Water rights may be useless to buyer

Wednesday, April 26, 2000 | 10:24 a.m.

Some water rights at the posh Las Vegas Country Club may go on the auction block Saturday as planned, but buyers may not be able to use them, according to State Engineer Michael Turnipseed.

Robert Deiro and Associates plan to auction 238 acre-feet, enough water to serve roughly 1,200 people per year, for an estimated $2.5 million. The country club saved its well water by introducing water-saving measures on its golf course.

Turnipseed said in a letter sent to the auctioneers on Tuesday that the club may no longer own the rights to that water under the state's "use it or lose it" doctrine. The rights are lost if the water has not been used in a year, and that is the case at the country club, he said.

That means that when buyers of the club's water rights ask Turnipseed for a well permit in another part of the Las Vegas Valley, he could turn it down.

The state, however, has no authority to stop the auction, Deputy State Engineer Hugh Ricci said. The club's original rights were granted before a law in 1955 made all new wells temporary after Lake Mead water became available for Las Vegas, Ricci said.

The state can deny a water-use permit if a new well will affect existing water use or if the new well is proved "detrimental to the public interest," Ricci said. He noted that the state recently denied a U.S. Department of Energy request for underground water use to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain based on the public interest clause.

Gordon Gaming, owner of land that was the site of the old El Rancho Vegas resort, is also auctioning 374 acre-feet of ground water on Saturday. Those rights are intact and available, Ricci said.