Washoe County fights plan to export water
CARSON CITY -- Protests are being filed with Nevada's state water engineer to plans by developers to export thousands of acre-feet of water from Washoe County for projects outside the county.
Washoe County commissioners voted Tuesday to protest water transfers sought by Sonterra Development Co. from Hualapai Flat and San Emedio Desert to communities in Lyon and Storey counties. Protests also are being filed by the Sierra Club and by the Great Basin Water Network.
More water rights applications from Hualapai will come before the Washoe County Commission in September. The water would be used for a $100 million-plus pipeline to be built by Wade Development in partnership with Gerlach-area farmer Mike Stewart.
Sonterra is controlled by Wade Development, owner of a business park and commercial area in Fernley. The company wants to use the water for a residential projects that would include 6,000 homes on the north side of Fernley.
The applications filed with the state engineer says Sonterra also wants to divert the water to Silver Springs, Stagecoach and Dayton.
Critics of the Sonterra plan say the amount of water that would be drawn from Hualapai Flat and San Emedio Desert, on the edge of the Black Rock Desert, far exceeds the estimated amount of groundwater recharge in the area.
The Washoe County Department of Water Resources has said existing water appropriations in the two basins, mainly for irrigation, already exceed the water yields and it would be wrong to aggravate the over-appropriation problem by using the water for municipal and industrial use elsewhere.
Susan Lynn of the Great Basin Water Network says the existing water appropriations "far and away exceed the supply" in the two basins. She added that the pumping requests appear to add up to at least 36,000 acre-feet of water annually from the two basins.
Besides potential environmental damage, Lynn said overpumping could hurt the economy of Gerlach. She also said organizers of Burning Man, the annual counterculture arts festival that draws thousands to the Black Rock Desert, have a well in Hualapai Flat.
