Fern Harbecke unloads a lawn mower Friday at the Harbecke Ranch in Spring Valley in Eastern Nevada. The ranch recently was purchased by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which also bought the Robison Ranch for $22 million from Vidler Water Company. Photo by John Locher. A burro and horse feed Friday at the Robison Ranch, one of two ranches in White Pine County near Great Basin National Park purchased by the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Photo by John Locher. Click image for enlargement. Graphic by Mike Johnson.

If good fences make good neighbors, the Southern Nevada Water Authority should fit in nicely at its new spread in White Pine County.

The patchwork of ranch property the authority bought last month came complete with improved fencing installed just a few years ago by the previous owner, Vidler Water Company.

But new fences alone cannot explain the tremendous profit Vidler made on the deal.

The Nevada-based water development company paid $4.5 million cash for the 7,150-acre ranch and its water rights during a court-ordered bankruptcy sale in 2000.

Three appraisals performed between 1994 and 1999 placed the value of the ranch, one of the largest in the vast and sparsely populated Spring Valley, at $10 million to $14 million.

Vidler fixed the fences and the irrigation system at the ranch, then sold the whole thing after six years to the water authority for $22 million.

White Pine County Assessor Robert Bishop said land values in the area have not increased anywhere close to that much.

"Around Ely, it's booming, but outlying land isn't doing that great," he said.

Water authority spokesman J.C. Davis acknowledged that the ranch 240 miles north of Las Vegas was "a tremendous bargain" for Vidler, but he said the authority is satisfied with the price it paid.

"Our primary objective was to acquire another tool to effectively manage water resources in Spring Valley. Frankly, the fundamental question for us is whether the value of that property was appropriate when we went to buy it," Davis said.

"I'm very comfortable with what we paid," said water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy. "I don't think it's out of line at all."

Davis said the deal compares favorably to other recent transactions in Eastern Nevada involving ranch land and water rights. "The value is really the water," he said.

The Robison ranch is named for the White Pine County family that owned it for decades. It came with some 12,000 acre-feet of surface water rights and more than 1,200 acre-feet of groundwater rights.

The water authority also recently bought a 1,370-acre ranch from the Harbecke family in southern Spring Valley.

The $4.9 million purchase price included 1,700 acre-feet of surface water rights and almost 1,800 acre-feet of groundwater rights.

About 326,000 gallons are in an acre-foot, which is almost enough water to supply two average Las Vegas homes for one year.

Water authority officials still are trying to decide what they might do with the groundwater rights, but the surface water associated with the ranches will be used to recharge the watershed and keep Spring Valley green.

Mulroy promised as much last month in an open letter to White Pine County residents that was carried in the Ely Times newspaper.

But that comes as cold comfort to county residents who are worried about the authority's $2 billion plan to pump groundwater to Las Vegas from across Eastern Nevada.

The proposed project includes some 91,000 acre-feet of water from beneath Spring Valley.

For five months, representatives from White Pine and the Southern Nevada Water Authority have been meeting in Ely to discuss a possible agreement that would provide environmental protections and financial compensation for the cash-strapped rural county.

White County Commissioner Brent Eldridge said he doubts whether the two sides can reach an agreement before Sept. 11, when state regulators will convene three weeks of hearings on the authority's groundwater applications in Spring Valley.

"I'm not sure we're ever going to reach an agreement," Eldridge said. "We don't have the data we want, and we're not going to deal for money. Money is secondary; we want protections."

He said White Pine County also wants control of the on-off switch for the authority's pipeline, should Spring Valley begin to dry up.

Eldridge has more at stake than most. His family has lived and ranched in Spring Valley for 90 years. The Robison ranch is right next door, he said.

Like many White County residents, Eldridge opposes the pipeline project and wishes the Southern Nevada Water Authority would go look for water somewhere else.

About the only entity he can think of that would make a worse neighbor is Vidler. At least as a public entity, the water authority is required to conduct its business out in the open, he said.

Doug Carson heads up White Pine County's water advisory board and owns a hay farm one valley over from the Robison and Harbecke ranches.

Carson said there is a reason Vidler is one of the only groups more feared and reviled than the water authority in some rural areas.

"They're in the water speculation business," Carson said of Vidler. "They're not in the ranching business. They're not a municipal utility looking for water. I don't think they're well received in any of the rural counties."

Vidler Vice President Steve Hartman dismissed that assessment as "just flat wrong."

"Vidler Water Company is anything but speculators," Hartman said. "Our projects are sustainable projects."

Through its real estate subsidiary, Nevada Land and Resource Company, Vidler claims to be the largest private landowner in the state.

Such private holdings are as scarce as people in White Pine County, where the livestock far outnumbers the humans and all but 6 percent of the land is managed by the federal government.

The Bureau of Land Management oversees some 4.3 million acres in the county.

Hartman said the company originally bought the Robison ranch in hopes of exchanging it for some federal land in the Fernley area.

When that fell through, Vidler officials ended up leasing out the ranch, which Hartman said was "run down" when they bought it.

"All the fencing was down," he said. "It was a very significant expense, and it took a long time" to fix.

From a public relations standpoint, Mulroy said the water authority would have preferred to buy the Robison ranch from someone other than Vidler.

Ultimately, though, she said residents of the area should be happy, because Vidler is "gone now" from Spring Valley.

Carson laughed when he heard that.

"I think there's also a certain amount of apprehension with regards to the SNWA," he said.