The Nevada Supreme Court today issued an opinion striking a serious blow to the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s planned rural Nevada water grab, effectively sending the pipeline project back to the beginning of the State Engineer’s hearing process.

Dozens of rural Nevada landowners joined nonprofit groups, including the Great Basin Water Network and Defenders of Wildlife, in arguing before the Court that they were unfairly excluded from being able to protest the original groundwater applications filed by the Las Vegas water agency in 1989. SNWA, Las Vegas’ water provider, and the Nevada Water Engineer then waited more than fifteen years before taking the applications up for consideration, despite Nevada state law’s requirement that applications must be decided within one year. 

By that time, many of the original Protestors had died or moved away from the area, and many others who would be affected by the decision had moved into rural Nevada.

The Court’s decision sends the case back to state District Court, to make a determination as to whether SNWA  must re-file its 1989 applications for hundreds of wells throughout rural Nevada, or whether the State Engineer must re-notice the applications, opening the process up to new protests and new rounds of hearings on SNWA’s old groundwater applications.

“This is a very important decision, and a home run for the public,” said Nevada conservationist and Great Basin Water Network coordinator Rose Strickland.  “The Supreme Court followed Nevada water law.  If we follow the law and the science, there will be no misguided pipeline threatening the environment and economies of rural Nevada and Utah.”

Simeon Herskovits of Advocates for Community and Environment, lead attorney for the diverse coalition that brought this case, said the decision shows that everyone and even powerful municipal agencies have to follow the law.

“This unanimous decision from the Nevada Supreme Court strikes a blow in favor of clear, evenhanded application of Nevada law across the board,” Herskovits said.  “The Court’s ruling clearly and forcefully affirms that powerful agencies like SNWA are not above the law that binds the rest of the citizenry, and that the State Engineer cannot arbitrarily give such agencies a pass on the law’s requirements.”

Officials and residents of rural Nevada also hailed the decision.

“Not only ranchers and farmers, but all Nevada water rights owners and citizens should celebrate this ruling,” said White Pine County rancher Dean Baker, “because it upholds the right of ordinary citizens – and not just the power brokers – to participate meaningfully in important water rights decisions and reaffirms the duty of government to provide ordinary citizens with a fair opportunity to participate in those public decision-making processes.”

Gary Perea, a White Pine County commissioner, urged the Nevada State Engineer to withdraw his now-suspect earlier decisions on the SNWA applications and begin the process anew.  Further, he said the federal environmental review process, which is ongoing, should be halted given that the Supreme Court’s ruling places water availability into question.

“This underscores so many of the procedural problems and inadequacies of SNWA’s process,” Perea said Thursday. “The agency either needs to go back to the beginning and do this right, with consideration of those who would be affected by the pipeline, or simply abandon the scheme and work to make Las Vegas sustainable with existing water sources and greater conservation.”

For more information: Rose Strickland (775) 329-6118 (Great Basin Water Network), Gary Perea (775) 761-6128 (White Pine County Commissioner), or Simeon Herskovits (575) 770-3438  (attorney for the protestants).