… Flanked by the Wassuk Range, Walker Lake is stunning, shrinking — and very near dead. It is fed more in theory than reality by the Walker River, which winds from the Sierra Nevada east through some of the state’s increasingly corporate farming communities. Thanks to more than a century of over-appropriation and ever-increasing demand, the damaged river exhausts itself in what’s been described as “an ooze of mud” as it seeps into a terminal lake whose waterline has dropped more than 150 feet in little more than a century. … I’m on the side of those who believe there must be a way to balance the interests of a greater good with expanded farming and long neglect.
–Written by Nevada Independent columnist John L. Smith.