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Thursday, May 08, 2003 Cover story: High and dryLincoln County ends water war with Las Vegas--but residents call it a sellout
By Heidi Walters
"Water is the true wealth in a dry land; without it land is worthless or nearly so. And if you control the water, you control the land that depends on it." --Wallace Stegner
PIOCHE--The air inside the Silver Café this cold April morning carries the faint scent of carrion. A family sits at a table, trapped in a flood of sunlight coming in the window. The cook, trailed by a cloud of steam, clunks plates of food on the ledge between the dining room and kitchen. The waitress, in her black restaurant T-shirt, moves from the ledge to the tables and back to the counter. The coffee's hot, the biscuits and gravy gratifying. Two old cattlemen sit at the end of the counter by the kitchen window, their sand-colored hats traditional, their jeans worn, their boots crusty with dried mud and their bright-colored Western shirts flashy with intricate patterns and pearl snap buttons. Heads bent in toward each other, they talk in that comforting low-key rumble of old friends sorting out the week's news. It's no doubt meatier fare than the uninspired writings of the local paper, the weekly Lincoln County Record, a copy of which can be had from a tin bucket on the counter if you drop a quarter in. Still, the Record's April 24 edition paints a fair enough picture of Lincoln County as it sits today--4,200 people in 10,635 square miles (98.2 percent of which is public land), 150 miles north of Las Vegas and wishing it was about as many years back in time. The top story says the U.S. Department of Energy's just cut in half the $800,000 it gives the county each year to conduct independent studies of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. The other story says the County Commission's holding a public hearing on its draft habitat conservation plan, a document that will enable development in the county. Let's look inside: There's the "Caliente Chit Chat," of course. Calls for entries in the fair book cover contest, for new kindergarteners to register for school, and for farmers to renew their crop insurance. Oh, the Caliente senior center's menu "What's Cookin'" promises a tasty week--baked chicken on Wednesday! Here's a two-page spread with photos of local kids parading their cows, horses, pigs and sheep at the Clark County Fair. There's a wrap-up of the Easter Bunny's visit, ads for Mardi Gras bashes in Pioche and a Mary Kay ad--"Beauty and brains." The personals section is boring but useful--a bunch of substance abuse meeting notices running the length of the page. There's help wanted--bartender--at the Alamo Club. And it looks like Nurse Jean Lucht is coming to the county next week, and the vet, too. There's one obituary: John E. Weberg, 62, who was born, and died, in California but who grew up in Caliente "where he enjoyed hunting and fishing." Later in the obit is this: "In 1989 John and [his wife] Bonnie were among the first former Lincoln County residents to make [a] significant donation to the water fight against Las Vegas." Maybe he died of a broken heart. Because that water fight with Las Vegas is finally over in Lincoln County--officially, as of March 17--and some people say the county's sold them down the river. That's probably what those two old cowpokes at the counter are talking about. How, after 14 years of fighting off the Las Vegas Valley Water District's attempt to take about every last drop of unallocated groundwater in Lincoln County (and Nye, White Pine and rural Clark counties), the Lincoln County Commission has agreed to quit fighting and to cooperate. In short, Lincoln County and the Las Vegas Valley Water District have divvied up the water rights applications each had filed in Lincoln County and dropped their respective protests. Also, Lincoln County has waived its right to ever again protest, or support any citizen or third party in protesting, the district's water-gathering activities. This means the Las Vegas Valley Water District and Southern Nevada Water Authority can begin reviving the old dream of building a pipeline across the eastern part of the state to bring more water to the ever-thirsty Clark County metropolis. All they need is to get White Pine County on board now--and they're talking. But that may not be all those cowboys are discussing. The future also is looking bright for the Lincoln County government's own crafty plan to act on its public-private partnership with Vidler Water Co. to develop and sell water at lucrative prices to big development projects. Siphoning rural water off to the big city. Selling water--a basic human necessity, a right--for profit. Yep, there's plenty to talk about these days in Lincoln County. More coffee?
* * *
Actually, the Lincoln County Record's motto, on the front page, sums things up pretty well: "Nothing is politically right that is morally wrong."--Abe Lincoln. The Record came alive, in its March 27 edition, to criticize the County Commission's deal with the Las Vegas water district. It praised the two commissioners, Tommy Rowe and Ronda Hornbeck, who voted against the agreement, but said about Tim Perkins, Hal Keaton and Spencer Hafen: "Unfortunately the remaining commissioners were unable to stand up to the pressure of Clark County. ... By signing the contract, Lincoln County has allowed Clark County to enter our county and take half of all future groundwater."
* * *
Lincoln County is miles and miles of lonely, lovely desert hills and valleys, interspersed with watery canyons where pastures and alfalfa fields turn a shocking green during spring irrigation. Dark green rivers of cottonwoods and willows fill these canyons, and springs trickle out of the rocks. From Moapa, just north of Las Vegas, you can follow the mostly dirt road north along the railroad track through intermittently creek-filled Meadow Valley Wash, cross into Lincoln County, and go all the way to the creek's headwaters in Spring Valley about three hours away. There, more than a hundred springs gurgle up into the meadows, forming deep, grass-covered sinkholes that cowboys claim are bottomless and can swallow a cow whole. The springwater, say hydrologists, could be as old as 50,000 years. It rises from a deep carbonate aquifer, which may stretch from Idaho to Death Valley in California, to fill long recreational reservoirs and drench those fields and pastures. Or, you might take U.S. 93, the Great Basin Highway that hugs the Desert National Wildlife Range for a spell. It takes you north across a mesmerizing expanse of creosote and heat waves into the mostly empty Coyote Springs Valley. Here, 60 miles from Las Vegas, tortoises crawl unmolested and the steep shadowy mountains on either side are admired mainly by coyotes. It's hard to imagine a sudden city of 50,000 or more people milling about, washing their cars and swinging their golf clubs. But that could happen soon. A bit more driving, and you come upon the first pool of water. Only, at the moment, this lower lake in the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge is just a bowl of white earth because of the drought. But the upper lakes have water. Once past them you come to Alamo, a ranching community of about 400 people. The water agreement doesn't touch the water rights here in the Pahranagat Valley. But some residents fear that any massive pumping from that deep carbonate aquifer, whether by Las Vegas or Lincoln-Vidler, in the surrounding basins could drain their valley dry.
* * *
It's early evening, and campers are setting up tents and getting ready to build their campfires along upper Pahranagat Lake. Soon the lake will glint like metal through the dusk-black trees. North several miles in Alamo, Great Basin Foods is doing a brisk business. Some tourists ask one of the clerks a question, and after they leave she heaves a big sigh and says, "I oughta start charging for questions." "You should," I say. "Except--well, I actually was going to ask you a question." She's nice, says ask away. "What do you think about the water agreement between Lincoln County and the Las Vegas water folks?" Oh, she's happy to talk about that--off the record, though. The words "water agreement" draw a small crowd of other willing talkers. "What `agreement'?" says one woman. "I didn't agree to that." A man adds: "They sold us out." Several other people murmur assent, and customer Susian Hughes says that she just thinks the commissioners moved too fast on it. "They should have taken more time," she says. Someone else says the commissioners seemed pressured. Susian and her husband, Kevin, say they're tired of their kids having to commute to Las Vegas for jobs. But they want to retain some of their rural lifestyle. "I'd like to see it grow," says Kevin. "Maybe to about 2,000 people, so we can have some industry." Susian says Commissioner Tim Perkins, a chief negotiator in the deal, "is real nice" and has been good to work with on other issues. "It might not be a bad agreement, either, but I just don't know," she says. Commissioner Perkins lives down the road a short ways from the store. It's dusk, and he and his wife are just sitting down to dinner in front of the television, but he agrees to chat awhile about the agreement. He's pleasant, even though he's weary from driving a truck all week (his job) and a bit tattered from trimming trees around his property all day. So, how's he feel about his neighbors muttering dark things about him these days? "My wife was raised here," he says. "I was born and raised in Overton. I'm a fifth-generation Southern Nevadan." The elementary school down in Moapa, he adds, is named after his grandfather, Ute. V. Perkins. "I think it's a good agreement," he says. "It was a hard decision, it affected me. But my job is to do what's right for the county. I know I made people upset, but I'm comfortable with what I did." Did he feel pressured by Las Vegas? "No," he says. "I didn't feel like I had to do it, but I thought this was good for Lincoln County. We've been fighting this since 1989. And what people don't realize is, all the protests they filed are what brought the Southern Nevada Water Authority to the table. And that's what the state water engineer wants, for them to sit down at the table and work things out." Perkins says they worked on the agreement for almost a year. "There were times when we almost got up and walked out," he says. And he wanted more, too--for instance, he wanted to add a provision saying if groundwater pumping by Las Vegas started to affect wells, then the water authority must be required to make them whole. "But the more we talked about it, we realized that's the state engineer's job, to protect a senior well." For the three commissioners who voted for the agreement, it was a means to move forward. "This agreement gives us the opportunity to develop our water, and provide some opportunity in the county," says Perkins. "This is a desert, and water is gold. Without it, you cannot develop the ground." Well, Lincoln County doesn't have that much private ground. But with the Lincoln County Land Act of 2000, in which Congress told the BLM to release into private ownership 13,500 acres in Lincoln near the border with Mesquite, the Lincoln County Commission had hopes for a new development that would bring in more tax revenue. With Vidler Water Co.'s backing, the county applied for 14,500 acre-feet of water rights in Tule Valley north of Mesquite, with plans to sell the water to the new community and also to a proposed new power plant. Those projects have stalled, with the state engineer so far granting only 2,000 acre-feet of water and the land sale up in the air because of an environmental lawsuit. Lincoln County has higher hopes for a project that developer Harvey Whittemore's working on that would straddle the Clark-Lincoln border in Coyote Springs Valley: a master-planned resort with multiple golf courses and 50,000 people on the Clark County side and possibly 50,000 on the Lincoln County side, says Perkins. Coyote Springs is going to need water, and Lincoln and Vidler want to provide it from some of the basins they've retained water rights applications to under the new water agreement. They just need to get the permits and work out the details. "We're working hard on bringing some industry here," says Perkins. "We're tired of our kids driving out of here. They graduate from high school and they go to Utah or Las Vegas for college, and when they're out of school they can't come back."
* * *
Twelve miles north of Alamo, U.S. 93 veers east. State Route 375 heads west toward Rachel and Area 51, crossing Tikapoo Valley where the Las Vegas Valley Water District gets to retain its applications for water rights under the water agreement, exclusive of Lincoln County. Heading east on 93, the creosote-spidery landscape soon gives way to the mint-green of the Great Basin sage and rabbitbrush. The road climbs steadily across a plateau stuffed with granite boulders and shadowed by the peaks of the Pahroc Range. Then it drops down again into a thick Joshua tree forest where, if you're lucky, your car will startle a golden eagle into a lurching big-winged hop away from its roadkill lunch. Back up, to the pinyons and junipers of Oak Springs Summit. Then down into the canyon to Caliente, the biggest town in Lincoln County with its 1,200 people. Caliente (named for its hotsprings) flourished in the early 1900s when the railroad came in, then languished after trains got faster and more efficient and quit stopping (though they still roar through town and Meadow Valley Wash at regular intervals). Here, you're within picnic distance of five state parks, a handful of swimming holes, hot springs and those long, winding, lush canyons with their rivers of green. Near the end of Rainbow Canyon heading south back down Meadow Valley Wash, there's even an organic apple farm. Sure, some of the shallow waterways around here are also stained rusty by cowshit and urine, and desert shrubs in some places are bit down to the quick. Caliente and these nearby narrow, cultivated valleys are not included in the Lincoln-Las Vegas Valley Water District water agreement. But all around them, just over the ridges, lie basins where one or the other (or both) has applications to pump groundwater.
* * *
Francis Lytle sits confined to his chair, hooked up to an oxygen tank, inside the Intellectual Cowboy Bookstore in Caliente. "Be careful of that table, it'll jump out and get ya," he says with a laugh to each customer who bumps into a small table laden with breakable trinkets and candles. A lung disease has slowed Lytle down, but he used to work on the land he's owned for 40 years in Clover Valley. It's 10 miles by way of the dirt road that parallels the railroad tracks running into the canyon to the east--it's also one of the basins where Lincoln County has retained its applications for water rights, and where the Las Vegas water district has bowed out. A year ago Lytle and his wife bought the bookstore. It has a small section devoted to the usual used-book suspects: Westerns, romances, spy novels. But they also keep it stocked with new books from the University of Nevada Press. It's a good selection, stuffed with regional relevance and works from native Nevadans: Robert Laxalt's lyrical portrayals of Nevada Basques, local boy Ralph Denton's oral history A Liberal Conscience, a collection of Joanne De Longchamps' poetry. Maybe someday there'll be an expose on the shelf about Nevada water deals. "I think it stinks," Francis says of the recent water agreement between Lincoln County and the Las Vegas water purveyors. "The county commissioners didn't do the right thing. Now, if Las Vegas gets the water, all this"--he gestures out the window--"could dry up and there'll be nothing here. There isn't much here now anyway. If it gets too bad here, I'll sell my water rights. But not to Vidler or Las Vegas. I'll sell them to someone else, a rancher here. And let them deal with it." Though he was raised in Utah, Lytle has relatives up and down Lincoln County.
* * *
Now, let's get one thing straight: Nobody dries up anybody's water until the state engineer says so. Wait, that's not quite right. Try this: All the water in Nevada belongs to the public. If you want some, you apply to the state engineer for the right to use it--as long as it's not already allocated to someone else. As the saying goes, it's "first in time, first in right." Oh, you can still apply--but you might be in line behind the first guy who filed. Plus, you must have a specific project in mind. And then the state engineer decides whether you actually get the water. It is considered one of the most thorough and protective water laws in the West. "We look at four criteria to determine whether to approve or reject an application," says State Engineer Hugh Ricci. "One, is there water available to appropriate? Two, will it have an impact on existing rights? Three, does it conflict with domestic wells and other permits? And four, does it threaten to prove detrimental to the general public?" That last criteria wasn't in place back in 1989, when the Las Vegas Valley Water District filed 148 applications with the state engineer to appropriate unallocated water from 27 basins in a 20,000-square-mile stretch of east-central and Southern Nevada and pipe it to the Las Vegas Valley. The district had made the filings quietly, without notice to the counties, and the furor that followed drowned out the district's explanation that it had to be sneaky because otherwise someone like Los Angeles might have beat them to it. And L.A. had snooped around in the past. The district's filings were perfectly legal. But 3,600 protests flooded the state engineer's office amid cries of "Remember the Owens Valley." The Owens Valley, recall, is the site of Los Angeles' infamous rural water grab in eastern California in the early 1900s. Now dust and perpetual contention dominate that landscape, even though (after nearly a century of ire and lawsuits) they eventually signed an agreement to cooperate. In answer to some concerns, the Las Vegas Valley Water District withdrew some applications and reduced its potential diversions to 16 basins in the four counties. And it began to think seriously about other water sources, such as conserving water in the Las Vegas Valley, pursuing more Colorado River water and making water storage deals with other Western states. The Cooperative Water Project--as the water district dubbed the rural water-diversion scheme--crept to the background. In the ensuing 14-year water cold war, the district's applications and the protests lingered side by side in the state engineer's office. During this time, however, protesters successfully pushed for a new state law amending Nevada water law so the state engineer has to consider impacts to the general public. In a system where water has always been allocated to "the greatest good for the greatest number of people"--i.e., cities--this addition to the law says the state engineer must also consider potential impacts of water withdrawals to the economy, environment and quality of life in the basin of origin. In 1999, the water district and the rural counties attempted a truce, in which the water district said it would work with the individual counties to reach agreements that would protect their economic viability and water futures while allowing the district to appropriate water. But Lincoln County backed out and hooked up with Vidler Water Co., a private water broker. Together they filed a slew of applications for more than 200,000 acre-feet of water, many in the same basins where the Las Vegas Valley Water District had filed on (which drew counter-protests from the water district). Lincoln and Vidler were counting on another change in the state law that made it possible, in a valley where applications have been filed on all the unappropriated water, for the state engineer to push ahead of them a second-in-time filer's applications if that applicant had a specific plan for the water. Well, Lincoln-Vidler had plans.
* * *
Pioche--county seat, population around 700--is unlike any of the other towns in Lincoln County. Founded in 1869 high in the hills, it careened into being with the discovery of silver, and at one time had 12,000 people. It was the county seat of a much larger Lincoln County back then that included what's now Clark County. And unlike the placid Mormon communities nearby, Pioche with its many murders had at one time the roughest reputation in the West. Its narrow streets are lined with rickety, fancy old buildings, including the "Million Dollar Courthouse"--the county's first grand display of government corruption and bumbling. The beautiful Italianate building, crafted from the country rock, was built way over budget and riddled with so many construction defects that it sent the county down a long road of debt. Today the old courthouse is a museum, and the town a tourist stop.
* * *
Inside the old courthouse, Louis Benezet shivers in his layers of warm clothes and dark-green beret. "They won't be turning on the heat in here for another month," he says. Benezet, who works part-time as a tour guide, lives at the Prince Mine on the other side of the hill. He moved here in 1980 from San Francisco, but his mother was raised in Pioche and he spent summers here at his grandma's house when he was a kid. It's home. "I like the quiet, and the lack of city pollution and noise," he says. Still, for as long as he's lived here, Benezet has been battling one intrusion or another. "By the time the Las Vegas water filings came along in 1989, I'd been involved in a number of issues," he says. "I was here in 1980 when the MX [a proposed roaming missile system] came along. Reagan was president--and I actually voted for him, because he said he was going to look at the MX thing. And he did, he killed it. That was the first issue I became involved in." Then, in 1985, he and a group of other citizens fought the absorption of Groom Mountain, then public land, into the Nevada Test Site. They lost. He joined the board of directors of Citizen Alert, and, from 1987 to 1990, they fought off a proposed hazardous waste incinerator--and won. "Then came the water thing," he says. In 1992, he worked exclusively on that. He likes to think Citizen Alert's vocal campaign was instrumental in shaming the Southern Nevada Water Authority into "giving lip service, at least, to water conservation and water banking and other deals." Now, though, he's worried. This agreement the county made, he says, weakens the position of all the individual protesters to Las Vegas' water filings. "They've taken away our right to protest," says Benezet. "And we've been put in this position of having to cooperate with Las Vegas. And once the pipeline is built, it'll be over as far as protecting the resource." He says the state law should be changed, so that the water has to be developed locally. But he doesn't want big development. "I'd like to preserve the way of life," he says. "Whatever we do, we should not throw away the one thing we've got: open space, relatively clean environment, clean air and water. And though I know a lot of people don't agree, I think it's a selling point, all this federal land."
* * *
There are tales out there, in the sagebrush. The man who tells me this one says I can't use his name: The cowboys say, sometimes when they're riding way out there, they'll stumble upon a huge pile of wild horse bones bleaching in the sun. The wild horses multiply fast and they eat up the range. But federal law says you can't kill 'em, because of that Wild Horse Annie who raised a big stink. But sometimes somebody might just take his gun out into the country and take care of a few.
* * *
From Pioche, if you turn east onto State Route 322 and go 15 miles, you come to a little community called Eagle Valley. It smells like fruit tree blossoms. Pass the first group of houses, turn left on a gravel road, and stop at the grand, still-fresh house at the end. That's Farrel and Manetta Lytle's place, built on Manetta's grandfather's land. They moved back here eight years ago after a 30-year stint in Seattle where Farrel, who's now 68 years old, worked for Boeing. He's an extremely inventive materials scientist, and a pioneer in the field of "extended X-ray absorption fine structure"--a phrase he helped coin in the 1970s. Ask him about it; his office is downstairs in their house. And when he's not down there, he's out back working in his massive vegetable gardens. Farrel was born in Cedar City, Utah. But he grew up in Rose Valley, just down the road, on his grandfather's ranch. His and Manetta's families go back four generations in this valley, to the first party of Mormon settlers. In fact, their families were neighbors back in Illinois, before that. But they're the first marriage between the two. They both attended the University of Nevada--when there was only one of them, in Reno. A few yards beyond their place is the old one-room elementary schoolhouse they both attended, gradually slumping back to earth. It's on Kenneth Lytle's property, which adjoins cousin Farrel's. Kenneth's been using it to store oats.
* * *
Standing out in dirt between his house and his family's grand, old brown barn, Kenneth seems to know just what that man was talking about, about the wild horses--and, no, it wasn't him. These desert dwellers have a pretty good notion of those wild horses running roughshod over the delicate land--it's just they care about their cows, whereas other people might care more about the bighorn sheep and other critters. Kenneth, permanently tanned and dashing, with lake-blue eyes, tenses up when I mention wilderness and all this pretty federal land. "Who cares about a dumb bug?" he says, in quintessential Lincoln County-speak. "I mean, really--a bug! Is it more important than our livelihood?" He doesn't think much of "the turtle"--desert tortoise--either. It's the reason the BLM retired certain grazing permits a few years back to protect the threatened species from being crushed by cattle hooves. "Well, now it turns out the turtles are hungry," Kenneth says. Apparently, he says, some scientists are now saying the tortoises had grown accustomed to dining on cowpies. "And the elk, we have a lot of elk. Horses and elk, that's all we've got is horses and elk." Kenneth and his brother Gordon, 10 years his senior, have been ranching here in Eagle Valley all their lives (nobody but the mapmakers call it "Ursine"). Sitting back in their house, Kenneth and Donna talk with Farrel about the good life in Eagle Valley, and the water agreement. Kenneth: "What concerns me most is, when they get to pumping those big wells it might dry up the springs here. There's springs all over these mountains." He says all the ranchers here pipe spring water to their fields. Farrel: "The problem is, the 100,000 acre-feet [an amount the combined applicants might take] is enough to dry us up. There's nowhere on Earth where they pumped that much water and didn't dry something up." Kenneth: "I've been here 71 years today." It's April 24, his birthday. "I was born in St. George [Utah], was there just long enough to be born." Donna: "I moved here from Beaver [Utah] when I was a child." Age and the elements have crinkled her some, but Donna has a youthful air about her. "It's sad--you say you want things to stay the same, but they don't." Kenneth: "We've been in this house for 50 years. That's a long time to be in one place." Farrel: "Well, would you want to be somewhere else?" Kenneth: "No." He pauses, adds to his previous thought: "About half the time on a horse." Their deep, rural roots here hold fast when they talk about their hopes for Lincoln County's future. Kenneth: "I'd like it to be just the way it is--or the way it was. It's too big now, and it's not going to stop." Farrel: "What I would like is desolation. What we don't want is more commercial development." So, what do they think about the Coyote Springs development? Farrel: "Oh my. Oh my." Long pause, then: "Harvey will get exactly what he wants." Kenneth: "Where are they going to get the water?" "Well...," begins Farrel.
* * *
The problem with the water agreement, says Farrel, is the commissioners moved "way too fast" on it. He wrote long, detailed comments to the commissioners telling them so, saying the agreement was "fatally flawed" and they should get some independent legal counsel and technical expertise before they vote on anything. Lytle told the commissioners that their upcoming vote on the cooperative water agreement was "the most important county business ever enacted in Lincoln County." He said the agreement, if passed as it was, would result in "the gradual desiccation of all of our water resources, both underground and riparian." He also mentioned how dewatering by mines up along the Carlin Trend in Northern Nevada threaten to dry up the entire northern half of the state for 100 years. Add that impact to the possibilities down here, and the picture is grim. He said too little is known about the deep carbonate aquifer: "There is good hydrologic evidence that the basins considered in the agreement are connected to a degree such that pumping as far north as Big Spring Valley, Cave Valley and Lake Valley will eventually dry up the springs in Pahranagat Valley or the spring along Meadow Valley Wash." He also said the 30-year termination date of the agreement should be amended to at least 99 years: "Termination after 30 years simply fits the Clark County long-range development plan." Lytle chided the commissioners for not capitalizing on their advantageous position: Clark County's other water sources have been squeezed dry by the drought, and that water under Lincoln County must be looking pretty good. Clark County, Lytle wrote, "fears the Lincoln/Vidler partnership because they might have to pay a fair price for water."
* * *
Manetta and Farrel drive me up into Spring Valley, where the 100 and more springs gurgle up through the ground. But still, all around, are the dry desert hills. We're in a caldera, Farrel says, and he points out the big cliffs of basalt. On one of the white rock faces is a drawing--in wagon axle grease--of George Washington's face that a traveling artist made about a hundred years ago. Manetta, driving, stops now and then to look through her binoculars at the birds on Eagle Valley Reservoir. Buffleheads, cinnamon teals, Canada geese, cormorants, great blue herons. In the field two harriers hover. Several turkey vultures sweep big circles over the dry slopes behind us. Manetta belongs to the Audubon Society. She also has been a lifelong member of the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association. But a couple of months back she tore up her Sierra Club card when the local chapter came out opposed to the war in Iraq. A crazy chatter comes from some trees along the shore--yellow-headed blackbirds. There's also a fisherman down there. Manetta says it gets to 40 below here in the winter, and people ice fish. "This is a popular place for people from Las Vegas to come hunt and fish and recreate," says Farrel. We go up to the campgrounds, then travel back down into Rose Valley. On the way back to their house we pass two little cemeteries fenced off on the edge of a big meadow. They're side by side except for a bit of land in between. One's Manetta's family's; the other is Farrel's. They have uneasy debates about who's going to go where when the time comes. "I say we should go in between them," says Manetta with a laugh. Back at the house, we sit in the living room, and relatives start dropping by. First comes Randy Lytle. He's 55, and retired from teaching government and history at Lincoln County High School. "I had to teach to keep ranching," he says. The way he describes it, ranching's never been easy in this area. "Just like today," he says. "We run a pipeline from the springs to our cattle, and we've been four days getting the water. We're getting just a trickle of water. And it just gripes the living hell out of me that the water can go to golf courses and fountains and fake lakes and Steve Wynn. I wouldn't care if they wanted the water, if they didn't waste it." Then Manetta's brother Lorell Bleak (pronounced "blake") stops by, with their 91-year-old mom, Martha Bleak. "There are 13 deer down in that field," Martha says. Lorell, who's the superintendent of the Lincoln County School District, is against the water agreement. When the Las Vegas water district filed all those applications in 1989, he says, "it was like being invaded by a foreign nation." He's sensitive to Clark County invasions, because right now there's a proposal to absorb Lincoln County's schools into the Clark County district. "There would be advantages," he admits. But he worries that his 900-plus students might get lost in the big shuffle. And they're doing well right now, with a dropout rate of 0.08 percent, an expected graduation rate this year of 98 percent, and 80 percent of those 71 seniors going on to college, trade school or the military.
* * *
Back in Pioche, as night progresses, three guys gather at the end of the long wooden bar in the old Overland Hotel. They're watching hockey on the TV: "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, baby, c'monnn!" One of them gets up, walks down my way toward the bathroom. "You coming to the Mardi Gras party tomorrow night?" he asks me. "No, I won't be here," I say. "That's too bad. It's gonna be fun," he says. The wind howls all night, banging against the walls and rattling the windows. Like the ghosts of angry ranchers (or miffed wild horses). Like a big storm's coming.
* * *
It's cold today, and the fields are just greening up at the Lister ranch, north of Pioche in Patterson Wash Valley. This is one of the valleys where, in the agreement, the applications stay exclusively with Lincoln-Vidler. Bevan Lister, 37 years old and a born rancher, says his ranch is safe, because his family has water rights. But he's still worried. He has six kids, and he wants to be able to pass this ranch down to them. But he won't be able to expand it. Lister and his parents, Wayne and Ruby (who filed protests against Las Vegas' 1989 water applications), have 700 irrigated acres of alfalfa, grown in large circles that Bevan says are "more water-wise, more efficient." He has a bachelor's degree from Utah State in irrigation engineering. Bevan fought hard to stop both the Lincoln-Vidler water filings and the Lincoln-Las Vegas Valley Water District agreement. "There's certainly a concern about the water table, especially if Lincoln-Vidler start pumping," he says. He allows that the state engineer has made some sound decisions on water rights. "But the problem is, the state engineer is a political animal and serves the governor," Lister says. "And Las Vegas has the power to change the laws." Lister scorns water profiteering. "I guess, if we were good stock brokers, according to Lincoln-Vidler's price tag, we're sitting on about $7 million worth of water here on the ranch," he says. But he'll never sell it. "We could. But philosophically, we never would."
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Lincoln-Vidler. Sounds like a shiny new kind of automobile. But no, it's a not-so-shiny new kind of partnership, between Lincoln County and Vidler Water Co., to sell Nevada water for hefty profits. They formed the partnership in 1998. "We're not the richest county in the state," reasons Lincoln County Manager Doug Carriger. He's right: With fewer than 5,000 residents in the agriculture-oriented county, only 2 percent of county land privately owned and the rest public land, the county's tax revenues, payment in lieu of taxes and whatever the DOE coughs up each year don't power dreams of megaprojects. But with Vidler's millions and technical expertise, the county can afford to dream of projects that will bring it millions, too. Vidler can also help with the land. See, Vidler's an interesting beast. It's a subsidiary of PICO Holdings Inc., a La Jolla, Calif.-based company that wheels and deals in land, mineral rights, water rights, water storage and insurance. Vidler is based in Carson City and run by Dorothy Palmer, who formerly ran Carson's water utility. It's been buying up land and water rights across the state and the West. And its Siamese twin, the Nevada Land and Resource Co., in 1997 paid $48.6 million for 1.3 million acres of checkerboard parcels across the state once belonging to the Union Pacific Railroad. It has sold and exchanged some of the land, and now has about 1.2 million acres left, says Vidler-NLRC vice president Steve Hartman. In a Q&A on PICO's website, CEO John Hart explains why his company bought the railroad lands, many of which are in the mountains: "Nevada has been the fastest-growing state for over five years, and there is a shortage of developable land. ... We are the largest land owner in the state with a large amount of land which potentially can be exchanged with these government agencies. In this sense, the land is currency." The NLRC had an embarrassing problem last year, however, when news broke that it had made a cozy deal with the BLM to ensconce an NLRC employee in the Carson City BLM office to help facilitate land exchanges between the two. And the BLM paid for this man's work that aided his real employer in acquiring public land. When Sen. Harry Reid heard about it, he ordered it stopped. Elsewhere on the site, the company describes Vidler's aim: "...to acquire water rights, to redirect the water to its highest and best use, and then generate cash flow from either the water or selling the right. Typically, Vidler acquires water rights in locations where there is a current demand or where near-term demand has been clearly identified." Well, this goal spoke directly to hungry Lincoln County, and the county signed an agreement with Vidler "to do things on a project-by-project basis," says Carriger. Lincoln-Vidler entered into an agreement with Cogentrix Energy Co. to sell it up to 9,000 acre-feet of water per year, at $3,300 per acre-foot, for a proposed power plant north of Mesquite. It was the height of the brown-out era; the project was promising. They hoped to split $23 million in profits. All it would take was water, and for Vidler to arrange a land exchange. Lincoln-Vidler also was hoping to sell water to developments on 13,500 acres that the county's trying to acquire from the BLM three miles north of Mesquite. Congress ordered the BLM, through the Lincoln County Land Act of 2000, to release the land into private hands. For both of these, Lincoln-Vidler applied for 14,000 acre-feet of water. The state engineer granted a permit for only 2,000 acre-feet. Plus, the energy scare dropped to a whimper. And the land deals didn't work out. Lincoln County Commissioner Perkins says Vidler has bought Cogentrix's project. "We're real close to making real good things happen in the county," Perkins says. "But there's always some little hurdle you have to get over." On April 23 the Center for Biological Diversity, the Western Land Exchange Project and the Committee for the High Desert filed a lawsuit to stop the Lincoln County Land Act sale. "Secretary Norton is trying to sell our natural heritage in Nevada for urban sprawl," says Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the center. "Clearly the national interest is for conservation of public lands--not privatization, strip malls and golf courses." The lawsuit says the BLM's environmental impact statement on the sale is crap, with "numerous violations of the National Environmental Policy Act" and a failure to analyze the project's impacts on threatened and endangered species in the area. "BLM's most striking failure was its complete avoidance of the issue of water supply," says Patterson. "There are currently no known sources of water in the LCLA area that could begin to supply the 35,000-plus acre feet the LCLA-related development would require." Lincoln-Vidler also wants to sell water to Harvey Whittemore's Coyote Springs development, at least on the Lincoln side. Under Lincoln's agreement with Las Vegas' purveyors, it can't sell water to Clark County projects unless those districts ask for it. Elsewhere in Nevada, Vidler:
Hartman insists Vidler does not want to provide water to Las Vegas. "We have gone out and surveyed land that is largely agricultural," he says. "Because of the remote nature of all the property we own, we try to develop projects specific to the area--with the exception of Lincoln and the power projects." And Coyote Springs. Vidler has projects elsewhere in the West, including the capacity for big water storage projects in Arizona and California. It fancies itself the "leading participant in the water industry in the southwestern United States." One big obstacle to the Lincoln-Vidler partnership is a legal opinion issued a year ago by the state attorney general's office that it is illegal for Lincoln County to hook up with a private company to sell water for profit. The opinion came after Clark County water providers expressed concern. "We just want to ensure we have the most reasonable prices we can," says Kay Brothers, SNWA's deputy general manager. "It's not just Vidler Water Co. that's a concern. It's any company that might come in and try to privatize water." Lincoln-Vidler now has a bill before the Nevada Legislature to bypass that pesky attorney general opinion. Senate Bill 487, which would make a private-public water profiting partnership legal, is doing well--the Senate passed it April 21, and it's in the Assembly, where the bill's fate looks bright. No surprise: Lincoln-Vidler-NLRC (and PICO in some cases) has a team of lobbyists in Carson City this session that's a Who's Who of Nevada bigshots: Pappageorge, Lazovich, Hennessy-York, Gugino, Fiorentino, Allison, Rowe, Puzey, MacKenzie, Peterson, Fagan, Griffin and Wright. Of course, not everyone's impressed by Lincoln-Vidler's push to sell Nevada water. State Sen. Warren Hardy, who opposed the legislation, reiterated on the day of the vote that nobody owns the water in the state. "This bill allows the private sector to get around long-standing,150-year-old Nevada law," he said. "We were told a number of times...that the intent of this was to help...Lincoln County to develop their water resources, yet when I proposed an amendment...that would specify this could only be done in Lincoln County for a profit, the proponents adamantly opposed that." He said Lincoln and Vidler also opposed his suggestion that their partnership be subject to the open meeting law--which, given that Lincoln County is, after all, a governmental entity, isn't a bad idea. Hardy said he wants to help Lincoln County, but "not [do] something that will make our most precious natural resource an instrument of commerce." Hugh Jackson, an energy policy analyst with the national watchdog group Public Citizen, says water profiteers like Vidler don't act in the public's best interest. "Vidler's strategy is simple: The West is dry, so buy up as much water as possible, sit back, and see just how high the price will go," Jackson says. "The more water Vidler sells, the more money it makes, which is to say Vidler's business plan is in direct contradiction to water-wise development and conservation progress. Increased consolidation and control of Western water by Vidler and other companies will accelerate aquifer mining, foster unwise water-wasting development and hasten the transformation of arid ecosystems into barren dust bowls. And as Vidler and other private companies acquire market power over Western water, they will be in a position to gouge customers." Jackson further berates Vidler's claim that it merely wants to direct water toward the "highest and best use." He notes evidence that shows otherwise: "Vidler's biggest single transaction in 2002, accounting for $5.2 million and 43 percent of Vidler's total revenues, was the sale of groundwater and land to a golf course development near Scottsdale, Ariz.," Jackson says. In 2001, he says, Vidler sold water rights to an energy company in Arizona and then bragged to its shareholders that it made "a $5 million cash surplus." "That is exactly the kind of needless middleman water profiteering that should alarm consumers," Jackson says.
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In between Pioche and Caliente, a short jog east on State Route 319, lies Panaca and beyond it a pond fed by a spring that gushes 2,000 gallons of 88-degree water per minute. The pond used to be Panaca's municipal water supply back when Mormons settled here. But now it's a swimming hole and irrigation source. And it's very, very beloved by locals and tourists alike. Neither Lincoln-Vidler nor the Las Vegas folks have applications on it in the agreement, but they have some in nearby basins.
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Jule Wadsworth and her husband, Matt, who have young children, scrape to make ends meet in Panaca--ranching, odd jobs and maybe someday getting into the farmers market business. She's a range scientist, and serves on the county's Natural Resources Commission. She actually sees a long-term relationship with Vidler as an asset. "The bottom line is, we've got Las Vegas down there with beaucoup bucks, and Lincoln up here, poor," she says. So, the partnership with Vidler "is a good idea." Not that she doesn't have her suspicions--for instance, what if Vidler is actually connected to Las Vegas? (Other people say they've heard this, but they can't substantiate the rumor.) And she does think the county moved too fast in its agreement with Las Vegas. "I tend to view Las Vegas as greedy," she says.
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Headlines, Las Vegas: "Vegas Water Authority Declares Drought Watch, Sets Restrictions" (Jan. 23, Las Vegas Sun). "Golf Courses Tee Up Opposition to Las Vegas-area Drought Plan" (Feb. 19, Sun). "Las Vegas City Council OKs Regional Drought Plan" (March 6, Las Vegas Review-Journal). "Increase in Water Rates Urged "(April 30, Sun). "Sun City-Summerlin Vows to Keep Fountains Running" (May 30, Sun). "Las Vegas 'likely' to Experience Water War" (May 3, Sun). "LAS VEGAS WATER: Feds Warn of Tapping Out Supply" (May 3, R-J).
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Driving back toward Las Vegas through Lincoln County, in the springtime, you might stop the car suddenly when you see a bright flash through the veil of trees in an irrigated pasture near Alamo. Cowboys and cowgirls are out there, chasing after the bulls, their horses flying fast, then spinning around to a stop, hooves making great watery splashes that catch the sunlight. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light. |
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