Rural Nevada: Las Vegas water plan is all wet

WHITE PINE COUNTY, Nev. -- Las Vegas is a parched desert city in a four-year drought, with new residents pouring in at a rate of at least 5,000 per month. So water officials plan to tap a great system of aquifers that form underground lakes in a swath across the state, some of them hundreds of miles away.

But the water is not free for the taking. On top of the aquifers are ranches and small towns where a small, tenacious group of rural residents are fighting hard to keep Las Vegas from sucking them dry.

``It's a question of values," said Dean Baker, a rancher with 2,000 head of cattle in White Pine County. ``Will society accept drying up this environment to feed Las Vegas's money appetite?"

The battle is the latest in a long series of skirmishes between Western cities and rural areas over limited supplies of water and how they should be allocated. Typically, cities win. Coastal California, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City all rely on distant groundwater supplies.

Such transfers of water from rural to urban areas ``have not yet occurred in Nevada," said Hal Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. ``But they are beginning here."

The Colorado River provides 90 percent of Las Vegas's water, but the city lives on an allocation of water that sufficed decades ago when Las Vegas was a whistle-stop. So the Southern Nevada Water Authority wants the water that lies underground to the north.

To carry the water to the households of Las Vegas, engineers propose a $2 billion hydra-headed pipeline stretching 250 miles. The Water Authority has already started buying ranch property in the county to access the water underneath. Water Authority officials said there is enough water underground statewide to provide for the ranchers, plus cover about two-thirds of Las Vegas's annual water needs.

On Sept. 11, the Nevada state engineer will hold a hearing and then make a decision about how much water Southern Nevada can take. Legally, all the water under Nevada is a state resource, and the engineer must determine its best use.

White Pine County lies at the northern end of the proposed pipeline. Officials in this county are considering a lawsuit if the hearing doesn't go their way.

``I've watched the attitude of Southern Nevada, and it's like they've got gold fever," Baker said as he bounced down a dirt road in his truck. He has worked on his ranch in Snake Valley for 50 of his 66 years. His three sons and their families work it with him.

``They say there's water here nobody's using. It's not that simple. There is no free lunch," said Baker. He said he worries that the aquifer could be depleted and turn the area into a dust bowl.

The specter of California's Owens Valley looms over the area, as people recall the aqueducts that almost 100 years ago turned a lush agricultural community into an environmental disaster so that water could be delivered to Los Angeles.

Nevada's valleys are majestic and arid, sloping floors covered in greasewood bushes and fields of alfalfa irrigated with springs or wells the ranchers have dug themselves. As Baker drives his land, antelopes, coyotes, and jackrabbits gathered at pools of water are startled by the sound of his truck.

``This is a closed basin and it is in balance now," Baker said of Snake Valley. ``The water is coming in through precipitation and going out through evaporation and transpiration of the plants. Nobody knows of any river underground where the water's going. It's here, and it's being used here."

Other counties along the pipeline route have formed agreements with Southern Nevada, but this summer White Pine County turned down $12.5 million from the Water Authority to drop its protests and cooperate.

The county could use the money. It's a depressed area, and due to financial mismanagement, the government is under state receivership. Still, that doesn't matter to White Pine County Commissioner Gary Perea. ``They could offer us 12 or 15 billion dollars, but what good is the money if there's nobody living here?" he said.

Perea wishes the city people would leave his corner of the state alone, the way he's had the good sense to do with them.

``People live up in rural areas for a reason; they don't like big cities," he said. ``We want to be independent. We want to take care of ourselves. To take the money from Las Vegas and endorse the project -- people did not want to do that."