Rural Nevada opponents to the Southern Nevada Water Authority 20 year old effort to drain the north received some unexpected help this week from Las Vegas television expose detailing alleged mismanagement and over spending of the SNWA.
“The Southern Nevada Water Authority has spent huge sums of public money to gobble up a string of rural ranches because of the water underneath them. SNWA claims the ranches are operating in the black, but a whistle blower has come forward to tell a much different story.” Reads and investigative news story from Las Vegas CBS affiliate channel 8.
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Prepared by Chief Investigative Reporter Charles Knapp the story details not only the millions of dollars above market prices the SNWA paid for a hand full of rural Nevada ranches but also the ranches are being run at a loss.
“This story was the best thing to happen for us in a long time,” said Denys Coyle, owner of Baker’s Border Inn and one of the leaders in the water fight with the SNWA. “It really damages their credibility and their assertions. Folks in Las Vegas should be asking if they can’t run a ranch how are they going to manage a multi billion dollar water pipeline system?”
The chief source of the story is identified as Debra Rivero, a former SNWA employee.
Rivero worked for the water district in Las Vegas for 17 years before moving north to run the office for the ranches. From the beginning, she said, she was struck by how little oversight there was by SNWA.
“I did everything, from paying the bills to weighing the trucks, every penny that came in, and every penny that came out, I was responsible for,” said Debra Rivero, told the tv reporters.
The SNWA owns seven rustic ranches in Spring Valley. The authority has spent nearly $80 million to buy a string of ranches, tens of thousands of acres, plus cows, sheep and farm equipment.
According to the report while the SNWA touts the ranches profits to the public it omits the expenses that increase substantially every year.
The operating budget was $500,000 a year in 2007, it went to $750,000 in 2008 and was bumped to $850,000 last year. Expenses that would count against a real rancher’s bottom line are not included, Rivero said. For example, SNWA reported it sold $1 million worth of hay.
“That doesn’t include the fertilizer, the irrigation equipment, the employees time, everything else,” Rivero said.
It has been 25 years since the project was first put together in secret and over 22 plus years since the Southern Nevada Water Authority made its first move and not an inch of pipe has been laid or a shovel full of dirt turned.
In fact the only real successes the SNWA can claim is last March’s ruling by State engineer that gave water rights to the authority originally filed for in 1990.
More than 300 local governments, Indian tribes, ranchers, farmers, businesses, environmental groups, and families and individuals from across Nevada and Utah filed petitions for judicial review appealing the Nevada State Engineer’s decision.
“We are definitely in this for the long haul,” said Abby Johnson a Board Member of the Great Basin Water Network. “We are appealing the ruling and depending on the EIS (environmental Impact statement) we could appeal that finding. If anything we in rural Nevada are more united, more ready to fight than we ever were.”