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?"
