Friday, April 08, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Lawmakers clash over rural water

Guinn administration opposes bill to help rural counties protect their water resources

CARSON CITY -- A Northern Nevada lawmaker said Thursday she's not giving up on her bill to help rural areas fight against the export of their water to booming Las Vegas, despite the Guinn administration's opposition.

"We're going to push this as far as we can," Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said after Gov. Kenny Guinn's natural resources adviser told lawmakers existing water law adequately protects the outlying counties.

"The prevailing attitude of big developers seems to be that everything is perfect right now for Nevada water law," Leslie said. "The arrogance in that statement just offends me, because we heard testimony from many Nevadans that the current law isn't working for them -- and has the potential for destroying their way of life."

Steve Robinson, Guinn's energy adviser, told the Assembly Government Affairs Committee that Leslie's Assembly Bill 434 would bog down applications by the Las Vegas Valley Water District to pump water from rural White Pine and Nye counties.

Southern Nevada Water Authority officials hope to secure approval from the state engineer and the federal Bureau of Land Management to pipe water along a 299-mile corridor from the two sparsely-populated counties. Their goal is to start pumping water by 2014.

Robinson said later that Guinn isn't opposed to a study of the state's water resources, but AB434 and Assembly Bill 253, a companion measure by Assemblyman Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, would "retard the entire water rights transfer process."

Robinson also said Guinn has "really looked out for the rural counties."

But Leslie said it's "a weak argument" to suggest that Nevada couldn't have its own version of California's Owens Valley, which was dried up to provide water to Los Angeles.

"It's so foolish to dismiss what happened in California in recent times and say that could never happen in Nevada," said Leslie. "That's burying your head in the sand."

Leslie also said a study of water resources would be "a bare minimum," but she'd like to salvage more than that from the two water bills.

State Engineer Hugh Ricci said Leslie's bill "provides no additional protections to existing water users not already granted in current statutes," adding it's "not a basis for good water policy."

Ricci also said the measure would cause long delays for pending water applications, and could even create public health and safety concerns.

On Wednesday, conservationists, ranchers and others urged lawmakers to approve both bills to improve water management, back off speculators and help fund water rights adjudication -- a formal process pending for decades in many cases.

Goicoechea said many requests for adjudication -- completed only in the Las Vegas Valley but nowhere else in the nation's most arid state -- have been pending for 50 years.

Longtime eastern Nevada rancher Dean Baker cautioned that the continued survival of ranchers depends on the availability of water. He's a strong opponent of a nearly $2 billion plan to pump groundwater from rural Nevada and pipe it to Las Vegas.

Greg James, a 30-year resident of the Owens Valley, urged approval of AB434 as a way to keep Nevada from going through the long and expensive battle over water that occurred in his area. James has served as special legal counsel for Inyo County, Calif., where the Owens Valley is located.

AB434 would require the state engineer to adopt goals for water conservation in all counties in the state, provide a process and funding to clarify the status of existing water rights, and require public hearings on any interbasin water transfers.

Under the measure, the state engineer would have to ensure that all rulings on water rights are in the best interest of the public.

The Review-Journal contributed to this report.