Supreme Court rules on Las Vegas water applications

By Cy Ryan

Thursday, June 17, 2010 | 1:36 p.m.

CARSON CITY – It’s back to square one for the Southern Nevada Water Authority in its efforts to pump thousands of acre feet of water from rural Nevada to serve the Las Vegas area.

The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that the state engineer must reopen the protest periods to allow residents and companies in rural Nevada to again present their objections to the applications of the water authority.

Both sides said they were pleased with the decision that reversed a previous ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court.

Scott Huntley, manager of communications for the water authority, said the court’s ruling maintains the viability of the original applications filed in 1989. It means the state engineer will again reopen the case.

Huntley said the authority is seeking between 150,000 and 200,000 acre feet. An acre foot is 325,851 gallons of water. But there are no immediate plans to build the pipelines from rural areas to Las Vegas, he said.

The applications were submitted when Las Vegas was among the fastest-growing cities in the country, but growth has since leveled off.

Abby Johnson of the Great Basin Water Network said reopening the protest period was “essentially what we wanted.” It gives the network and others another chance to raise objections to the “water grab plans” of the water authority.

She said those who want to protest can raise questions on whether the water is needed and if the project is economically feasible.

In February, the Supreme Court ruled that former state Engineer Tracy Taylor violated the law in 2007 when he approved rights for the water authority to withdraw 40,000 acre feet of water a year from Spring Valley in eastern Nevada.

The water authority asked the court to reconsider its ruling. In its new decision Thursday, the court said the state engineer must reopen the protest period.

After the February ruling, the water authority resubmitted all of its 1989 applications.

Johnson said 2,300 protests were entered. She said the new ruling would permit the network to gather more objections.

The original applications from the water authority sought 800,000 acre feet but that has been whittled down.

Justice James Hardesty, who wrote the unanimous decision, said “voiding the state engineer’s ruling and preventing him from taking further action would be inequitable to the Southern Nevada Water Authority and future similarly situated applications.

“And applicants cannot be punished for the state engineer’s failure to follow his statutory duty,” the court said. “Similarly, it would be inequitable to the original and subsequent protestants to conclude that the state engineer’s failure to take action results in approval of the applications over 14 years after their protests were filed.”

The court originally ruled the state engineer failed to rule on the applications by the authority within the required one year. The Legislature in 2003 amended the law to permit the state engineer to postpone action on pending applications made for a municipal use.

District Judge Norman C. Robison ruled the 2003 law applied to the applications filed in 1989 and he upheld the ruling of former engineer Tracy Taylor to approve the withdraw of 40,000 acre feet from Spring Valley.

The court said it is sending the case back to Judge Robison with directions to resubmit it to the state engineer to reopen the case.