Over the past several months a couple of major court decisions, the first in mid-April when Judge Bita Yeager of Nevada’s 8th District Court, determined that the State Engineer did not have the authority to base a decision on conjunctive management of water resources in the Lower White River Flow within a superbasin that he had created and now the Nevada Supreme Court’s Diamond Valley Groundwater Management Plan, we’re going to be dealing with another Nevada Legislative Session of attention on water matters.
The question for Nevada Farm Bureau members is whether the organization policy we have in place offers the direction that they want their organization to pursue? Our policy establishes an unwavering perspective on maintaining Nevada’s doctrine of prior appropriation…first in time – first in right.
Our current policy on “conjunctive management” states…
“We are very concerned over the lack of legislative direction and absence of specific parameters in regard to how “Conjunctive Management” is going to be carried out. We urge a full public discussion of what conjunctive management of water resources means and how combining separate sections of state law will be implemented. Long and established separations for surface and groundwater rights cannot be quickly combined without a complete vetting of how issues and impacts will be worked through. Top down edicts by the State Engineer’s office, without local, public engagement of those being affected is not acceptable.
Statutory parameters need to be established to guide regulatory actions in how the State Engineer will implement and operate conjunctive management activities.
Regulatory activity related to carrying out conjunctive management needs to be based on established scientific documentation that the water relating to the conjunctive management of specific groundwater and surface water are connected, as well as an established understand to the degree one water right is relating to others.
The interaction of water from various sources involves many different elements include the timeframes and the degree to which connections take place. State policy on the use of conjunctive management needs to be based on site specific circumstances, which recognizes the variety of elements that exist at a specific site. Not all areas have the same connection and interaction throughout a system
and this warrants consideration in implementing active management that has consequences to different water rights”.
“In responding to State Engineer actions where conjunctive management actions could have an impact on different water right owners, senior water right owners need to have their rights duly recognized as they wish to have the water associated with their rights dealt with. They should be able to receive water which meets their water rights instead of being required to accept financial or other compensation through mitigation measures that they do not voluntarily agree to.”
We strongly urge discussion and thoughtful consideration by Farm Bureau members in this year’s policy development process, factoring in where we appear to be and in light of extremely likely water law proposals to be taken up in 2023.