Rob Mrowka near Mount Wilson
Rob Mrowka was born in Buffalo, New York, but he has worked for decades on issues of natural resources in the West and Southwest. After five years with the Air Force, he got a master’s in forest ecology from Washington State University, then spent 28 years with the U.S. Forest Service, including five years as supervisor of the Fishlake National Forest in Utah. Mrowka then worked for five years as an environmental planning manager for Clark County, and for the last six years as a conservation advocate and senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting endangered species and natural habitats through legal action, scientific work and grassroots activism. Mrowka recently announced plans to retire to upstate New York. We asked him a few questions.
What is your takeaway from more than a decade working in Las Vegas and many more years working on natural resource issues?
I’ve worked 38 years in the field of natural resource science in federal and county government, as well as with a private nonprofit, and from coast to coast, so I’ve been fortunate to accumulate a fairly broad perspective of how things work, warts and all. My Vegas experiences have shown me that growth does not pay for growth, politicians are generally gutless and unwilling to address critical, long-term issues, and water flows uphill to money.
How has the discussion and debate over natural resources evolved over time?
Over my tenure in Southern Nevada, environmental issues have generally shifted from the impacts on the natural environment from sprawl and rampant growth to the even larger question of how a human community can survive and be sustainable in the driest desert in North America, with an emphasis on the issues of water and renewable energy. There has been a profound shift in that time. Local governments once wanted broad, grassroots solutions. Today, government often turns to the growth and development complex, developers and other profit-motivated actors, for public-policy direction.
What lies ahead for Southern Nevada?
The impacts from climate change loom large for Southern Nevada, and unless our elected officials take heed and apply even a basic understanding of biology, the community will ultimately face collapse. There is such a thing as carrying capacity and limits to growth. Las Vegas is only possible with the addition of huge and extremely expensive human subsidies — where would we be without widespread air-conditioning? We are already experiencing the increasing heat and drought that is the new normal. The real problem is the failure of elected officials across the board to engage the community in a discussion of the impending doom. It is dereliction of duty and a failure of their roles as community leaders. Despite the myths to the contrary from local officials, water should, and ultimately will, limit growth. A Southern Nevada Water Authority proposal to build a $16 billion, 250-mile pipeline, bankrupting the community to bring limited water from ancient aquifers to fuel growth in Las Vegas, is not an intelligent answer. Growth management and living within the current development footprint, increased conservation indoor as well as outdoor, and long-term planning to bring desalinated water to the valley are the only hopes. Larger and finer civilizations have failed and disappeared when faced with choosing between personal greed and community good. We’re facing the same sort of existential crisis.