In an amazing reversal of fortune rural Nevada won a major victory this week in the quarter century old fight against the Las Vegas Water Grab.
In a stunningly strong decision, Senior Judge Robert Estes of the Seventh Judicial Court of Nevada declared the State Engineer’s decision “subjective, unscientific, arbitrary and capricious”, and “unfair to following generations of Nevadans” and “not in the public interest”.
Estes resoundingly rejected the Nevada State Engineer’s allocation of some 84,000 acre feet per year of groundwater in four rural valleys that the Southern Nevada Water Authority planned to pump and pipe to Las Vegas.
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“I am ecstatic,” said Abby Johnson, President of the Baker, Nevada-based Great Basin Water Network. “This decision should send a clear message to SNWA and Nevada leaders that this project is doomed to fail and should be cancelled now in order to save Las Vegas ratepayers billions of wasted dollars”.
Estes’ ruling requires the State Engineer to recalculate reassess the water available for appropriation from Spring Valley to assure that “the basin will reach equilibrium between discharge and recharge within a reasonable time”, and to “recalculate the appropriations for Cave, Dry Lake, and Delamar Valleys to avoid over appropriations or conflicts with down-gradient, existing water rights”.
The Court also required that the State Engineer add Millard and Juab counties, Utah in the mitigation plans for the groundwater development project because they will be affected by the proposed pumping from Spring Valley. Estes was highly critical of the project monitoring, management and mitigation plans, finding that the Engineer had, in effect, “relinquished his responsibilities” to SNWA. Noting the lack of triggers in the plan requiring actions to minimize damages from groundwater drawdown, Estes wrote “if there is insubstantial evidence and it is premature to set triggers and thresholds, it is premature to grant water rights”.
Steve Erickson, Utah Coordinator for the Great Basin Water Network, lead plaintiff in the case, called the ruling “a huge victory for the families and communities of these rural valleys in Nevada and Utah, and a vindication of our collective efforts to resist a massively misguided and destructive project”. “This ruling affirms our long-held positions that groundwater withdrawals of this huge scale are not sustainable and can’t be effectively managed or mitigated, will pre-empt existing water rights, and will cause permanent, widespread damage to the environment, the economy, the health, and the quality of life in the Great Basin,” Erickson said.
The ruling is the first legal victory for opponents of the water grab since the SNWA filed on all unclaimed water rights in northern and central Nevada in 1989.
Since then opponents to the water grab have waged delaying actions on the state and federal level losing at almost every turn
Indeed until five years ago opponents of the massive $15 billion pipeline that would transfer millions of gallons of water from the rural south to the forever thirsty south seemed like a fait accompli and the delaying tactics had all but run their course.
The SNWA flushed with Las Vegas cash and backed by Clark County’s political clout had begun to peel off the once united front of rural Nevada counties and buy up ranches critics characterized as legal bribes.
Then struck the Great Recession.
“The downturn proved our point,” Johnson added. “The line that Las Vegas was always going to grow was proven wrong.”
The downturn for Las Vegas also raised the serious question of whether the city could actually afford the $15 billion project or muster the political will to raise water rates to pay for it.
“$15 billion is a lot of money even for Las Vegas,” Johnson said.
Just as the SNWA was recovering from the recession, opponents of the water grab scored their first political victory when Utah Governor Gary Herbert reversed himself and refused to sign a SNWA sponsored water sharing agreement with Nevada. Instead Herbert took up the banner of the Great Basin ranchers.
“At the end of the day, when it comes down to those people who have the most to lose — it’s their water, their lifestyle, their livelihood — I can’t in good conscience sign the agreement,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
The people out in the west desert, in Juab, Millard and Tooele counties, the county commissioners don’t want it, the people don’t want it,” he said. “Estimates are 80 percent of the people don’t want it.”
Herbert’s decision was praised not only in Utah but also in rural Nevada where ranchers, miners and townsfolk have been fighting the water grab for almost 20 years.
Until Herbert’s decision opponents of the water grab felt completely alone in their battle. In the last year, the estimated $15 billion pipeline had won approval from the Nevada State water engineer; the project environmental impact study was okayed ; and the project had the endorsement of the Nevada political establishment.
If not reversing the Nevada Water Engineer out right, Judge Estes ruling cripples it.
“Yes the SNWA will probably appeal,” said long time opponent Denys Coyle. “But it is a whole lot harder to reverse a judge’s ruling than it is to sustain it. For the first time in 25 years we are the winners and it feels good to finally be on top.”