Saturday, July 15, 2006 | 7:48 a.m.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority's plans to pump ground water from White Pine County have roiled the rural area for years - and two sons of Greek immigrants are at the center of the controversy.
George Chachas is mayor of Ely, the county seat. He says he needs more input from voters on the 16-year-old Water Authority applications, which are at the heart of the agency's ground water pumping plan. His brother, John Chachas, is a White Pine County commissioner, and adamantly opposes the Water Authority's plans.
One thing Commissioner Chachas, who sells insurance in Ely, and Mayor Chachas, who runs the town's RadioShack dealership, agree on: The voters of White Pine should have a bigger say in what their local governments do regarding the Las Vegas agency's plans.
Mayor Chachas says he will ask the county commission to put the issue on an upcoming ballot for a referendum .
"Citizens of the community would send a message to the White Pine County Commission," he says.
Says Commissioner Chachas: "You get people who come to the public hearings - a lot of them are the same faces over and over. When you give everyone the power of a vote, that will send a clear message what the entire population feels about the plan."
How divisive is the issue? Enough to have triggered an unsuccessful recall attempt in 2004 for two commissioners and the White Pine district attorney for the sin of just talking to the Water Authority.
The authority says without White Pine County's ground water, Las Vegas and its suburbs will run out of water for new growth within a decade. It also wants the water to diversify its near-total dependence on the drought-stricken Colorado River.
"From a health and safety perspective, to protect the inhabitants of this community, you have to develop a separate supply," Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy says. "If Nevada cannot find a way to develop its ground water resources, it is done. Nevada can shut its doors."
The agency is not just depending on the goodwill of the White Pine populace. It is planning to go forward with hearings in September before the state engineer, who will determine how much the authority can pump from the ground there. The Water Authority has asked to take 91,000 acre-feet annually from the Spring Valley and another 25,000 from the adjacent Snake Valley.
The Las Vegas agency uses 300,000 acre-feet a year from the Colorado River at Lake Mead. One acre-foot is equal to about 326,000 gallons.
The Water Authority also is buying up ranches and their water supplies in White Pine's Spring Valley. During the last week, Mulroy announced the authority would buy the 7,200-acre Robison ranch from water broker Vidler Water Co. for $22 million. Along with the land comes 12,000 acre-feet of surface water rights, 1,300 acre-feet of existing ground water rights, and Vidler's applications for another 55,000 acre-feet from the ground in the valley.
The authority also announced it would buy a 1,400-acre ranch from a family trust in the Spring Valley for $4.9 million. With the second ranch comes 1,700 acre-feet of surface water and 1,800 acre-feet of ground water.
The point of the ranch purchases is not to divert their water to Las Vegas but to give the Water Authority tools to manage the hydrology in the Spring Valley to eliminate or mitigate negative effects, Mulroy says.
"We can balance our portfolio, protect the ranches, protect the wildlife," she says. Rainfall and snowmelt now used by the ranches can flow into the aquifer, she says. "We did not buy these resources for exportation. We bought these resources for management This is water intended for environmental protection."
While the water may be crucial for Southern Nevada, the issue is much more complicated for White Pine residents and voters. On Thursday night, residents gathered at an Ely City Council meeting and for six hours debated the pros and cons of the Water Authority's plans.
Ely is home to half of the county population of 9,500 . The City Council could have agreed Thursday to take $1.25 million from the Water Authority and withdraw its formal opposition to the ground water pumping plans, but the council quashed a motion to immediately accept the money.
The White Pine County Commission has similarly, at least so far, declined the Water Authority's offer of $12 million - money the cash-strapped county could use for development.
While the money would be welcome, Commissioner Chachas does not like the Water Authority plans: "I know what damage this pipeline would do to us. I just don't trust this project as being good for White Pine County I was a commissioner when they filed here in 1989, and I'm a commissioner today. I have lived through this saga for 16 years."
Mulroy says the county will be tougher on the issue than the town. Most of the protests, and the most vehement ones, come from ranchers in the rural Snake Valley in southeast White Pine County, on the Nevada-Utah state line, she says.
The authority has promised that farming, ranching and wildlife in the targeted valleys will not be significantly affected by the plans.
Regardless of what the commission or City Council do, the Water Authority board will vote Thursday on the proposed agreement to give $1.25 million to the town. J.C. Davis, Water Authority spokesman, explains that the town "effectively left the window open for future consideration of the agreement" at the last council meeting.
The authority does not have a statement on bringing the issue before White Pine County voters because the mechanisms of how or when that might happen are unclear, Davis says.
Mulroy says that whatever happens, her agency will continue trying to work with the county's local governments.
It won't always be easy, she says: "It's going to be a wild and bumpy ride for a while."
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