A wildly successful water conservation program piloted in rural Nevada may soon be the basis for a statewide effort.
Assembly Bill 104, discussed in an Assembly Committee on Natural Resources hearing Monday, would create the Nevada Voluntary Water Rights Retirement Program, which would use state funds to compensate water rights holders to turn over to the state their power to pump.
“I was meeting with my little city of Sparks, saying: ‘OK, what all do you need?’” said Assemblymember Natha Anderson, D-Sparks, who presented the bill alongside the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “And the biggest thing that I kept on hearing about was water rights, how to handle it and what to do with over-appropriation. … Establishing a water rights retirement program in statute would be one step forward.”
According to science nonprofit The Nature Conservancy, more than half of Nevada’s 256 hydrological basins are considered “over-appropriated.” In other words, water users hold rights on paper to pump more water than the so-called “perennial yield,” or the total amount of water the state engineer deems is physically available each year.
How will it be funded?
Recommended by an interim legislative committee, the bill and the program it creates is a response to a pilot program run by the four regional water authorities, propped up by $25 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
The initial program focused on Diamond Valley, a small farming community in Eureka County that the state’s top water regulator designated a “critical management area” because of the impacts of overpumping.
By all accounts, officials were successful: They told the interim committee that efforts to secure water rights in Diamond Valley would translate to a reduction in pumping equivalent to a third of the perennial yield.
However, far more water rights holders were interested in the program than money allowed — a potential issue for the new program, as well, as the source of funding is unclear.
One section of the bill allows for the program to accept funds from the Legislature, though it does not explicitly ask lawmakers for an appropriation. Gifts, donations and grant funding may be other avenues to explore, as the bill permits the director of the state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to accept those.
A sign of support
The bill enjoyed wide support in the hearing from diverse groups such as the Nevada Farm Bureau, Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe and the Nevada chapter of the Sierra Club.
“What you’re seeing is a consensus product that we were able to agree with,” said Doug Busselman, executive vice president of the farm bureau.
Not everyone in the Nevada water world is a fan of the program, however.
Robert Coache, a former deputy state engineer who faced felony bribery and extortion charges but was later exonerated, called in to the meeting to express his opinion that such a program would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
“No public funds should ever be allocated to a groundwater buyback program when the state engineer already possesses the statutory authority to address groundwater conflicts and injunctive use issues,” Coache said. “Instead, any potential public funds should be invested in actual science to identify problems and support conflict resolutions under existing statutes.”
Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.
