On May 23 Southern Nevada Water Authority asked to have hearings on their applications to import more than 16 billion gallons of water annually from the Snake Valley in North Eastern Nevada. At SNWA's request the hearings were scheduled in record time. The gavel goes down on July 15. The quick start date for the hearings makes it challenging for those with an interest in the applications to make sure they are heard.

Snake Valley

Nevada's Snake Valley stretches into Utah, making the applications of interest to those in the water challenged areas of both states. The basin also is home to Great Basin National Park, Nevada's only National Park.

"We know there are a lot of very vocal people who live in Snake Valley. We've seen that in the other hearings," Kay Brothers, deputy general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority told the Las Vegas Review Journal. The article in the Review Journal lays out a schedule where the hearings will be started in July and then continued to next year.

One is certainly left to wonder if this quick hearing call isn't designed to stack the deck in favor of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The tight timeline makes it difficult for many public bodies to even meet and decide to take action before paperwork must be filed with the state engineer.

If you're headed to the CALI conference on law school computing this summer be sure to check out Drupalfest. At Drupalfest a group of law school Drupalers will be taking the group through a one-day intensive Drupal setup and configuration. We'll start with a thumb-drive with the necessary applications pre-installed and leave with each person having a functioning student-organizations website.

So if you're headed to Baltimore and have always wanted to know more about this whole Drupal thing be sure to sign up and join us.

Nary a day passes without some prognostication by our local realtor bloggers saying everything has turned around and the market is headed back up. What is most surprising about these is not that there are sales people who believe that they can still sell snake-oil but that there are sales people who haven't taken the time to understand that 2008 is not 2006 or 1989. Consumers are better informed and have access to more information than at any point in the past.

What is most surprising is that some of the very same folks who are trying to high-pressure customers into buying now are doing so online. In the very same environment that gives consumers access to the actual information about what is going on. Real estate sales people can say "the market is turning" till they are blue in their faces but we'll still know that the rate of foreclosures is increasing. We'll still see the new house each week that is bank owned on our streets.