Hearings on rural water delayed

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 | 7:14 a.m.

CARSON CITY - State Engineer Hugh Ricci has some unkind words for the way the Las Valley Water District is pursuing its case to win the right to pump more than 150,000 acre-feet of water from rural Nevada.

In an order issued last week setting a hearing on the district's applications, Ricci denied some of the district's requests, saying at one point that a district request would "prove detrimental to the public interest."

The state engineer said the water district has given the impression for the past 17 years "that these applications have been on the back burner and would not be actively pursued." But, he noted, the district has been doing significant work in the last few years to prepare for hearings.

Ricci denied a district request to start the hearings this summer. He denied a request to hold one hearing on applications in five different areas of White Pine and Lincoln counties. And he denied a request by the district that he said would have hurt other people with water applications in the area.

Ricci set hearings to begin on Sept. 11 on the district's water applications in Spring Valley in White Pine County. The district is asking for 91,224 acre-feet of water from the valley as part of its plan to supply water for the Las Vegas Valley.

An acre-foot is enough water to sustain a family of five for a year in Las Vegas.

Hearings on the applications in other areas will come after the September hearing. Ricci said a second hearing will be conducted later on the application to draw 50,680 acre-feet of water from the Snake Valley. A subsequent hearing will be held on the applications to draw 11,548 acre-feet each from Delmar, Dry Lake and Cave basins.

The district's applications have sparked more than 830 protests.

Ricci also said he was concerned that the district was not going to pursue the applications as filed but to make changes to diversion points.

"The state engineer is very concerned about the expenditure of significant amounts of time and resources being spent on hearings on applications that are not a true expression of the intent of the applicant (the district)," Ricci said.

He said he was worried about the cost and time if the district was going to make changes in the water diversion sites. He said he hoped the district would file any change of location before the hearing.

J.C. Davis, spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the water district's sister agency, said it respects the decision of the state engineer to delay the hearings until September.

Davis said the authority officials noted two years ago that it was "accelerating our plans because of the Colorado River drought."

He also said the district, after the hearings, would conduct studies to determine the best places to drill the well. He said a "change of diversion" was common in these applications and was "essential when developing a municipal water supply to sustain the ground water rights you have."

Stephen Palmer, assistant regional solicitor for the Interior Department, said he backed Ricci's decision.

"It gives us more time to focus," said Palmer, who will represent the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Simeon Herskovits, director of the Western Environmental Law Center, said he saw some things in the state engineer's order as a "victory" for those protesting. He said he would have liked to have seen the hearing delayed longer but setting it in September instead of June was a "positive step."

He said the ruling to have the hearing of Spring Valley first and hold the other valley applications until later was "better for the public." Splitting the hearings is "better all around in developing evidence," Herskovits said.

Ricci served notice that the applications would be evaluated at the hearing as they are described "and not on some unidentified proposed future well field."