To hear rocket scientist Robert “Wally” Spencer tell it, the answer to Westerners’ water problems might be right under their noses.
For four years, the Oregon engineer with the down-home demeanor has dimissed any talk of water scarcity as so much malarkey.
Using technology developed during his days designing space-shuttle boosters, Spencer said he discovered a giant river beneath Nevada that could fill Las Vegas’ cup and spill over into Los Angeles, too.
Why is it still untapped? Spencer initially refused to divulge the site of his subterranean stream unless Nevada officials agreed to pay him a finder’s fee of up to $3.5 million. Frustrated, he now is drilling for the water himself north of Las Vegas.
“The minute I prove it, it will be like a piranha feeding ground,” the 64-year-old Spencer said during one of his frequent visits to the Nevada desert in his plush motor home.
The modern-day prospector’s claims are a reminder that not all Westerners believe low-flow toilets are the answer to the region’s water crunch. His merely is the newest and most intriguing attempt to find that mythical fountain to drench the West’s worries.
At a recent Nevada “water summit,” Spencer’s proposal shared the stage with some of the outrageous water schemes titillating Westerners since they first laid eyes on the desert.
An Alaska official proposed towing icebergs in plastic bags down the Pacific Coast behind tanker ships. A gold miner said the solution lies in the mysterious water that floods his shafts in northern Nevada.
A businessman resurrected the notion of diverting the Columbia River along 1,000 miles of canals and wetlands from Oregon.
“I hear from Wally Spencer types all the time,” said Timothy Quinn, an official with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “They think big, but those of us with jobs on the line can’t afford to wait for that one big untapped source.”
Spencer said he did not set out to find water. He wanted to strike oil, and initially thought he did just that while exploring with satellite maps and a special radiation detector mounted on his pickup truck.
What he found instead, he said, is a river 50 percent larger than the mighty Colorado.
Despite impressive references from former colleagues at aerospace companies, Spencer is dismissed by many experts as a kook and compared to a water witch with a forked branch.
His pleas for help, all the way up to the White House, have gone unheeded.
Nevada officials say it’s possible the water he says he has detected is simply groundwater. Even if the river is there, they contend, it might prove too costly to tap and to transport the water to where it is needed.
“Our chief hydrologist says it defies the laws of physics,” said Patricia Mulroy, Las Vegas’ top water official.
“With the way the land has shifted over the centuries, (any underground river) would have been cut off its path.”
Nonetheless, Spencer, who now claims full rights to the water, hired a drilling outfit that began work in July.
“We’ve had guys who want to build pipelines into the clouds,” said Robert Swadell, a consultant to the Henderson Chamber of Commerce and Spencer’s biggest booster. “But if Wally’s river is real, all this other stuff doesn’t mean a thing.”
