Water imports reconsidered

Plans to import water into Reno's North

Valleys are again at the center of the debate

on how to meet demand created by unrelenting

growth in the area.

Several projects to import water are in

various stages of development. All the projects

are at least several years - and many

hurdles - away from realization. And they

are guaranteed to elicit both strong support

and determined opposition.

The idea of importing water to the area

comes with a storied history and it remains

to be seen whether times are different or

if, as the saying goes, the more things

change, the more they stay the same.

On Wednesday, the county Regional

Water Planning Commission is scheduled

to hear about one of the projects in a presentation

about Fish Springs Ranch in

Honey Lake Valley.

The plan is a descendant of the infamous

Honey Lake project first proposed in

the early 1990s. The original proposal,

which met with much opposition and

ended with the ouster of a handful of

county officials, was for moving 13,000

acre-feet of groundwater. It was estimated

at the time to cost between $105 million

and $115 million.

This time around the plan has been

scaled down. The new venture called

the North Valley Importation Project

now calls for the transport of 8,000 acrefeet

into Stead, Lemmon Valley and, possibly,

Golden Valley.

The presentation to the RWPC will

include the results of a feasibility study

done by Reno-based water engineering

consultant Eco:Logic, the same firm doing

the county's interim water report required

by the settlement of theTruckee Meadows

Regional Plan suit.

The importation study, which was commissioned

by the county, was presented to

the Truckee Meadows Water Authority,

real estate developers and county water

resource planners in a meeting last month.

The study compares the North Valley

Importation Project to current plans to

serve the area with Truckee River water

and finds importation worthy of another

look.

"It is not our job to make recommendations,

but the North Valley Importation

Project appears to be the better project,"

said John Enloe, a principal with

Eco:Logic in Reno. "The whole politics of

water has changed."

TMWA, which would alternatively

continue to supply Truckee River water to

the area, agrees.

"It is a very viable project," said Lori

Williams, general manager of TMWA. "I

think they could get the permitting done in

2003 and be online by 2007.We're anxious

for them to get started."

Fish Springs Ranch is now owned by

Vidler Water Co., which bought it two

years ago and currently farms alfalfa on the

property. Dorothy Timian-Palmer, Vidler's

chief financial officer, said the company has

received approval to build the needed

pipeline, but it would have to go through

an environmental impact study, or EIS,

which could take up to two years. Then it

would take another year to build the conduit.

(The original Honey Lake project fell

apart when the federal Department of the

Interior pulled the plug on the EIS.)

First, though, there's the local approval

process. "We still have a lot to work out

with the county," said Timian-Palmer.

"We're waiting to see how the board reacts

to the study. The county generally supports

it."

That's not how Bob Marshall sees it.

Marshall is a Warm Springs Valley rancher

who has a project to move close to 5,000

acre-feet of groundwater using the pipeline

that would be built with and shared by

Vidler.

Marshall said the Washoe County

Comprehensive Regional Water

Management Plan released in 1997 recommends

that the county further investigate

the possibility of importing water into the

North Valleys, and specified the Warm

Springs Valley project as well what is now

Vidler's venture.

"The [water management] plan says to

aggressively pursue my project," said

Marshall. "The county staff is supposed to

support us, and they have not."

The project will face other obstacles.

The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, for one,

will oppose it. The tribe protested the earlier

Honey Lake project, saying that groundwater

pumping in the area would reduce

the level of Pyramid Lake.

The more modest volumes outlined in

the new plan don't change that, according

to John Jackson, vice chairman and director

of water resources for the tribe in Nixon.

"We have always been against any

importation project," said Jackson. "The

pumping will ultimately draw from

Pyramid Lake. And you shouldn't mix

basins," or move water from one hydrographic

basin for use in another because of

possible environmental impacts.

The project would also require right-ofway

permits to lay the pipeline through

Bureau of Land Management land. "And

Senator Reid and the feds have always supported

us," said Jackson.

Besides that, Jackson thinks there isn't

8,000 acre-feet of groundwater there, but

closer to 5,000 acre-feet to 6,000 acre-feet.

"We think the amount is exaggerated," he

said.

Whether it's 5,000 acre-feet or 8,000

acre-feet, it isn't enough to meet the area's

needs, according to Jeffrey Kirby, an associate

with Resource Management and

Development Inc., a Reno-based firm that

finds water rights for real estate developers.

"An 8,000 acre-feet importation project

is Band-Aid on an open wound," said

Kirby. "The county should be looking for a

larger project that could service the entire

system."

Kirby is working on a competing

importation project that he says would do

just that. Kirby declined to discuss details

of the project, which the group has been

working on for eight months. But he did

say that a plan that could meet the needs of

the entire area would require between

30,000 acre-feet and 40,000 acre-feet of

water.

The project involves two ranches north

of Reno, according to George Thiel, principal

engineer with Thiel Engineering

Consultants, which is working on the project

with Resource Management. (Thiel

conducts the research needed to find water

rights, and Resource Management acts as

the broker once the rights are established.)

Thiel estimates that the importation of

water becomes economically feasible when

local water rights reach about $8,000 per

acre foot. His estimates include $2,000 per

acre-foot for the pipeline; $2,000 an acrefoot

for the pumping facility; and the costs

of the water rights, which vary depending

on location.

Right now, the price of Truckee River

water rights in the Reno area fluctuates

between $3,500 and $4,000. That's up

about $1,000 in the last five years, according

to TMWA's Williams.

Williams said TMWA tries to stabilize

the water rights market, so developers don't

compete and push up prices. Most agree

that, in fact, prices hover around the price

charged by TMWA.

(Developers can buy water rights from

TMWA, if it has them, or obtain the

rights on their own. Either way, the rights

are then deeded to TMWA, which then

provides a "will serve" letter guaranteeing

to deliver service.)

That's only in the Reno area. In the

Truckee-Carson Irrigation District in the

Fallon area, water rights go for about $300

an acre-foot. "The Bureau of Reclamation

still controls the farmers in Fallon and

what they do with water rights," said Rang

Narayanan, a professor with University of

Nevada Reno. "They can't appear to be

selling or having a market for developers in

Reno. They can only sell for environmental

reasons."

Some groundwater rights run as high as

$10,000 an acre foot, said Jack Ferris, a

water rights consultant with Resource

Application and Development Ltd., which

has secured rights for the developers of St.

James Village, Redfield Properties and

other projects. But those prices will drop if

demand drops, as is expected in South

Truckee Meadows and the Galena fan

where there are plans to use creek water.

Prices can drop quickly if communities

adopt a no-growth policy. The price of

water rights in Douglas County, for example,

was about $4,500 per acre foot in 1992

and is now about $1,625, according to

Thiel. "Anti-growth sentiment there has

driven the price down," he said.

There is certainly anti-growth sentiment

in Washoe County, although the area

hasn't gone as far as Douglas County,

which passed a ballot to limit growth in

last month's election. The settlement of

Truckee Meadows Regional Plan suit says

the area is resource-constrained and stipulates

that land planning be done in conjunction

with water planning, thus the

interim water planning report that is

required to be completed by February

2003.

Water rights holders certainly don't

want prices to drop. Some, said TMWA's

Williams, sell off small pieces of large

blocks as a form of continuing income. But

developers are likely more worried about

something else.

"Developers don't really care about the

cost of water because they always pass it

along," said David Zilberman, a professor

and water economist with the University of

California, Berkeley. "The big cost for

developers is delay."

Development may be delayed if it's

found that the area doesn't have enough

water rights to meet demand. A report

done by Stantec Consulting several years

ago said there was the potential to recover

enough water rights for demand in the area

excluding the North Valleys (see chart).

Imported water could cover that excess

demand, as well as free up rights that have

already been allocated there, including

rights dedicated for so-called return flow.

That's because the North Valleys area has

its own water treatment center which uses

effluent to irrigate parks and golf courses.

Thus, it doesn't return water to the river;

additional water rights are dedicated to

make up for that water that is never

returned to the river.

"You have to dedicate half again as

many rights that stay in the river," said

Eco:Logic's Enloe. "That's an inefficient

use of water rights."

Another possible inefficiency is in the

way water rights are allocated.TMWA

monitors water use. If it's found that a

property continually uses less water than it

has rights for, the purveyor can go to the

State Engineer to try to get it re-appropriated,

thus freeing up some water rights for

other properties.

Those are all small transactions, though.

Even the rights that could be returned to

the system from a North Valleys importation

project are relatively minor 3,000

acre-feet today in light of overall needs

estimated by TMWA to reach about

110,300 acre-feet by 2025.

But that's how water rights are found

these days, in bits and pieces. The lowhanging

fruit, as TMWA's Williams calls

the larger blocks once sold by ranchers, has

all been picked.What remains are fractionalized

rights small pieces of larger

claims that became fragmented when the

land was redeveloped for housing or commercial

use.

Those rights are extremely hard to

acquire, say those who do it for a living. So

even the most conservative estimates of

how many of those rights can be recovered

and used for municipal and industrial use

in the Reno area may be too generous.

For now, though, the debate continues

about whether there is enough water to

support the development going on in the

urban areas of northern Nevada. And

whether importation is a part of the

answer.

That's what the RWPC will be mulling

this week.

Says Jim Smitherman, water management

planner coordinator with the County

of Washoe Department of Water

Resources: "The big question on people's

minds is how long can [the water] go?"