Happy Friday, Nevadans!

The Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) starts today and will last through the weekend, so for those of us in Las Vegas, keep an eye out for heavier traffic on the I-15. And if you’re attending, stay safe out there!

Did you know Westgate Las Vegas is hosting a pop-up today where festivalgoers can access free naloxone, overdose education materials, plus snacks and water?

Westgate Resorts founder David Siegel and his wife, Jackie, founded Victoria’s Voice after losing their teenage daughter, Victoria, to a drug overdose in 2015. And now, Victoria’s Voice sets up shop at the Westgate ahead of EDC to help keep festival goers safe. 

In today’s newsletter:

Have a safe weekend!

King’s River Valley, Nevada, Sept. 2, 2022: Warning sign of a fence, restricting access to the Thacker Pass Project Lithium mine by the Lithium Nevada Corp. in the remote Nevada desert. (Gchapel/Shutterstock)

By Inside Climate News

In Nevada, ground zero for America’s lithium rush, Western Shoshone members, much like their Sioux counterparts, have maintained that they never ceded their ancestral land. The roughly 80 million acres stretches across multiple states in the West, encompassing the contentious Rhyolite Ridge and Thacker Pass lithium projects. Today, many of the state’s 69 proposed mines are sited in or near the tribe’s traditional territory. 

The Shoshone have sued the federal government over its land loss, arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court twice—first in 1984 and again in 2007. But the court dismissed the claims. The government classified money the tribe had accepted as compensation for past damages to the land as payment for the land itself, arguing the tribe had relinquished it, said Fermina Stevens, a Western Shoshone member who heads the Western Shoshone Defense Project, a nonprofit advocating for land and treaty rights.

Now, she said, tribal members fear they have little recourse to stop the adverse impacts from projects planned across their ancestral territory.

Joe Kennedy, Timbisha Shoshone tribe’s former chairman, has spent his life exploring the terrain where construction for the Rhyolite Ridge mine is scheduled to begin later this year. The 58-year-old, who has hunted and gathered pine nuts here since he was a child, has seen dramatic changes. Now, he says, much of what was once there is gone, as drought intensifies and mining companies drill in the region. 

🟣 Professional Women’s Hockey League expands to Las Vegas with 2026-27 season debut. KTNV

“‘This is a hockey city,’ Jamie Hersch, a broadcaster for the PWHL and VGK, said during opening remarks. The PWHL said the team will play its home games at T-Mobile Arena and will train at America First Center in Henderson … The official team colors are also a nod to the ‘natural tones’ of Southern Nevada: green and gold.”

🟣 Northern Nevada police to use facial recognition to fight shoplifting. Does it go too far? The Nevada Independent

“The software, Dataworks Plus Facial Recognition, will be used by a handful of crime analysts to compare video or photos from crime scenes against local police databases. According to its proposal, Sparks police aims to see at least a 10 percent decrease in calls related to retail theft by August with use of the software, which was purchased with a nearly $19,000 grant from the state.”

🟣 Researchers try to understand microplastics in Lake Tahoe. KUNR

“Ongoing research in collaboration with the Desert Research Institute (DRI) and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) might reveal how much microplastics are polluting the once pristine lake … In collaboration with ECO-CLEAN Solutions, Keep Tahoe Blue also uses a cleaning robot called BEBOT. It’s able to remove plastic trapped under the sand and not picked up by volunteers.”

🟣 Las Vegas Arts District: An Antidote to the Glitz. The New York Times

“Historically, the area has had few residents, said [Izaac Zevalking of Recycled Propaganda], largely because it didn’t have much real housing. But that’s quickly changing. This spring more than 600 apartments are opening in two new high-end residential properties.“

Thanks for reading. This newsletter was written by Jannelle Calderón with a story from Inside Climate News. It was edited by Paula Solis.

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