West’s Water War Centers on Rivers in Thirsty Nevada

The sun that set 10,000 years ago over a prehistoric inland sea today rises in the same spot over a vast inland desert. It is called Nevada, and it is the driest state in the nation.

Each year, an average of nine inches of rain falls on Nevada. Only one river is contained solely within its borders. About 1.3 million acre-feet of water flows into Nevada from other states, but it gives up 850,000 acre-feet to its neighbors.

Consider that one acre-foot equals almost 326,000 gallons, or enough to sustain an average family for two years. It is no wonder that fighting over water is a tradition in Nevada and across the West.

Colorado fights with seven states over seven rivers. El Paso, Tex., fights for New Mexico’s ground water. Wyoming fights the federal government and two Indian tribes over water rights on the Wind-Big Horn River. Montana fights with its largest utility and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation over the Missouri River.

Great Consternation

Wherever people settle in the arid West, they live with hydrological contradictions and consternation. Floods and drought in the same year. Rivers swollen with water but nowhere to store it. Vast ground-water basins hundreds of miles from thirsty cities.

Some Westerners consider it unnatural to dam and drain and drill for water in a region so naturally dry. Others consider it a sin to allow water to trickle or rampage at will. “Every drop of water that runs to the sea without rendering a commercial return is a public waste,” Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover said 60 years ago.

Farmers and ranchers, who traditionally have used the most water in the West, now find that their water rights are worth more than their crops or animals. Booming Western cities have gone into farming, buying up the land and its water rights and maintaining it against the day the water rights are needed.

Some people, like Fresno water consultant Joe Lord, look to the future and issue warnings: “There’s going to be a water crunch that’s going to make the OPEC oil embargo look like a tea party.”

Not Their Problem

Still, surveys show that many Westerners fail to recognize that water is a limited resource; it’s always the other guy’s shortage.

In his 1981 book, “A River No More,” writer Philip Fradkin said, “A period of unparalleled harmony (in the West) . . . will very quickly become unraveled when it becomes readily apparent that there will be shortages, and you’ll see water wars like you’ve never seen.”

In Nevada, a complex, 80-year-old water battle rages along the banks of the Truckee River, which meanders 110 miles from postcard-perfect Lake Tahoe north to the stark desert beauty of Pyramid Lake. Fierce competition for a limited resource pits Indian against farmer, farmer against city dweller, Nevadan against Californian and state interests against federal ones, with no settlement in sight.

Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.), who once likened the difficulty of ending the river battle to achieving a Middle East peace, has made reaching a Truckee settlement a priority before he leaves office at year’s end, but even that would not solve the area’s water problems. Severe shortages might be just six years away, and three consecutive dry years would create a crisis, water officials say.

Decree in 1944

Thirty years after the United States filed its first lawsuit in the northern Nevada water war, the 1944 Orr Ditch decree spelled out who was entitled to what piece of the river and which rights had priority over others.

“We’re at a stage in a lot of the West where we’ve exhausted those alternatives. So emotions are going to continue to run high.”

Emotions over Truckee water run as high as the Sierra Nevada and as deep as Pyramid Lake itself, a giant puddle left when the ancient sea receded. Today it is the largest body of water contained entirely in Nevada. The Truckee ends there, and it is where much of the conflict over the river’s water began.

Joe Ely, the 29-year-old chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe, stands on the edge of the desert lake that shines like a sapphire and cannot recall a day when his people were not fighting over water.

Water is the salvation of the fish that have historically sustained the tribe: the cui ui , a prehistoric fish found only in Pyramid, and the Lahontan cutthroat trout, the largest of that species.

Alfalfa Growers

Three generations ago, the Paiutes operated a thriving fishery on their lakeside reservation. The trouble began with the National Reclamation Act of 1902, a measure meant to turn America’s deserts into fertile farm land. Nevada is the site of the nation’s first reclamation effort, the Newlands Project. It siphons water from the Truckee and neighboring Carson rivers to feed the valleys southeast of Pyramid Lake, including one of the nation’s largest alfalfa-growing areas.

In a good water year like this one, the 1,500 farmers who till the fields around the dusty town of Fallon might fill their cups from the Carson and take little if any water from the Truckee. In a dry year, they might use all the Truckee they are entitled to, and every drop diverted to the farmers of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District means that much less for Pyramid Lake.

The farmers and Indians “are engaged in a very serious conflict over how much water the irrigation district is entitled to and how much water Pyramid Lake needs to maintain its elevation,” said Federal Water Master Garry Stone, who regulates the flows of the Truckee and Carson.

Water Level Down

From 1902 to 1981, the lake level dropped 70 feet, and the cutthroat trout vanished. The cui ui, once so numerous that Paiute children waded in to play among them, nearly disappeared.

The tribe lost a legal battle, which went to the U.S. Supreme Court, to guarantee water for Pyramid. However, it won rights to all the water in the Stampede Reservoir, a major Truckee water storage site, to protect their endangered fish.

The lake fish have come back, and good water years have pushed Pyramid to its highest level in four decades. But officials disagree over exactly how much water is needed to sustain the lake and its fish.

There are other problems. If Pyramid gets more water, someone else must sacrifice. The logical losers are the irrigation district farmers, who use more than 70% of the area’s water. They say they already get too little water and resent further cuts in a resource designated theirs by the courts.

Squabbling between the district and the Pyramid tribe could end with a settlement, but there’s another stumbling block: the proposed California-Nevada Interstate Compact.

Lacking an Agreement

Most states that share water have agreements about who gets what. But California and Nevada have no ratified agreement over Lake Tahoe, which straddles the state line, or the Truckee, Carson and Walker rivers, which begin in California and end in Nevada. Although both states approved a compact in 1971, opposition from the tribe and disagreements over its terms within the Interior Department let it drift in congressional waters. Now Nevada’s senators want Congress to ratify it.

“(Without it), we are still faced with the unresolved issue of how much the state of California can develop and in effect preclude from crossing the state line, directly affecting what’s available for use in Nevada,” one official said.

Nevada’s growing thirst is reflected in the rapid transfer of farm water rights to municipal and industrial use, a familiar pattern across the West.

In the Reno-Sparks area, growing demand and shrinking supply spell big money for Truckee water rights. An acre-foot that sold for $50 to $100 a decade ago now commands about $2,500, with rumors of prices as high as $5,000.

“There’s no question that it won’t be many years before there are no big ranches left, nothing over a few acres, in the Truckee Meadows,” Stone said. “How can a farmer justify putting $2,000-an-acre-foot water on a pasture?”

Rise in Water Demand

In five years, water demand in the Meadows has jumped 20%. As early as 1992, demand is expected to equal supply; it will exceed it by the year 2000. Sierra Pacific Power Co.’s recent Water Resource Plan identified 17 possible water sources, most of which would guarantee long litigation and construction costs in the millions.

Expensive projects mean expensive water. Users will pay the price for the $3.6-billion Central Arizona Project, which will carry Colorado River water 330 miles to points south of Tucson, Ariz., by 1991.

In California, where the north has about 70% of the water but the south consumes 80% of the 11 trillion gallons used each year, the state is trying to reduce its dependence on ground water, which supplies about 39% of its needs. Ground water depletion has caused serious soil subsidence problems.

“In the southern part of our district, there have been studies showing that the land subsided 15 to 20 feet over a period of 50 years,” said Don Upton, spokesman for the 600,000-acre Westlands Water District in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Laws in Nevada

With so little surface water, about 45 years ago Nevada became one of the first Western states to pass laws for managing its ground water supplies. Overseeing the situation means Nevada can avoid depleting its ground water resources, unlike states like California, where there is no statewide regulation.

“You can go in (California), drill a well and start pumping,” one Nevada official said. “The result has been they’ve virtually destroyed some of their ground water basins. Right now, they’re overdrafting their ground water to the extent of about 2 million acre-feet a year.”

With so much demand, conservation is critical. In the Truckee Meadows and other parts of Nevada, such efforts are complicated by the lack of water meters, and resistance to installing them. Arizona’s 1980 ground water law requires cities to meet conservation goals or face fines of up to $10,000 a day. Cities have responded by banning swimming pool construction, increasing water rates for high-volume users, offering rebates for installation of water-saving landscaping and providing free low-flow plumbing devices.

In Nevada, California, Texas, Montana and Arizona, agriculture uses up to 98% of the water. A report by a Western Governors’ Assn. task force this summer suggested that if as little as 10% of irrigation water were conserved, it would double the supply to cities and industry and provide enough water to meet most urban needs into the 21st Century.

Nevada water officials agree that although conservation programs are deemed moderately effective in dry years, it’s tougher to make people save for the future.

“If in 1986 they see the Truckee River flowing with an abundant supply,” said Roland Westergard, Nevada’s director of conservation and natural resources, “it’s hard to convince them that in 1989, there may be dust in their faucet when they turn it on.”