Friday, June 10, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.
Six rural counties have drafted a plan to create a centralized water authority that would control and protect the water resources in those counties against the huge needs of Southern Nevada, rural county officials said.
The timing of the proposal is directly tied to the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan to pump water from White Pine and Lincoln counties to Clark County through a pipeline, county commissioners said.
The proposal, drafted by select commissioners of Elko, Esmeralda, Eureka, Lander, Nye and White Pine counties and released on Thursday, calls for creating the Central Nevada Regional Water Authority, an entity that would oversee water resources in those counties, according to a copy of the proposal.
Commissioners from those counties are scheduled to vote on the matter in coming weeks.
The creation of the water authority would protect the water in those counties from the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which some commissioners view as grabbing up the state's water without regard for the individuals living in those areas, officials said.
Mickey Yarbro, Lander county commissioner, viewed the creation of a legal water authority as a protectionist move against Southern Nevada water interests.
"We have a lot of water, but we want to make sure we keep it and that it doesn't go to the cities," Yarbro said. "This will protect our water that we are going to need down the road 30 or 40 years from now."
Yarbro said Lander County also shares water resources with neighboring counties, and he wants to ensure that Lander county would protect its water even when a neighboring county sells off its rights of the shared resource.
The functions of the authority include managing and conserving the water in those counties, monitoring the water supply for drinking and non-consumptive uses and drafting regional water plans.
Vince Alberta, spokesman of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said Clark County will likely not be affected by the creation of the Central Water Authority because Southern Nevada is already first in line in filing water applications in water basins in the east and the south, and therefore has the rights to those water claims.
"That will not change" with the creation of this new authority, he said.
"The water is a resource for all the citizens of Nevada and it is not dictated by county lines," he said. "Water goes where the water is needed."
But some rural commissioners believe the water should stay where it is.
Gary Perea, White Pine county commissioner, said the new authority -- if approved -- would assist rural counties such as his with drafting water plans that aim to conserve water for future generations and could get rural counties' interests represented at the state level.
And, as importantly, it would allow the rural counties to draw from a pool of water experts that counties either can't afford or don't have at their disposal now, he said.
Perea said the rural authority is being put forward now because of the proposed pipeline that could pump 100,000 to 180,000 acre-feet of water from Lincoln and White Pine counties into Las Vegas each year.
His county couldn't keep up with the demand, Perea said.
"There is not enough water to sustain the needs of the area," he said.
Eureka County Commissioner David Pastorino said that water resources in Eureka's Diamond Valley are already decreasing substantially because of irrigation, and that the water in the county needs to be guarded.
"I have nothing against the Southern Nevada Water Authority, but I don't want to get into a situation where we lose all our water," he said.
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