Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2005 | 9:49 a.m.
The battle between the Southern Nevada Water Authority and residents of White Pine County opposed to the agency's plans for bringing water from the county to Las Vegas continued during a sometimes contentious meeting of an advisory committee Monday.
The Water Authority hopes to win federal and state approval for its plan to as much as double the amount of water flowing to Las Vegas in a $2 billion system of wells and pipelines to bring groundwater to the urban area. The plan has support in Lincoln County just to the north of Clark County, but a political insurgency in White Pine County farther north is fighting the proposal.
The agency has this year held meetings of the Integrated Water Planning Advisory Committee, which had been scheduled to wrap up its recommendations to the Water Authority board on development proposals, costs and other issues earlier this year. The meetings continue, with one scheduled next month, however, as the thorny issue of White Pine's water resources splits the panel.
Dean Baker, a rancher and representative to the committee from White Pine County, proposed requiring the Water Authority to count every spring, well and bog in White Pine County before the agency could begin drilling test wells or production wells.
Baker said he believes the Water Authority will find the water it is seeking in the county -- but fears the ultimate impact on existing resources in the Snake Valley, which is the epicenter of resistance to the plan.
"If you drill enough holes, I think you can put the water out," he said. "I'm not sure how long it will last. I've spent my life there and drilled a lot of wells. I don't believe the water's there."
Baker brought an analysis of water flows from springs in California's Owens Valley that showed a dramatic drop-off after the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began pumping rural water from that area to its urban users in the 1970s.
"In our valley, the springs have been sensitive to pumping," Baker said. "How many acres of meadow are you going to dry up?
"How are you going to know what you are going to leave unless you do a thorough outside inventory?"
Baker has the support of other members of the 29-member committee, among them Glen Zelch, Lincoln County's representative. Zelch said that in his rural area one spring pumping out 8 million gallons daily was counted only by the U.S. Geological Survey this year.
Without a similar inventory in White Pine County, impacts may go unregistered, Zelch said.
But Water Authority officials fear that the inventory proposal could stall what they believe is a critically needed resource program.
Pat Mulroy, Water Authority general manager, has insisted for the last several years that what happens in White Pine and Lincoln counties will not be a repetition of Owens Valley.
"If the state engineer," the arbitrator of groundwater use in Nevada, "sees a negative impact, he will stop us pumping."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also would shut down pumps if wildlife were affected by pumping, she said.
Richard Bunker, a member of the Colorado River Commission, a sister agency to the Water Authority, and a nonvoting member of the advisory committee, defended the agency's plans.
"We don't only have an obligation, we have an absolute, state, solid right to go up and try" to bring water down from the rural area, Bunker said.
He said the Water Authority plans to dig wells that are hundreds of feet deeper than those used by farmers and ranchers in the White Pine area now. Baker, among other ranchers, "is going to be the first person to notice" when water stops flowing.
"They're going to be watching exactly what this pumping will do," he said.
Bunker said the region has a number of safeguards against damaging impact from the groundwater development program.
"The Water Authority has made a significant number of promises to the people of White Pine County."
Mulroy said those promises include the vow to stop pumping where impacts are shown, to create a two-county commission to oversee yearly pumping levels from the Water Authority's wells, and to do a thorough review of the groundwater program after 75 years -- by which time the Water Authority would have paid for the $2 billion investment, a cost that could grow to $3 billion with contingency costs and inflation over the next 30 years.
"That is an absolute fallback Southern Nevada has to have," Mulroy said.
Mulroy argued that impacts to water users in Utah should not block the Water Authority's plans. She said that although most of the water in the Snake Valley comes from Nevada, 75 percent of the irrigated farmland is on the Utah side.
"If Nevada does not get aggressive with Utah, we will have ceded Nevada water to Utah," she warned.
Mulroy, however, said she is not against an inventory of water sources in Nevada. She said ongoing studies, including the required environmental impact analysis needed to begin construction of the wells and pipelines in rural Nevada, would provide that information.
Baker said he is concerned that those who are doing the inventories now are beholden to the Water Authority and what he wants is an independent, outside analysis.
The argument at times became emotional.
"We have an obligation to do this," insisted Bryan Nix, a former Boulder City councilman and former Water Authority board member. "We don't have any choices ... We can't stop growth. The Water Authority certainly isn't in charge of that, and there doesn't seem to be any appetite for that.
"We're asking our neighbors to go out and see if there's resources to share. We have protections that never existed in the Owens Valley. We have an obligation to go forward and see what's there."
Gary Parea, a White Pine County commissioner who came with a half-dozen neighbors to Las Vegas for the meeting, took the opposite perspective.
"It's amazing that there's not more support on this committee for Dean's (Baker) proposal," he said. "How will you know whether or not you're harming the residents without an inventory?"
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