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The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power wants to spend $3 billion to pump back the water that's flowing through Hoover Dam -- so it can flow through again later, during periods of peak energy demand. This generates a net profit for the dam's operators -- the pumping stations are powered by cheap solar and wind energy, while the dams are currently operating at just 20% of their capacity. An anonymous reader quotes Clean Technica: The problem is that California has so much renewable energy available now, thanks in large measure to aggressive state mandated policies, that much of it is "constrained." That's utility industry speak for having to give it away or simply let it go to waste. In some cases, utilities in California actually pay other utility companies to take the excess electricity off their hands.

Why not store it all in some of Elon Musk's grid scale batteries? Simply put, pumped hydroelectric storage is cheaper than battery storage, at least for now. Lazard, the financial advisory and asset management firm, estimates utility scale lithium-ion batteries cost 26 cents per kilowatt-hour compared with 15 cents for pumped hydro storage. "Hoover Dam is ideal for this," Kelly Sanders, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California tells the New York Times. "It's a gigantic plant. We don't have anything on the horizon as far as batteries of that magnitude."

The two Nevada state employees, Tami and Kevin Jenicke, who took 77 gravestones from the Southern Nevada Veterans Cemetery to build a patio aren't overzealous Marilyn Manson fans, or really into Halloween, they just have extraordinarily poor judgement. The Attorney General's Office is now investigating the incident and trying to decide if taking the stones is considered a crime. Tami Jenicke is a spokesperson for the state veterans home. Kevin Jenicke works at the cemetery. A veteran and their spouses can be buried together and that requires replacing the current headstone. Tami and Kevin took these stones which are usually destroyed. "We have to step back and say, 'How have we failed?' Our veterans deserve a respectful, peaceful final resting place," said Carole Turner with the Nevada Office of Veterans Services.

Laurinda Drake and Elaine Clermont wanted to prove how easy it was to abduct a child from the local elementary school. So they did what any reasonable person would, they abducted one. Drake says that she noticed a young boy walking away from the school after she dropped off her own child. She picked him up and says he didn't know where he lived and he didn't want to go back to school. So she took him to the Clark County School District office. The police have a different story. They say she drove him around to various locations before going to Clermont's house to call the media and set up a meeting at the Clark County Board of Trustees building, where they would turn the boy over to the School District. It looks like these two are only going to prove how easy it is to go to jail for kidnapping.