Editorial: State agency orders feds to return stream to church retreat property

Erosion on church retreat property.

Over a tiny tract of land — nestled in the middle of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge northwest of Pahrump that a church uses for a retreat — a state agency has pierced the dark bureaucratic clouds with a ray of sunshine.

In 2010 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rerouted a stream that had run through the Ministero Roca Solida (Solid Rock) church’s 40-acre parcel of private land since at least the 1880s. The church purchased the land in 2006 and used the stream for traditional baptisms. The federal agency claimed it needed to reroute the stream so it could reintroduce speckled dace, an endangered minnow.

The rerouted spring-fed stream promptly overflowed its poorly engineered banks during a rain storm in 2010, presumably washing away the dace as well. Flooding occurred again in 2015 and twice this year, extensively damaging buildings and creating massive gullies.

But in an order dated Nov. 4 the state Division of Water Resources, arbiter of water rights in Nevada, demanded that Fish and Wildlife within 90 days return the stream to its original banks transversing the church retreat property or face a fine of $10,000 per day.

The state water agency concluded that the contention by Fish and Wildlife that it was reestablishing a historic natural drainage course is clearly wrong and the Carson Slough historically traversed the church land and the church has vested rights to the water, as well as the evidence to prove it, dating as far back as 1887.

The Solid Rock church, pastored by Victor Fuentes, a Cuban immigrant, has been fighting the federal land agency in court for several years with the aid of Nevada Policy Research Institute’s legal arm, the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation. The court case is currently pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

“Getting the water returned would be a major first step in making the Ministry whole, after years of suffering litigation and egregious constitutional violations by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Joe Becker, director of NPRI’s legal unit. “However, the Ministry still suffered significant harm in the interim from the federal government’s actions — including repeated flooding and five years of flood damage resulting from the illegal water diversion project.”

The first flooding caused $86,000 in damages, but subsequent floods have created so much damage the church is seeking $3 million or complete restoration of the property to its original status. Becker said, “A mini-grand-canyon now cuts through what was once lush wetlands, and the significant improvements made to structures and the land for the benefit of young campers are being undone with each recurring flood.”

The state’s action is a step in the right direction toward restoring the church’s property and water rights, but the federal government needs to repair or pay for the damage it has caused.

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: Federal stream diversion has washed out church property

Patch of Heaven erosion

The little Patch of Heaven keeps getting washed away a little bit at a time.

Since 2010 the Ministero Roca Solida (Solid Rock) church, which owns a 40-acre parcel of private land nestled in the middle of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge northwest of Pahrump that it calls Patch of Heaven, has been fighting to protect its property and water rights from the federal government.

After the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rerouted a stream that had run through the church property since at least the 1880s, putatively in an effort to reintroduce speckled dace, an endangered minnow, the rerouted stream overflowed its poorly engineered banks in 2010, again in 2015 and now twice this year extensively damaging the private land.

The first flooding cause $86,000 but the subsequent floods have created so much damage the church’s attorney is asking the federal court to award the church the entire value of the now practically unusable property and the value of five years of water rights for which the church as been deprived — $3 million or completely restore the property to its pre-diversion-project status.

The church claims the stream diversion was in violation of both federal and state laws.

Church minister Victor Fuentes and his wife purchased the land and its buildings in 2006 for $500,000 using church donations with the intent of using the property as a church retreat and to use the stream that ran through it for baptisms, recreation and for livestock. The church has since upgraded the buildings.

The church is being represented by the Nevada Policy Research Institute’s Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation, which is operated by attorney Joseph Becker.

Becker wrote in the latest lawsuit, filed this past month, that the Fish and Wildlife stream diversion moved the stream completely off of the church property and onto higher ground, which has resulted in modest rainfalls causing the stream to flood back into its original channel but in such a way that the water has eroded the land, “leaving a mini-Grand-Canyonlike landscape in the flood’s wake.” (Fuentes final complaint)

He added, “With each subsequent rainfall, the new rainfall creates new pathways for rushing water to re-enter Plaintiff’s land. The result is that less and less rainfall now results in more and more flooding and flood damage.”

The case has dragged on so long that there is a danger of running past the statute of limitations for a takings claim under the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits taking of private property without just compensation.

In addition to the erosion and other damages, the suit notes that the federal land agency has been frequently closing access roads to the church’s property, purportedly due to the flooding caused by the government, and is failing to maintain access roads as required by an agreement with Nye County, making it difficult to even access the property.

Further, Becker writes, “Campers are typically dropped off in buses, which then depart the premises and return at the conclusion of camp, thus leaving would-be campers stranded and in danger of harm on the grounds in the event of precipitation and flooding.”

The courts need to step up and force the federal land agencies to treat private property and water rights with the respect guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

Patch of Heaven flooding

A version of this editorial appears this past 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.

Owners of church await justice

Church tries to get Supreme Court to hear case

Feds can take property rights

NPRI fights federal power

 

Newspaper column: Nevada property rights case knocking on the door of the Supreme Court

A Nevada church is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold its constitutional rights in the face of bureaucratic intransigence and contradictory laws.

In petitioning the court for a hearing this past month, the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation (CJCL), the legal arm of the libertarian-leaning Nevada Policy Research Institute, said current law essentially forces the church to choose between its First Amendment right to freely exercise its religion and its Fifth Amendment right to due process and compensation for the “taking” by government of its private property.

It started in December 2009 when Victor Fuentes and his wife Annette, whose church owns a 40-acre tract of land surrounded by the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, learned that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service planned to reroute a stream that had run through their property since at least 1881.

Victor and Annette Fuentes next to stream when it ran through their church camp. (Photo for Pahrump Valley Times by Mark Waite)

The property is a retreat for the Ministero Roca Solida (Solid Rock) church and the stream was one of the major attractions for visitors to what they called Patch of Heaven. It was also used for baptisms. On Christmas Eve 2010, heavy rains caused the stream to overflow its new man-made banks and flood the church property with water and mud, causing nearly $90,000 in damages to buildings and other property.

Following statutory procedures, CJCL filed a claim with Fish and Wildlife for damages. The agency never even acknowledged receipt of the claim, and CJCL filed suit.

Fuentes — a Cuban refugee who swam seven miles of open ocean in the dark from near his home in Santiago, Cuba, to Guantanamo Bay to gain political asylum — has been disturbed by the lack of justice he has received in his adopted country.

“I came to this country because I didn’t want the government’s hands on me,” said Fuentes in an interview when the litigation began. “I fled that government. That’s not the government I wanted to find here.”

Since the petition was filed with the high court, two amicus briefs have been filed in support of Roca Solida — one by the Nevada attorney general and another by the conservative Cato Institute and the National Association of Reversionary Property Owners.

“This is the powerful federal government squeezing an important but vulnerable religious ministry started by an immigrant who fled an abusive government in Cuba,” said Attorney General Adam Laxalt in a statement when his office filed the amicus. “I remain committed to protecting our state and its inhabitants from the detrimental effects of federal overreach and abuse of power.”

There is an urgency to the case, because a six-year statute of limitations is about to expire, even though the case has been languishing in various courts for most of those six years.

The petition and the amicus briefs argue conflicting law cannot erase fundamental constitutional rights.

CJCL Director and Chief Legal Officer Joseph Becker explained, “At issue is whether Congress may confine Pastor Fuentes and his churchgoers, the victims of multiple constitutional rights violations, to seek redress in but one federal court even though no single federal court has jurisdiction to remedy each of the constitutional violations suffered.”

Congress may not abrogate by statute a right constitutionally guaranteed.

“The hallmark of an unconstitutional condition is legislation that offers relief for a violation of a constitutional right, but only through the abdication of another right …” the attorney general’s amicus brief notes. “As the Court has done for decades when parties face a Hobson’s choice in adjudicating constitutional claims, the Court should grant review and clarify that the procedural statutes in this case should be interpreted to avoid this constitutional quagmire.”

The Cato and the property owners amicus quoted a passage from on opinion by Justice William Brennan: “As soon as private property has been taken, whether through formal condemnation proceedings, occupancy, physical invasion, or regulation, the landowner has already suffered a constitutional violation, and the self-executing character of the constitutional provision with respect to compensation is triggered. This Court has consistently recognized that the just compensation requirement in the Fifth Amendment is not precatory: once there is a ‘taking’ compensation must be awarded.”

The case, though complicated and even convoluted, is hardly academic to Nevadans who are downstream from numerous federal land agencies that control 85 percent of the state and presume the power to divert streams and close roads that lead to private property.

A version of this column appears this week in the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel, the Lincoln County Record and the Sparks Tribune — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Newspaper column: Your property rights taken by a federal agency? It could happen to you

In 1957, Frank Sinatra warned in song, “Keep an eye on spring/ Run when church bells ring/ It could happen to you.”

Since one federal agency or another controls at least 85 percent of Nevada, one day it could happen to you. You find yourself downstream — literally or figuratively — of one of those agencies, with your property and livelihood in jeopardy, only to discover your property and livelihood are less important than some minnow, bug or weed.

It happened to Victor Fuentes, as reported in this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times and Elko Daily Free Press.

In December 2010 Fuentes’ land, 40 acres in the middle of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, was heavily damaged by flooding. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had rerouted a stream but it overflowed its banks during heavy rain.

Annette and Victor Fuentes pose next to a channel running through their church camp in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in 2009. (Pahrump Valley Times photo)

The property is a retreat for the Ministero Roco Solida Church (Solid Rock) and the stream had been one of the major attractions for visitors to what they called Patch of Heaven. Fuentes is the pastor of the church and operator of the camp.

A year later the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation (CJCL) — a division of the Nevada Policy Research Institute — filed a claim with USF&W for actual damages in the amount of $86,000, claiming “negligent and lawless actions” by the agency caused the flooding.

The agency never even acknowledged receipt of the damages claim. CJCL has since filed lawsuits in two federal courts.

In January, USF&W published an environmental assessment that proposes restoring natural and historic hydrology to the area by removing a dam.

Fuentes replied to the assessment that this “would inevitably result in a permanent or regular flooding of our private property resulting in a permanent ‘taking.’” The Fifth Amendment prohibits taking private property without just compensation. (Fuente’s reply to environmental assessment: Fuentes comments)

Though the USF&W claims it wishes to return the water flow to its “original” stream beds, Fuentes notes it is using 1948 data to determine “original,” when maps dating back to 1881 and an 1891 biological inventory show settlers in the area using the water to grow crops on private land granted at the time of statehood in 1864.

It could happen to you.

(Read the entire column at the Ely or Elko websites. For more accounts of government waste, fraud and abuse in Nevada go to Watchdog Wire-Nevada.)