Nevada Supreme Court CRUSHES Las Vegas Plan To Drain Rural Aquifers & Pump Water South - Sun

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Mulroy had staked her career on the successful execution of a plan she launched in 1989, when she was general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, to drive a pipeline 300 miles north to the Great Basin, connect it to a network of wells and draw the water south. If she succeeded, scientists said, disaster would befall the Nevadan basins, turning them to dust bowls. And if she didn’t get the water, Las Vegas — whose irrepressible growth for much of the past two decades demanded to be quenched — would remain dependent on a dwindling supply of Colorado River water.

Until recently, smart money was on Las Vegas getting the water, with five rural valleys in central and eastern Nevada feeling the pain — largely empty places in the target basins save the occasional string of oasis ranches, lined up like long narrow flagstones leading half way to Salt Lake City: Delamar, Dry Lake, Cave, Spring and Snake valleys. But recently the odds have swung in sudden ways against Las Vegas. In October, Nevada District Judge Norman C. Robison stripped it of all the water awarded for the pipeline from the first three stepping stone valleys. Robison ruled that the state engineer, who approves or denies water claims, had used exaggerated yields in his decision concerning the Delamar, Dry Lake and Cave valleys, effectively awarding water to Mulroy that was spoken for. The autumn day that the decision was announced, Mulroy had just persuaded her board to pay the ranchers behind the suit $4 million to withdraw it.

And that setback proved pale compared with Thursday’s: The Nevada Supreme Court issued a ruling that appears to invalidate every award for her pipeline on the grounds that in 1991, the very first set of protesters was denied due process. Mulroy, in fact, had anticipated legal concerns and, the shrewd lobbyist she is, went to the Nevada Legislature to work around a law requiring hearings to be held within one year of the closing of protests. In 2003, at the request of Water Authority lobbyists, legislators passed a law exempting projects for municipal, or town, water from that rule. In 2006, when the state engineer’s hearings began to approve Mulroy’s applications for water in the steppingstone valleys, 17 years had passed since the original applications. The protesters were ragged. Mulroy, framed by successes, looked unstoppable in getting her water.

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In 2006, Herskovits lost in his first attempt to challenge the 2003 legislation denying the pipeline’s opponents a timely hearing after the close of protests. So he appealed it straight up to the Nevada Supreme Court, which heard the case last June. And on Thursday, what looks like the mother of all oversights became apparent in the court’s decision against the state engineer. Mulroy and her lobbyists got the wording wrong on the 2003 amendment. It did not apply, it turns out, to the 1989 protesters represented by Herskovits, who happened to be challenging all of the awards in her steppingstone valleys.

The faulty wording occurred in section 2 of the amendment to SB 336 in 2003, introduced at the request of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The new wording said that action on the application for water rights may be postponed "if the purpose for which the application was made is municipal use" and "where studies of water supplies have been determined to be necessary ... or where court actions are pending..." However, last week, in Great Basin Water Network vs State Engineer, the Supreme Court of Nevada ruled (page 13) "After examining the legislative history, it is clear that SNWA requested the 2003 municipal-use amendment, but, unfortunately, the legislative history provides no guidance regarding retroactive effect ... There is no language in the statute or legislative history that indicates an intention by the Legislature that the amendment for municipal use apply retroactively to the applications made more than one year prior to the amendment's enactment..."

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http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jan/31/small-oversight-threatens-valleys-big-pipeline-pro/

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