The Southern Nevada Water Authority has struck a $7.2 million deal to lease water on the Muddy River from what might seem an unlikely source: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In fact, there's nothing unlikely about it.
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The Mormon church owns land and water rights all over the region and the country. Some of its holdings are left over from when the church helped settle what is now Utah, Nevada and Arizona in the latter half of the 19th century.
A lot of that land and water is still being used, and not just for churches.
"If they're not the biggest, they're one of the biggest cattle producers in the United States," said Ray Schmutz, a veterinarian in Lincoln County who has worked in Nevada for about 36 years.
The church-owned Deseret Ranch in Central Florida has been called the largest cow-calf operation in the country, with some 44,000 head of cattle on a swath of land 50 miles long and 30 miles wide.
Officials for the Salt Lake City-based church declined to release details concerning its holdings in the region, but church spokeswoman Kim Farah said that "it's not unusual for us to own farms" and ranches. Those operations supply food to the church's welfare program for needy LDS members and for its "humanitarian outreach worldwide," she said.
According to assessors' records, the Mormon church owns more than 720 acres in Clark County alone. "Church LDS Presiding Bishop," with an address on North Temple Street in Salt Lake City, is listed as the owner of 129 properties in the county, almost three quarters of them in the Las Vegas Valley.
Nearly half of the church's property in Clark County has a listed use other than "Non-Profit Religious." Most of that land is vacant or being used for agriculture, county records show.
In 1978, the church bought the Warm Springs Ranch, within the headwaters of the Muddy River about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Since then, the church has sold off much of the ranch once owned by Howard Hughes but kept much of the water rights.
About six years ago, the church began leasing some of its Muddy River rights for use as cooling water at Nevada Power's coal-fired Reid Gardner power plant in Moapa Valley.
The water authority's lease with the church is for 2,001 acre-feet of water a year for 20 years, with an option for two 10-year extensions. When stretched through reuse and other means, the water should be enough to supply about 6,500 Las Vegas Valley households annually.
Because the Muddy River empties into Lake Mead, the authority won't have to build a pipeline to get the water. It can be taken using the authority's existing intakes at the lake, just as soon as the U.S. Department of Interior signs off on the so-called "lake conveyance" of Colorado River tributary water. That is expected to happen by the end of 2007.
The Moapa Valley Water District will get a similar amount of Muddy River water under the lease agreement. Some of that water could be used to supply a new 1,600 residential development proposed in Moapa Valley.
"We're not sure," said Brad Huza, the Moapa district's general manager. "It's going to go into our water portfolio and increase our ability to serve."
Water authority Deputy General Manager Kay Brothers called the lease agreement "a step in the right direction for water management in Southern Nevada."
Brothers said that as far as she knows, this is the first time the authority has procured water from the Mormon church.
It might not be the last.
According to county records, the Mormon church still owns about 250 acres in the Moapa Valley, almost half of it for agricultural use.
The church also owns a large ranch in Spring Valley, one of two basins in White Pine County targeted for groundwater pumping by the water authority in its $2 billion pipeline project.
Schmutz said that down the road from his home in the tiny Lincoln County town of Hiko, about 115 miles north of Las Vegas, the Mormon church owns a small farm near Crystal Springs.
Schmutz said the farm was recently put back into production, using groundwater to grow pastures, presumably for cattle.
Near Blythe, Calif., about 190 miles south of Las Vegas, the church runs an alfalfa farm that covers about 10,000 acres and gets its water from the Colorado River.
"They are serious farmers. This is a serious farming operation," said Ed Smith, general manager for California's Palo Verde Irrigation District, which supplies water to the church-owned farm.
The extent of Mormon holdings in the region comes as no surprise to Chris Macek.
"They had a lot to do with the settlement of this area," said Macek, supervisor for the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park.
The fort-turned-museum, at Las Vegas Boulevard and Washington Avenue, preserves the historic site where the Latter-day Saints operated a mission from 1855 to 1857.
"They were the first non-American Indian people to settle in the Las Vegas Valley," Macek said.
