THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Thursday, March 12, 2020 |A
U.S. NEWS
attorney, Martin Weinberg.
Mr. Sidoo was one of 36
parents charged in connection
to the case, which was un-
veiled by federal authorities
last March.
He is the 22nd to plead
guilty or agree to do so.
All but one parent sentenced
in the case so far have receivedversed the decline. Since 2016,
Lake Mead has risen 25 feet to
1,096 feet as of Tuesday, leav-
ing it 44% full, its highest level
in six years.
“It’s great for the lake, great
for the fish and great for tour-
ism,” Josh Gannon, a worker at
the lake’s Las Vegas Boat Har-
bor, said on a recent after-
noon.
The turnaround may not
last long, though. Water man-
agers caution that measures
such as greater use of ground-
water will be needed when the
reservoir likely resumes its de-
cline in the coming decades
amid population growth and a
warming climate that is ex-
pected to shrivel snow packs.
“This gives us a little time
as we look ahead,” said Daniel
Bunk, deputy chief of the Bu-
reau of Reclamation office in
Boulder City, Nev.
One reason for the plunge in
use has been a massive conver-
sion of water-sucking turf
grass to drought-tolerant
lawns. In 2015, the Metropoli-
tan Water District of Southern
California doled out about$350 million in rebates for
conversion of water-intensive
turf grass to drought-tolerant
lawns—seven times what had
been budgeted.
“We think a lot of this is a
permanent transformation in
the way people use water,”
said Jeffrey Kightlinger, gen-
eral manager of the big Los
Angeles water wholesaler.
In Orange County, Calif., the
Irvine Ranch Water District
has been able to cut its per
capita drinking-water use by
nearly one-fifth since 2013 due
to conservation programs in-
cluding a water budget for
each customer. If they go sub-
stantially above it, they are as-
sessed rates in higher price
tiers, and the usage is labeled
on bills as “inefficient” or
“wasteful.” The district previ-
ously used the term “abusive,”
but changed it after com-
plaints.
“There’s being firm with
your customers, and then
there’s insulting,” said General
Manager Paul Cook.
Most of Nevada’s water is
now recycled, including fromsinks and showers. Much of
the recycled water is returned
to Lake Mead, where the
Southern Nevada Water Au-
thority has stockpiled enough
water to account for about 7
feet of the reservoir or more
than two years of its allotted
supply of 300,000 acre-feet a
year.
With most water used out-
doors, the agency focused on
reducing consumption on the
lawns and golf courses that
carpet the Las Vegas Valley,
which sits in a desert that re-
ceives only 4 inches of rain an-
nually.
Building codes were
amended to prohibit new turf
in the front yards of newhomes, while rebates were
paid to yank out nearly 200
million square feet of grass—
enough to cover 3,350 football
fields.
At the Red Rock Country
Club, crews replaced much of
the turf at two 18-hole golf
courses with desert landscap-
ing—leaving grass mainly
where golfers play, said Re-
gional General Manager Thom
Blinkinsop. He does regret the
decision to take grass out of a
driving range, though, saying
the hard desert soil is causing
problems like scuffed-up golf
balls.
“It’s more of a negative vi-
sual than it’s worth,” Mr.
Blinkinsop said.LAS VEGAS—The largest
reservoir in the Western U.S.,
Lake Mead, is rising again af-
ter more than a decade of de-
cline, and at least some credit
goes to the local National
Hockey League team.
“Reality check!” Ryan
Reaves, right wing for the Ve-
gas Golden Knights, yells as he
body-slams a man through a
plate-glass window for exces-
sive lawn watering in a televi-
sion commercial. “Vegas is en-
forcing water waste big time.”
Ads like this began airing
last year as part of a campaign
by the Southern Nevada Water
Authority to persuade the
more than two million resi-
dents of this sprawling desert
metropolis to use less water.
Using a carrot-and-stick ap-
proach, including paying land-
owners to remove grass and
fining for overuse, the agency
said it has cut total Colorado
River water consumption by
25% over the past two decades,
even as the population it
serves has grown around 50%.
The savings are crucial be-
cause Lake Mead, which is fed
by the Colorado River, supplies
water to more than 40 million
people in seven states in the
fast-growing Southwest. The
reservoir had dropped precipi-
tously in a drought between
2000 and 2015, undermining a
$1.4 trillion economy tied to
the river, according to Arizona
State University estimates. Ex-
panded conservation across
the region, combined with
snowier winters in the Colo-
rado’s headwaters, have re-BYJIMCARLTONIn Turnaround, Lake Mead Rises
Campaign to reduce
water usage pays off
for reservoir serving
millions in SouthwestLake Mead, a reservoir fed by the Colorado River, supplies water to seven states. The lake is now at its highest level in six years, after falling during the 2000-2015 drought.ROGER KISBY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2)LakeMeadwaterlevel ConsumptionofColoradoRiver
waterbysouthernNevada**Excludes offstream storage
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (water level); Southern Nevada Water Authority
(consumption)100020406080billion gallons1990 2000 ’1,1,1,1,1,1,feet1990 2000 ’10 ’prison terms, ranging from two
weeks to nine months.
Other parents who have
pleaded not guilty are sched-
uled to go to trial in two
groups, in October and January.
Mr. Sidoo stepped down as
chief executive of East West
Petroleum Corp. after charges
were announced.
Prosecutors say Mark Rid-
dell used fake IDs with his pic-
ture and Mr. Sidoo’s sons’
names to take the SAT in Van-
couver in 2011 and in Califor-
nia in 2012.
Mr. Riddell has pleaded
guilty to taking the exams on
behalf of the teens and, later,
working as a test proctor for
other clients of Mr. Singer’s.
Mr. Singer shifted his ap-
proach after testing agencies
tightened security, having Mr.
Riddell fix wrong answers af-
ter the fact or feed the an-
swers to students instead of
standing in for them.
—Jennifer Levitz
contributed to this article.A Canadian businessman is
expected to plead guilty to
fraud conspiracy after being
accused of having someone
else take the SAT on behalf of
his two sons.
Prosecutors say David Si-
doo, a Vancouver father who
also played pro football in
Canada, paid $200,000 to Wil-
liam “Rick” Singer, master-
mind of the college admissions
cheating scheme, who in turn
paid a test-taking whiz to sit
for the standardized exams in
place of his sons.
A Wednesday court filing in-
dicates Mr. Sidoo will appear
before a federal judge in Boston
to formally enter a guilty plea
Friday. According to his plea
agreement, prosecutors and Mr.
Sidoo are jointly recommending
a sentence of 90 days in prison,
a $250,000 fine and one year of
supervised release.
“His desire is to seek finality
to this process,” said Mr. Sidoo’sBYMELISSAKORNCanadian CEO to Plead Guilty
In College Admissions Scandal
David Sidoo allegedly paid
$200,000 to have someone
take the SAT for his two sons.JONATHAN WIGGS/THE BOSTON GLOBE/ASSOCIATED PRESSA federal appeals-court
case heard Wednesday in Ohio
could help shape a contentious
question in abortion law:
Should a woman be allowed to
terminate a pregnancy be-
cause of the fetus’s disability,
race or gender?
The full Sixth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals is considering
the validity of an Ohio law that
makes it illegal for a physician
to perform an abortion on a
woman whose motivation is
fear that the fetus has Down
syndrome. Abortion opponents
say the case is winnable in one
of the nation’s most conserva-
tive legal venues and could send
the issue to the Supreme Court.
“There’s a real chance that
they’re going to uphold this
law,” said James Bopp, long-
time general counsel for the
antiabortion National Right to
Life Committee organization.
No federal appeals court
has upheld such a restraint on
abortion, and several federal
court rulings have blocked
similar provisions enacted
elsewhere. The Supreme Court
has barred laws that “place a
substantial obstacle in the
path of a woman seeking an
abortion before the fetus at-
tains viability.”
Last fall, a three-judge
panel from the Sixth Circuit
suspended enforcement of
Ohio’s law because it imposed
too much of a burden on
women seeking an abortion in
violation of Supreme Court
precedent. But a majority of
the Sixth Circuit’s judges then
took the unusual step of vot-
ing to rehear the case before
their entire bench.
Abortion-rights groups ar-
gue that limiting the right to
terminate a pregnancy before
viability is categorically un-
constitutional and that Su-
preme Court precedent doesn’t
permit such exceptions.
“This law is nothing more
than part of a nationwide at-
tempt to push abortion out of
reach,” Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, a
senior staff attorney at the
American Civil Liberties
Union, said Tuesday. The
ACLU represents abortion clin-
ics challenging the Ohio law.
Lawyers representing the
state of Ohio have defended the
2017 measure, signed into law
by then-Gov. John Kasich, as an
effort to protect a vulnerable
population. And antiabortion
advocates of the laws say abor-
tion rights aren’t so absolute.
They say the Supreme Court
has never specifically exam-
ined the constitutionality of
“eugenic abortion”—the term
used by the state of Ohio—or
weighed the government’s in-
terest in preventing it.
At least nine states have ac-
tive laws on the books restrict-
ing abortions based on one or
more fetal characteristics: the
sex or race of the fetus or be-
cause of a genetic anomaly, ac-
cording to the Guttmacher In-
stitute, a research group that
promotes abortion rights.
Some of those statutes haven’t
faced judicial scrutiny.
Last year, Arkansas, Ken-
tucky, Missouri and Utah en-
acted measures restricting
abortions that are solely moti-
vated by the pregnant
woman’s objections to giving
birth to a child with Down
syndrome. Kentucky and Mis-
souri also restricted abortions
based on the sex or race of the
fetus. Utah’s law doesn’t take
effect unless the restriction
survives judicial review.
Similar legislation protect-
ing fetuses with genetic anom-
alies or Down syndrome is
pending in at least eight other
states, according to the Gutt-
macher Institute.
In 2018, the Seventh U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in
Chicago struck down a provi-
sion of a 2016 Indiana stat-
ute—signed into law by then-
Gov. Mike Pence—that
restricted abortions solely mo-
tivated by the fetus’s race, sex
or disability.
BYJACOBGERSHMAN
Abortion
Motive
Law Heard
By Judges
An Ohio law bars
abortions motivated
by fear the fetus has
Down syndrome.