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Inyo not willing to gamble with shared aquifer |
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Wednesday, 12 September 2007 |
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By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff 9-11-2007
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
– Sun Tzu,
“The Art of War”
Las Vegas has won one round of the escalating water war over siphoning water from the north of the state south to Sin City. Plans are underfoot for a new Clark County airport a few miles away from the Inyo County line and Pahrump is growing, and sucking up water as fast as a weed.
The aquifers that would feed any additional development east of the Death Valley area run under the Nevada/California state line.
Inyo County and its California counterparts should not sit quietly on the sidelines while Nevada develops what could be new towns in the desert, especially if those towns suck water out of an aquifer that rests partly in Inyo County.
The county should look to form some sort of semi-official advisory council or board to address issues common to counties on both sides of the border, suggested Inyo County Fifth District Supervisor Richard Cervantes.
“The big one is water,” Cervantes said when ticking off the potential issues that affect Inyo County stemming from developments and growth planned for the Nevada desert just across the state border. “Underground aquifers don’t respect state lines,” he noted.
State Senator Roy Ashburn has endorsed, conceptually, creating an advisory board or commission with representatives from counties in Nevada and California that could begin to share information and concerns, Cervantes noted.
The Board of Supervisors, while generally in favor of the concept of talking to its counterparts in the region, wanted a workshop on both the issues being faced and the various formats any sort of multi-county or multi-jurisdictional commission might take.
Recent developments in Las Vegas and Nevada prompted a bit more urgency at this time about keeping track of what Inyo County’s cross-border governments might be up to.
Cervantes even suggested that Inyo County might want to start considering Clark County (Las Vegas) as an adversary, or at least not much of a pal, when it comes to water issues.
“We should keep a close eye on Clark County’s water acquisition moves,” he said.
The main reason for being leery of Clark County when it comes to water is a startlingly familiar move it made in the recent past.
Cervantes likened Clark County’s most recent and most ambitious water “acquisition” effort to what the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power pulled in the Owens Valley at the turn of the 20th century.
Clark County has purchased land and water rights in the far northwest section of the state, and recently won state approval to pump about 250,000 acre-feet of groundwater from those holdings and send it south to Las Vegas via a pipeline. The pipeline hasn’t been built and the whole project will take years to complete, but all the parts are in place.
Clark County “has the money and the power” to complete such a massive water project, Cervantes noted.
Cervantes said he had discussed the Nevada situation with Inyo County Special Water Counsel Greg James and said it was James’ opinion “we should keep an eye on” the evolving water issues in Clark County that might impact Inyo County.
Just days after Cervantes talked about a potential water threat from the east, a long-simmering state water issue blew up.
A federal judge ruled that there might have to be up to a one-third reduction in the amount of the water delivered to Southern California from Northern California from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The move would be made to protect the endangered delta smelt.
Southern California water officials, including those from LADWP, are drawing up plans to ration water, if need be, in response to any significant reduction in northern water supplies.
David Nahai, LADWP board president, said that water rationing has been implemented in previous droughts, and could be implemented again.
Los Angeles recorded its driest year on record, and the Sierra snowpack was just 52 percent of normal, dramatically reducing the amount of water the city typically receives via the L.A. Aqueduct from the Owens Valley.
With a dry L.A. to the south and a scheming Las Vegas to the east, and both cities growing at a nice clip, Inyo County’s water will only become more important and a bigger target in the coming years.
While the relationship between the county and LADWP is outlined in a half-dozen agreements and a similar number of court cases, Cervantes suggested that Inyo County begin talking with Clark County and Nevada now, before conflicts arise that might necessitate more forceful action from the county or the state.
Cervantes suggested that an advisory commission of some sort be formed that included Inyo and San Bernardino counties from California, and Clark and Nye counties from Nevada.
Besides the water concerns, Cervantes noted that Clark County is still moving forward with plans to build Ivanpah International Airport in Sandy Valley, which is right at the intersection of the state line and the border between Inyo and San Bernardino counties. Other developments are also planned in the area, he noted, and they would all tap into aquifers that probably also run into Inyo County.
Fourth District Supervisor Jim Bilyeu said when it comes to regional issues, Inyo County “needs to be involved in the discussion.” The Water and Planning departments would, logically, be the county departments closely involved in any such talks, he noted.
Bilyeu and First District Supervisor Linda Arcularius wondered whether any such talks have to be formally structured or based on an official agreement between all governments involved. Informal talks could also be beneficial, they said, and might be able to get started sooner.
The supervisors decided to bring James in for a workshop to discuss the regional issues involved, and explore the various methods, formal and informal, that the county could use to gather information and discuss issues affecting the county and the region.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 26 October 2007 )
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