," Ferguson said.

"I'd like them to know that we're extremely concerned -- very concerned -- and we just don't believe that the taking of water out of this little valley will be a good thing for the park."

Snake Valley represents the final leg of the multibillion-dollar pipeline the authority plans to build to tap groundwater across eastern Nevada.

The authority is seeking state permission to pump as much as 16 billion gallons of water a year from the vast and sparsely populated watershed on the Nevada-Utah border.

The valley is home to many of the authority's harshest critics, including ranch families who have lived in the area for generations.

Baker married into one of those families. Her father-in-law is Dean Baker, a longtime Snake Valley rancher who has become the de facto spokesman for pipeline opponents.

For their part, though, Gretchen Baker and other staff members at Great Basin National Park are trying to let science do the talking when it comes to the groundwater project.

The park service is in the process of drilling four monitoring wells just outside the park boundary as part of a research project funded through the sale of federal land in the Las Vegas Valley.

Three more monitoring wells will be drilled inside the park as soon as an environmental review of the work wraps up in the spring, Ferguson said.

In the meantime, Baker, Roberts and their colleagues are drawing up maps, collecting samples and monitoring seasonal changes in the caves in hopes of developing a baseline that can be used to identify any impacts from the groundwater project.

One senior environmental planner for the Southern Nevada Water Authority insists there shouldn't be any impacts.

Lisa Luptowitz said the authority's proposed wells would operate a few thousand feet below and a "substantial distance" away from the caves and their water sources.

As Luptowitz put it, there is a "hydrologic disconnect" between the caves and the areas where the authority eventually plans to drill its production wells.

She added that potential impacts to the caves will be addressed in detail in a federal environmental review of the pipeline project. A draft of that document is scheduled for release in the spring.

Great Basin staff members aren't just discovering new critters; they're finding whole new caves in and around the park.

The total right now stands at 42, including the longest, deepest and highest elevation caves in Nevada.

Baker, who is the park's ecologist, said the caves come in "a whole range of sizes," from ones you can walk through to ones only large enough for "belly crawling."

And then there are some that are "all vertical so you only can go up and down on rope to see the cave," she said.

The deepest cave in Nevada, appropriately named Long Cold, has "permanent ice in the bottom of it year round," Roberts said.

He suspects more caves might be hidden away within the park's 77,000 acres of steep mountain terrain. There might even be one out there as large and intricate as Lehman, which boasts more than 300 rare shield formations.

Lehman is the only cave that is open for guided tours by the general public.

The park service issues permits to experienced spelunkers for a handful of the other caves, but most of Great Basin's caverns are strictly off-limits. A few of them are so dangerous that even park personnel are not allowed inside.

Model Cave is one of the park's most diverse in terms of biology and hydrology. Snowmelt completely floods portions of it during the summer, but there is evidence that the cave also gets moisture from the groundwater table and nearby Baker Creek.

"This cave's been known for fifty years, and yet we're still finding brand new species out of it," Roberts said.

In November, for example, Baker, Roberts and another staff member took a survey trip 2,000 feet into the deepest reaches of Model, and on the way back out Roberts spotted something in a puddle. Drifting in the 55-degree water were tiny white objects that turned out to be freshwater shrimp.

He saw them but they did not see him; the shrimp have no eyes.

Baker said they put a few of the critters in a vial and sent them off to a specialist at the University of Illinois.

"He said, 'Oh, you guys have found something new. Go get more,'" Baker said. "It took several months and many trips to get enough of the adults to send to him."

In the process, they stumbled across another type of shrimp they'd never seen before, something called an ostracod.

As it turns out, finding tiny new species in a pitch-black cave isn't always the hard part. Locating an expert to confirm a discovery can be just as much of a shot in the dark.

"There aren't many people who describe these species. That's one of our biggest problems," Baker said. "There is one person who would describe the ostracods if we can find enough. He did his Ph.D. dissertation on the ostracods of Nevada and then he went back home to Turkey."

To analyze specimens of other possible new species, the park has turned to taxonomists in Brazil and the Czech Republic.

"A lot times there's only one or two people in the entire world who are the experts at these things," Roberts said.

His favorite critter is the Model Cave Harvestman, a spindly, pale-orange spider first identified and described in 1971.

Baker is partial to the Campodeid Dipluran, a primitive-looking insect about half an inch long and all white, with long antennae and tails. She doesn't know whether the bugs are unique to the park because she can't find a qualified specialist who can tell her.

"There's nobody currently describing them, so they go in the deep freezer," Baker said with a sigh.

The first day of fall yields one possible new discovery in Model Cave: a silvery beetle about the length of an eyelash.

Roberts spots it in a small pile of organic debris about 250 feet from the cave entrance, and Baker collects it in a small vial filled with ethyl alcohol.

First, though, Roberts lets it crawl around on his hand so Baker can snap its picture. The beetle scuttles so fast it's hard to photograph.

Such rapid movement suggests it could be a surface dweller that found its way into the cavern somehow. Most cave critters move slowly due to the cold and their own sluggish metabolisms, which help them survive on what meager nutrients they can find in the dark.

The beetle will need to be sent off to Illinois for positive identification, but the two smiling cave explorers say they have never seen anything like it before."

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.

"

entire article found @;
http://www.lvrj.com/news/new-cave-species-have-been-identified-at-great-basin-national-park.html

additional info @;
http://www.greatbasinwater.net/



Brief Comment on article;

Need to specifically comment on these paragraphs from above article;

"Lisa Luptowitz said the authority's proposed wells would operate a few thousand feet below and a "substantial distance" away from the caves and their water sources.

As Luptowitz put it, there is a "hydrologic disconnect" between the caves and the areas where the authority eventually plans to drill its production wells.

She added that potential impacts to the caves will be addressed in detail in a federal environmental review of the pipeline project. A draft of that document is scheduled for release in the spring."


Response;

There is no "hydrological disconnect" in a carbonate aquifer system located in the same valley. Unless Ms. Luptowitz is a shapeshifter and has herself been traveling underground in the manner of the cave millipede, she cannot make this sort of a claim with 100% accuracy.

The carbonate aquifer system is constantly making new caves and chemically carving away at the semi-marble limestone walls with carbonic acid (groundwater + CO2), and this process links the Pole Canyon limestone with deeper deposits far below the Lehman Caves region located further east and under the gravel overburden of the Snake Valley. Groundwater moves downwards from Lehman Caves east into the Snake Valley, it is the same Pole Canyon limestone material found in both locations. Through small fractures the carbonic acid water travels, further enlarging the crevices and eventually forming new caves.

Removal of water from the lower part of the limestone aquifer system can indeed effect the process of cave formation and allow air pockets to form, which would result in collapse of the aquifer ceiling since air cannot provide the same support as water. It is essential that the aquifer caves remain filled with water, any excess water will emerge at spring and seep sites on the surface where an entirely different sort of ecosystem (wetlands, spring snails, Bonneville trout, etc...) depends on this water source.

For the moment am "chomping at the bits" awaiting the release of SNWA's EIR so that all the predictable errors, omissions and mistakes can be exposed to the public. It is comical yet sad and frustrating when scientists working for SNWA attempt to twist science around to suit the needs of their employers. People in Las Vegas do not need any pipe dreams of a pipeline that will be unstable and most likely unusable after a few years when the aquifer water lowers and the caves dry up from excess withdrawal. Hello new cave species, goodbye new cave species! Sorry we couldn't get to know ya'll better, but Pipeline Pat needed your water for Whittemore's suburban sprawl!

What SNWA Director "Pipeline Pat" Mulroy needs to do is get to work on improving water conservation (native plants for landscaping, recycling water, etc...) and rainwater harvesting & filtration methods for Las Vegas instead of promising developers like Harvey Whittemore (see; Coyote Springs) a hook up to the pipeline that just so coincidentally happens to pass directly by his Coyote Springs suburban sprawl development in the middle of the desert. It was Whittemore who originally supplied large amounts of cash to SNWA for their pipeline start-up program.

In addition, Sen. Harry Reid's son is working together with Whittemore for more suburban sprawl development projects, and this reflects in Reid's support for the SNWA pipeline. For many other serious issues like (almost?) stopping Yucca MT.'s nuclear waste repository, Reid has taken the correct side in support of the ecosystem, yet with this pipeline issue family ties and funding from developer lobyyists is making Reid blind as a cave critter to reality of potential ecological catastrophe if this pipeline goes through. We expect this sort of pro-developer corruption from Republicans, though Democrats claim to be the "opposition party" that protects the environment. Maybe only when there is no lobbyist's money riding on it!

background on "lesser evil" Harry Reid from Audobon Magazine;

"Aerojet’s plan collapsed. But now Coyote Springs, its tortoises, and its groundwater are in the crosshairs of both Las Vegas’s water grab and its sprawl. Casino lobbyist and developer Harvey Whittemore, who since 2000 has contributed at least $45,000 to Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and who employs one of Reid’s sons as his personal lawyer, bought 43,000 acres of Aerojet’s property for $25 million. He then sold part of the water rights to the SNWA for $25 million. Now he’s developing Coyote Springs into a 159,000-home community with 16 golf courses. Another Reid son sits on the SNWA’s board.

Senator Reid is the chief architect of a series of land bills that have required the BLM to sell off vast tracts of public land to facilitate Sin City’s uncontrolled growth and groundwater project. In January 2006 the SNWA redesigned the project so Whittemore could tap into its pipeline for his development. A provision in one of Reid’s land bills moves a power-line right-of-way off the site."

entire article found @;
http://audubonmagazine.org/features0703/incite.html

Conclusion;

The only "growing" Las Vegas needs to do is growing more drought tolerant native desert plants for landscaping that do not require any extra irrigation other than the summer thundershowers. Traffic, sprawl and home foreclosures in Vegas will not be made better by enabling developers to push further out into the desert with the false promises made by "Pipeline Pat" Mulroy. If anything this proposed population growth depending on an easily drawn down distant aquifer would set the entire city's population up for a crisis once a really long drought takes hold. The inner city core of Las Vegas would then be strapped for even drinking water because the surrounding suburbs were built on Pipeline Pat Mulroy's pipe dream of pipelines, in reality nothing less than a nightmare for Nevada!!

The Oct 12 issue of High Country News features the Snake Valley spring snails, and the risks posed by SNWA's pipeline;

Editor's Note

"Suck this, Vegas!

It's time to change the way we think about water in the West."

Op-Ed - From the October 12, 2009 issue of High Country News

by Jonathan Thompson

"If you've ever driven across Nevada, you might be tempted to shrug off fears about Las Vegas' plans to siphon the groundwater from under the east-central part of the state. From Highway 50, "the loneliest road," that basin-and-range country can seem pretty bleak, hardly worth stopping in, let alone saving.

In this issue's cover story, however, Madeleine Nash shows us what is truly at stake -- thriving aquatic communities nestled in little oases scattered across the emptiness.

Nash approaches the subject of the Las Vegas water play cautiously; it's too early to know for sure how the plan to pump billions of gallons of water out of the Great Basin's aquifers will affect the creatures that depend on them. Studies that are under way will give us more insight into the effects, but it could be a year or more before any conclusive results are available.

But do we really have time to wait?

This is a crucial time for the West and its water. The notion that we can meet the needs of growing populations simply by shuffling water around like playing cards is outdated. Most of the cards have been snatched up and some are disappearing altogether, thanks to climate change.

This is also a time of opportunity. The fastest-growing, thirstiest cities in the West are either in decline or stagnant. Accurate counts are elusive, but various indicators, such as school enrollment, show that the populations of both Las Vegas and Phoenix are either holding steady or dropping for the first time in decades.

With rampant sprawl no longer a given, we have time to pause and consider this: What if the Las Vegas pipeline -- and other projects like it -- are simply no longer necessary nor feasible, either financially or ecologically? What if we use this economically induced moment of contemplation to extract ourselves from the paradigm of growth for the sake of growth, and instead implement some sensible land- and water-use policies?

Unfortunately, we seem to remain stuck in the past. One of the biggest barriers to the Vegas project is Utah -- the aquifers in question inconveniently slip under Nevada's border into that state, and Utahns are understandably reluctant to lose their water to the fountains and hotel rooms of Sin City. Now, it turns out, Utah may surrender. Why? Because by doing so it would potentially remove Nevada's resistance to Utah's own water-sucking, in the form of a pipeline that would divert water from Lake Powell, pump it up a grade, and send it down to St. George, Utah (which, ironically, is just a stone's throw from Vegas).

Instead of valuing water as the non-renewable resource that it is, Utah and Nevada are still throwing it around like penny-chips in a casino. Like the compulsive gamblers who eat breakfast in windowless buffets along the Strip at 2 a.m., they remain completely oblivious to reality. The losers will be the tiny creatures in the springs of the Great Basin. And us."

editor's note found @;
http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.17/suck-this-vegas




Here's the feature article;

"Silenced Springs?
Great Basin waters face threats big and small."

Feature story - From the October 12, 2009 issue of High Country News

by J. Madeleine Nash

"In his right hand, Don Sada clutches a simple kitchen sieve; in his left, he holds a Tupperware container. As I look on, the 58-year-old ecologist from Reno's Desert Research Institute plunges into a thick stand of watercress that obscures the headwaters of Big Springs Creek, an exuberant stream that issues from multiple springs at the southern end of Snake Valley, along the flanks of the Snake Range in east-central Nevada. "Let's see what's here," he says, stooping to part the watercress and drag his sieve through the stream's pebble-strewn bottom. "I've got springsnails," he shouts.

Peering into the container, I see about a dozen dots that appear as animate as baby peppercorns. The dots are snails, so small that the whorls that mark their shells are all but invisible. These diminutive gill-breathers belong to a species -- Pyrgulopsis anguina -- found near the source of just three springs, all of them in Snake Valley.

The snails are part of an ancient assemblage of aquatic organisms found here and in other Great Basin valleys. Fifteen thousand years ago, agile minnows now confined to spring-fed pools and streams swam through the shallows of great lakes and rivers. Springsnails, and the type of habitat they occupy, may have existed here for some 5 to 6 million years, ever since the end of the Miocene, the geological epoch during which Nevada's corrugated basin-and-range began to form. But now many of these little spring dwellers are in trouble, due largely to us, the brash newcomers who, barely two centuries ago, began pushing into the territory west of the 100th meridian."

entire feature article found @;
http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.17/silenced-springs