Las Vegas, rural counties end water fight

Wednesday, April 7, 1999 | 10:25 a.m.

A bitter feud over Nevada water rights is coming to an end.

Las Vegas has returned some of the rights to ground water it claimed from three Nevada counties that led to a bitter urban/rural battle that has lasted for 10 years.

Las Vegas Valley Water District Manager Pat Mulroy said Southern Nevada has agreed to work with Nye, Lincoln and White Pine counties in a cooperative spirit to manage the state's scarce available water.

The water district's board approved an agreement Tuesday to work with the rural counties to share 170,000 acre-feet of the unused ground water. As a good-faith gesture, the water district put 53,000 acre-feet of that water on the table for immediate use in the rural areas.

There are strings attached to the deal, Mulroy said. For example, rural counties will have to specify a project to use that available water. And the water must be in use within five years or the claim on the water reverts back to Southern Nevada. The state engineer will have the final say over rural water rights once a management committee made up of two members from each county commission approves.

"We're not giving the water back to the rural counties unless they need it," Mulroy said.

The water district gave up its claim on another 53,500 acre-feet in those counties recently because of potential environmental impacts.

While the water district voted on the agreement first, the three rural counties are expected to approve it later this month.

With Southern Nevada needing more of the state's water to serve its growing population, the Las Vegas Valley Water District went hunting for unused water around the state and found 230,000 acre-feet of it in the ground.

That amount of water would almost double the water the federal government allows the Las Vegas Valley to draw from the Colorado River's Lake Mead each year. So the water district asked the state for the right to use the rural water to supplement its river supply, triggering a bitter standoff between the urban area and the rural counties for a decade.

Yet Mulroy said she understands why the rural areas fought so hard and so long to protect their water rights.

"If you've given up your water in the West, you've given up your destiny," Mulroy said.

The rural areas saw Southern Nevada with a big-city, aggressive attitude coming to grab the water, said County Commission Chairman Bruce Woodbury, who served on the water district board in 1989. When water district officials called meetings in those towns, farmers and ranchers attended with rifles displayed on their pickup truck gun racks.

"Maybe we won't be seen as the urban aggressor anymore," Woodbury said after the hearing at the County Government Center. Woodbury voted in favor of the agreement, along with Commissioners Dario Herrera, Erin Kenny and Mary Kincaid. Lance Malone, Yvonne Atkinson Gates and Myrna Williams, who negotiated the agreement with Woodbury, were absent.

The rural areas were so angry at Southern Nevada during the feud, they drafted legislation this year to stop all transfers of water between basins, leaving Las Vegas to wring extra water from the Colorado River, an impossible task under current federal water law. That bill is due to be dropped by Friday.

Mulroy admitted that Southern Nevada has not envisioned its future growth accurately in the past. "Our crystal ball has been so wrong," she said, noting local public officials didn't expect to reach 1 million residents until after 2000. The population is estimated at 1.2 million people today.

With the Southern Nevada Water Authority acting as a regional water agency to secure water for the future, the rural ground water is viewed as a last resort, Mulroy said. Southern Nevada is seeking ways to use the water from the Virgin and Muddy rivers to supplement the Colorado's share, leaving ground water for rural growth.