Monday, Aug. 1, 2005 | 10:56 a.m.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority's attempt to develop wells and build pipelines to bring ground water from rural Nevada to Las Vegas has been at least temporarily derailed, with one federal contractor predicting that the approval process will take years longer than originally estimated.
The public comment period for a needed environmental impact statement, or EIS, by the Bureau of Land Management is scheduled to end today, but it may need to be extended, said Bruce Flynn, the contractor overseeing the EIS.
He said the reason is a flood of requests for new wells and pipelines by Lincoln County, the Water Authority's partner for water development.
Further, the requests by Lincoln County could mean more scientific evaluations that could add another three years to the process of preparing an environmental impact statement, Flynn said. Lincoln County's requests have come to the state engineer over the last six months, and increases the number of valleys with proposed new wells from eight to 16, he said.
Flynn said he believes that the studies alone now will take as long as six years. The Water Authority had hoped to complete the required environmental process in 2007, with pumping of water to Las Vegas to begin by 2015.
The BLM has collected 7,500 comments from the public, much of the comments coming from a series of public hearings the agency held beginning in April. But the agency might have to start again from scratch, Flynn said. Those who have commented will be informed of the changes to the environmental study process, he added.
"When we went to the public in April, we said this is the proposed action," Flynn said, referring to the Water Authority's plans. "If the proposed action has changed significantly, we would have to begin the process all over again."
What has changed, he said, is Lincoln County's requests to the Nevada state engineer to draw water from valleys throughout the largely rural county and to pump that water along rights-of-way that the water authority has already asked for.
It is not yet clear if Lincoln County would simply use the Water Authority's pipelines, or share the same pipeline, Flynn said.
J.C. Davis, a Water Authority spokesman, said his agency and Lincoln County are now in conversations on the technical issues.
Flynn said those answers have to come from Lincoln County and the Water Authority before the Bureau of Land Management, which by law is leading the environmental impact study, can complete its work.
Regardless of the answer, the work won't be completed by Flynn, who said he is resigning from the project at the end of this month.
"I thought it was going to be a three-year schedule," said Flynn, who began his work late last year. "Now it looks like four to six years. The whole thing has changed."
Flynn said the BLM now needs to hire a larger company to do the work. He said it also may be necessary to move the project offices out of Ely, where they are now, to a place where there is more available office space and easier coordination with the state leadership.
Such a move would help achieve the "broader, regional approach" that Flynn now believes is necessary because the state office would be better poised to coordinate with the BLM leadership in other states, he said.
The state director of the BLM in Utah "has asked to be on the team," Flynn said. "We're looking at an alternative project office reporting directly to the (Nevada) state director."
Flynn said before the project can go forward, fundamental questions have to be answered.
"Southern Nevada has been collecting data for several years" in preparation for the required environmental studies, Flynn said. "Well, what is the data that Lincoln County has? You get into whether we have enough data to do the analysis.
"At the BLM, we're internally also conversing, asking if we have all these water projects, how should we be managing the reviews? How many EIS processes should we do? What are the new schedules?"
One way to go forward would be to do one much larger environmental study, Flynn said, or several smaller but "connected and cumulative" studies.
"It just brings up a lot of legal and technical questions," he said. The worst outcome would be an environmental impact statement that could be legally challenged. Thus, "We have to be extremely careful about the approach."
He admitted to feeling some frustration with the process that is "dead in its tracks, or rolled backwards."
The Water Authority hopes to take almost double the 300,000 acre-feet of water it now takes from the Colorado River to supply most of the water needs in Las Vegas and suburbs. Most of the new water supply would come from ground water pumped from wells in Lincoln and White Pine counties. The leadership of Lincoln County signed an agreement last year to work with the Water Authority for the joint development of water resources in the rural county immediately northeast of Clark County.
But residents and political leaders in White Pine County and neighboring areas across the state line in Utah have steadfastly opposed drilling wells and building pipelines in their rural, mountainous area.
One member of the Snake Valley Citizens Alliance, a group formed to oppose the Water Authority's plans, said the delay would benefit his side.
Ken Hill, a teacher's aide in rural Utah's West Desert and an opponent of the Water Authority's plans, said any delays would give scientists more time to study the potential impact of the water draw. Hill and other opponents have argued that definitive studies need to be done to track how the proposed water draw from Lincoln and White Pine counties would affect existing water rights.
"We've always thought that the more actual science going into this decision would be to our benefit," Hill said. "We're hoping that there won't be more objections to doing that study or, if it stretches out very long, the Water Authority would have to start looking for water somewhere else."
The Water Authority has said that if negative impacts to existing rights are detected, it would turn off wells bringing ground water to Las Vegas. The Water Authority also has proposed co-managing water supplies in White Pine County.
Opponents, however, have generally scoffed at the Water Authority's promises and offers.
Jerald Anderson, a farmer in the western Utah community of Eskdale, in the Snake Valley, said slowing down the process would be a good thing. However, he has some concerns about how a revamped environmental assessment would go forward.
He said the potential impacts to Snake Valley, where the Water Authority plans to locate nine wells to take 25,000 acre-feet a year, might get lost in an environmental impact study that would grow to include all of Lincoln County.
"We could be a much smaller part of a much larger process," Anderson said.
Davis, with the Water Authority, said that beginning the environmental study process over again might not affect the date that the hoped-for rural ground water begins flowing to Las Vegas.
While 2015 is the year usually cited for the water to begin coming from the rural areas, the water authority has always considered the date to be a range from 2015 to 2018, he said.
"It is not even certain that you would have to completely restart the process," he said. "You might just have to expand the scope of the EIS."
Technical issues still have to be resolved with Lincoln County, Davis said.
"It's like in the second inning deciding how long the game is going to last," he said. "There's a lot of work to do and you have to build in time for these regulatory processes.
"If anything, these developments underscore why it was so important to start this project when we did."
He said the BLM might decide to keep the comments it already has even if the parameters of the water projects change.
"I think it's just a change," Davis said. "Certainly we may have to do some more work as far as the scoping process, but that's ultimately up to the BLM.
"We've applied for rights of way. How the process works is up to the BLM. What is the bottom line? Is there going to be a delay in the delivery date because of this? The answer is, we don't know. ... It's still early in the process."
He said the Water Authority has been storing water in Southern Nevada and Arizona, "banking" against drought and future needs, so the agency will not be in crisis even if the ground water plans are pushed back. Still, those ground water resources are a central component of the future water supply envisioned by the agency.
Davis said the Water Authority is prepared for more rounds of public comments and additional study, if that is what the BLM says is needed.
"If it requires more work, then it's still worth it."
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