Editorial: Beware of changing state water law

A controversial bill that would have drastically changed state water law apparently has been scuttled for this session of the Legislature.

Gov. Steve Sisolak said no consensus on the bill could be reached by the time the session ends this week and state water regulators should put together a panel to study the matter prior to the next session, according to The Nevada Independent.

Opponents of Assembly Bill 30 said it would have eroded the foundation of our current water law that protects senior water rights holders and the environment as well.

Existing law requires the State Engineer, who is assigned the task of regulating water appropriations, to reject an application for a permit to take water if there is no unappropriated water at the source or if the proposed use conflicts with existing water rights in wells, springs or streams. AB30 would have allowed the State Engineer to authorize a new water use if an adequate monitoring, management and mitigation plan — known as 3M — is reached.

Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, which has been fighting for years an effort by the Las Vegas water district to pump groundwater from valleys in Eastern Nevada, said the bill was just a way for deep pocketed interests to get water.

“We are pleased at AB30’s demise and committed to working with all stakeholders on policy,” Roerink said. “But we will never compromise on the pipeline or any nefarious attempts to undermine the law. No part of the state should be viewed as a water colony or sacrificial lamb for another part of Nevada.”

He explained the problem with the bill as written, “The real key distinction is that, if you’re avoiding a conflict that means a conflict never happened, but if you are eliminating a conflict that means you’re allowing the state engineer to grant a permit when a conflict exists and say, well, we’ll grant the permit and you go ahead and you start and we’ll figure out how to eliminate the conflict, but go ahead. Start pumping.”

Efforts to change the water law have been ongoing since the state Supreme Court in 2015 ruled that the state water law says the State Engineer “shall reject” an application for use of water when the use “conflicts with existing rights.” The court also said there was insufficient evidence that mitigation efforts would eliminate the threat to the existing rights holders.

The case involved an application for water rights for a molybdenum mine in Eureka County. Just this past week the mining company and local ranchers announced an agreement to allow the mine to access water in return for a $1 million payment, pending approval by the State Engineer.

That’s how such conflicts should be settled. Let the free market decide the value and distribution of water from the original owners to others.

(GBWN pix)

Meanwhile, any panel that works on this topic should keep in mind that estimates about available water resources and the effectiveness of mitigation efforts are difficult to pen down.

For example, after the State Engineer granted the Las Vegas water authority permits for groundwater in several valleys in Eastern Nevada by creating a 3M plan, a state judge tossed the permit, saying, “There are no objective standards to determine when mitigation will be required and implemented. The Engineer has listed what mitigation efforts can possibly be made, i.e., stop pumping, modifying pumping, change location of pumps, drill new wells … but does not cite objective standards of when mitigation is necessary.”

In a recent op-ed in the Reno newspaper, Mark Butler, the retired superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park, and Alan O’Neill, the retired superintendent of Lake Mead National Recreation Area, said the use of 3M plans jeopardize fragile ecosystems that pronghorn, bighorn sheep, mule deer, desert tortoises and other creatures call home.

“We are not opposed to the state engineer permitting water and seeking to modernize water law,” the retirees wrote. “However, we are opposed to the state engineer unilaterally permitting water projects that do not adequately account for natural recharge and that fail to consider the intrinsic value of leaving water in the ground for the benefit of future generations.”

Be cautious of making changes to water law that could affect current rights holders and lead to the draw down of water tables that might take centuries to replenish — long after vegetation and wildlife have disappeared.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Editorial: No need for murky water law changes

Two bills proposing to alter water use policy are pending in the Nevada Legislature. They are at best problematic.

Assembly Bill 30 appears to give the state engineer greater leeway in the use of monitoring, management and mitigations — known in the jargon as 3M — to resolve conflicts in water rights. The language is rather vague and subject to interpretation.

Assembly Bill 51 appears to give the state engineer more flexibility in what is called conjunctive management of water. While current law treats surface water and groundwater as interchangeable in a basin in the scheme of allocations, AB51 tells the state engineer to adopt regulations that mitigate conflicts between the two water sources.

Nevada water law is based on the concept of prior authorization, in other words the first one to use a water resource has priority or senior water rights. Those who come later, if there is enough water available, have junior rights that must yield to the senior rights if supply becomes inadequate for any reason.

The Great Basin Water Network, an organization that has been fighting attempts for years by the Las Vegas Valley water provider to tap groundwater in eastern Nevada basins, suspects these two bills are intended to give the state engineer the flexibility needed to allow the project to reach fruition.

GBWN says the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s $15 billion groundwater importation plan would pump 58 billion gallons of groundwater annually in a 300-mile pipeline to Las Vegas. They say the Bureau of Land Management has estimated the project would irreparably harm 305 springs, 112 miles of streams, 8,000 acres of wetlands, and 191,000 acres of shrub land habitat.

A federal judge has so far blocked the water grab from Spring, Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys, saying the state engineer failed to establish any objective criteria for when mitigation — such as halting pumping — would have to be initiated. The engineer plans to appeal that ruling, but a change in state law could moot that.

GBWN questions the effectiveness of the two bills’ calls for monetary compensation and water replacement to make whole senior water rights owners.

Abby Johnson, GBWN’s president, says in an op-ed she has penned for area newspapers, “From ranchers to environmentalists, there is a consensus that we don’t need to fix what isn’t broken. Nevada water law has served Nevadans well for more than 100 years and continues to serve the public interest. That success, however, has stymied a select few.”

The select few, Johnson says, include real estate developers and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has “not had much luck in recent years getting what they want under the current legal and regulatory framework. Why? Because what they want is to facilitate unsustainable over-pumping of the state’s fragile, limited groundwater resources.”

She adds, “ The problem –– for all of us –– is that they want water that either doesn’t exist or already belongs to someone else.”

Johnson further charges that the change in law would grant the state engineer “czar-like powers to unilaterally choose winners and losers without regard to senior water rights holders’ existing property rights … which would mire Nevada water rights owners and the state government in complex and unpredictable litigation for years.”

Assemblyman John Ellison of Elko released a statement saying the bills would constitute an unconstitutional “taking” of water rights and said a recent hearing saw a consensus of opposition from industry, ranchers and farmers and not one person testifying in support of either bill.

“We cannot allow an unelected bureaucrat to wield this much power over one of our state’s most precious resources. I’m reminded of the famous Mark Twain quote, ‘Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.’” Ellison said. “I will never stop fighting for the rights of senior property rights owners in my district and throughout Nevada.”

Though Twain probably never said that, it sounds like something he would say and is apropos to the current situation. AB 30 and AB51 need to be sent down the drain.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.