Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2004 | 9:36 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers are confident they will get legislation creating a utility corridor between Lincoln and Clark counties through Congress by the end of the year, despite the administration concerns on technical aspects of the bill.
A provision in the Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act, creates a 256-mile and 192-mile pipeline corridor for the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Lincoln County Water District respectively, partly to allow the water authority to transport water from the rural county to the Las Vegas Valley.
Rebecca Watson, the department's assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management would rather see the bill give a general direction that a utility corridor should be created and then allow the department to determine the specific route, not be told specifically by the bill where it should go.
"Let the people on the ground decide where it would go," Watson said after a Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee hearing Tuesday on the bill. "They need to work with us in how they designate the route."
Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, wants to change maps included with the bill for the rights-of-way, saying they should not be located along U.S. 93 and U.S. 95, but she fully endorsed the plan otherwise.
Mulroy said the bill "will help expedite a solution to Southern Nevada's current water situation without compromising public involvement and environmental compliance."
Watson and Mulroy gave identical testimony at a House Resources Committee hearing in July. But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said there is not much to smooth over on the bill and the people who need to support the legislation do support it.
"What BLM needs to understand is that they are not elected members of Congress," Reid said.
Reid, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., all testified at the hearing. They said that this is a compromise bill and neither is 100 percent happy with everything in it, but that it will benefit the county.
"There are a lot of different interests you have to keep track of and try to satisfy," Ensign said. "It is not exactly how John Ensign would write the bill and it is not exactly how Harry Reid would write the bill."
Both senators said some details are being worked out on the bill now. Ensign noted that everyone did not like all aspects of the Southern Nevada Lands Management Act when it was debated, but that measure passed.
Lincoln County Commissioner Spencer Hafen said all the corridor would do is allow Clark County to tap into water resources it already has permission to use within the other county's border. The state water engineer still will have control over who gets water. "The county has no intent for its water to be used outside of the county," Hafen said.
Hafen explained that the corridor creation is "one of those things you just have to agree with," but not a dealbreaker in the bill.
Hafen said at the hearing it is sometimes forgotten that the corridor will help Lincoln County tap into water resources it cannot access now.
Ensign said the corridor provision is designed to protect Lincoln County's interests and make sure a slew of lawsuits cannot happen in the future.
Reid said "there's going to be no water stolen."
Lincoln County Commissioner Tommy Rowe said if the state does its job, the county will not have problems because the state will watch the levels of water Clark County would take. But if the state allows more water to go to Clark County than it should get, "it could be devastating."
Rowe did not testify at the hearing, but said the main point of the bill was the wilderness areas not the utility corridor.
Among several other provisions, the bill authorizes the auction of 87,000 acres of federal land adjacent to private property in the county with a new formula on how profit from the sale could be geared toward building outdoor tourism.
Rowe said everything else that has been added to the bill has "clouded over" the main point.
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