Las Vegas shouldn’t bank on rural water

Gleeful headlines and statements from the Southern Nevada Water Authority belie the truth about the state engineer’s April 16 decision regarding Clark County’s plan to import water from rural Nevada.

What the decision really indicates is that despite the best hydrologists money can buy, the water authority could not convince the state engineer that its models and projections were accurate. Instead, the state engineer’s ruling shows that the water authority was not even close.

The water authority claimed that 91,000 acre-feet per year could be extracted from the aquifer under Spring Valley without damaging the high desert environment, and that the full 91,000 was essential to its pipeline project’s financial viability.

Rejecting the authority’s claims the state engineer granted less than half the requested amount, permitting only 40,000 acre-feet a year to be pumped for a 10-year test period and requiring monitoring of environmental impacts to determine what Spring Valley can support. He also required a five-year baseline study before test pumping can begin.

The authority has crowed about getting 60,000 acre-feet a year of water, but that’s a blatant distortion of the ruling. Only if 10 years of test pumping demonstrates that 40,000 acre-feet a year of pumping causes no undue impacts and that an additional 20,000 acre-feet annually also would not cause undue impacts, is there any chance of the additional 20,000 acre-feet. Since current information indicates that even 40,000 acre-feet of pumping would cause undue impacts and have to be curtailed, it’s virtually certain that no additional water will be permitted.

Given how wildly wrong the water authority’s projections have been, the public cannot have any confidence in its water modeling or projections of this massive project’s costs.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has never released any thorough budget or accounting of costs for this project. But it’s clear that the state engineer’s decision just blew a gasket on the project’s cost of water. The water authority must stop dissembling. Nevadans deserve more than media spin, they deserve a real accounting of all the costs — environmental, social and financial — associated with this massive project and an accurate projection of the project’s real potential to deliver water.

Remember, the state engineer did not determine the actual availability of water in his ruling. Water rights are simply a hunting license to try to find water.

In other words, the authority did not acquire definite, reliable water rights under this ruling — it merely acquired an opportunity to determine how much water really is there.

In that light, things look grim for the water authority. Seeps and springs already are drying up in the area. The state engineer’s ruling plainly states that confidence in predictions of long-term water availability is low. He added that dire consequences could result if municipal development is based on the supposed amount of water in a water permit. At bottom, the state engineer was unable to determine whether or not there is real water to back up the authority’s water permit. Only long-term test pumping can demonstrate how much water can be taken from the aquifer on a sustainable basis. Las Vegas cannot afford to base its future on a roll of the dice.

Meanwhile, farmers and ranchers in Spring Valley know from a lifetime of first-hand experience rather than models that the water simply isn’t there. They oppose the project and want to prevent the fragile and beautiful Great Basin from becoming a dust bowl. The National Park Service agrees and has stated that there isn’t enough water in the area to satisfy water authority’s demands.

Let’s be clear. The state engineer’s ruling demonstrates that the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s numbers simply aren’t credible.

Bob Fulkerson is executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.