Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006 | 12:34 p.m.
Score it Moapa Valley rancher: 1, Meadow Valley Wash: 0.
After rancher Bob Lewis wheeled heavy equipment onto federal land last year to divert the flow of a slender Lincoln County stream, at least five state and federal agencies opened investigations. No way would Lewis get away with rerouting a stream on BLM land.
Unless he did.
As of this week, all of the agencies have concluded that there is nothing they can do. Some state officials joined a Las Vegas conservationist in arguing that the case reveals a problem in state law.
Lewis went onto the public property to create a couple of artificial lakes for the purpose of irrigating his adjacent private land. His work temporarily dried up the Meadow Valley Wash, which sustains wildlife and cattle for about a hundred miles, from Caliente to the Clark County border, including a fish species protected by the state. Conservationists and some state regulators believe the work left the Meadow Valley sucker without water for several days.
Lewis did not receive any approvals from federal or state agencies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, the Nevada Wildlife Department and the state engineers office all looked into the issue. None has taken any action.
Federal officials tipped John Hiatt, a Las Vegas conservationist, to the diversion of the wash in early December, hoping Hiatt could stir up opposition, which he did. Hiatt said Monday that the lack of response among the agencies is a concern.
"What it shows is that nobody really cares about the Meadow Valley Wash," Hiatt said. "When push comes to shove, it's not clear that anybody will do anything about anything."
The rancher's actions in the wash aren't isolated incidents, he said.
"This is just one of many, many incidences where people have treated federal land as part of their operations, just sort of done whatever they have felt like doing, to make it work for them," Hiatt said.
Lewis, who did not return phone calls Monday, said he was repairing water diversions damaged in last year's heavy winter flooding.
Amy Miller, an EPA team leader, said her office investigated the lagoon construction but decided the EPA was already overextended trying to investigate Union Pacific Railroad construction in the same channel. The company is still repairing its rail line, heavily damaged by last year's floods.
"Basically, the EPA, considering our resources and focusing on the most egregious issues in the watershed, at this time the EPA is not pursuing any enforcement action," Miller said. "An agency like ours, we have to prioritize with our limited resources. We are investing a lot of resources in Meadow Valley Wash investigating the most egregious problem (with the railroad).
"We're trying to do the best we can with what we have. We are very concerned about the Meadow Valley Wash."
Dante Pistone, a spokesman for the Nevada Environmental Protection Division, said his agency didn't see anything that would require a government response.
He said the division inspected Lewis' work Jan. 4, more than a month after the diversion was completed.
"There were no observable environmental impacts," Pistone said. "We don't know of any fish that died or any other environmental impacts."
Jon Sjoberg, a Nevada Wildlife Department biologist, said his agency arrived on the site several days after the diversion. Although he believes fish died, any evidence of dead fish - which, if deliberate, could be at least a misdemeanor - was gone by the time of the inspection.
"By the time we had anybody on the ground, there really wasn't a whole lot left to document," Sjoberg said.
Despite anecdotal reports of a fish kill, "it would have been real tough to take to a Lincoln County justice of the peace," he said. "There wasn't much we could do between the way the statutes are written and the lack of good evidence. We just did not have that chain of evidence."
Sjoberg said the incident might spur discussions on how to prevent future incidents.
"This is not the first instance where we have examples of what should be free-flowing channels getting dried up," he said. "It's symptomatic of the bigger problem. There are questions as to how those diversions are managed in a lot of areas."
The BLM's Ely office, which has jurisdiction over the land, did not return phone calls Monday. But agency representatives said last month that it would not take action until it had a report from the state engineer's office.
State Engineer Hugh Ricci said last month that his office would not be writing such a report because Lewis had rights to use water from the wash, although not necessarily to use bulldozers on public land to build the lakes.
The land-use issue would be for the BLM to act upon, Ricci said.
Hiatt said in this and other cases, natural resources are destroyed on public land with little or no oversight.
"What we need to have happen is that is some egregious cases, someone needs to have their hands slapped," he said. "This is on the public land. It is public land that is owned by all of us, but it is still owned. It has value."
Launce Rake can be reached at 259-4127 or at [email protected].
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