Wrangling Over Water

Toughened by a life of just getting by, John and Judy Leikam say they’ll believe change is coming to their desolate patch of scorched desert only when bulldozers begin to plow it under.

The couple have lived in this tiny community of washboard roads, a few weathered trailers and a three-legged dog for 13 years, ever since they moved from Bullhead City, Ariz., to take care of Judy’s ailing mom.

“Who in the hell would want to live out here?” said John Leikam, 63, a heavy equipment operator. “This isn’t a place I would have chosen.”

“Yep,” Judy said, “we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

But, suddenly, nowhere is awfully attractive to builders. In recent months, three developers have quietly floated proposals that together would transform barren Charleston View into a city of 150,000 -- an hour’s drive from the Las Vegas Strip. Unlike the federal lands surrounding Las Vegas, the property here is privately owned and available for development.

Such ambitious plans spotlight the seminal issue of development in the West: Where will the water come from?

Officials say they fear that over-pumping could dry up or significantly draw down existing well water in California and Nevada. Some environmentalists warn that the region’s increasing thirst could eventually kill dozens of natural springs that sustain rare desert plants and animals in nearby Death Valley National Park and other federal wildlife refuges.

Inyo County officials have already hired a Bay Area planning firm to evaluate the three development proposals and help merge them into one coherent master plan. Developers have until Monday to pay their share of $140,000 in pre-application fees to set the formal planning process in motion.

In a county that usually approves about 50 houses a year, officials are scrambling to evaluate proposed growth that would include 50,000 to 60,000 homes.

Large-scale development of Charleston View would shift the balance of political power in the rural county of 18,000 from Owens Valley in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada range to a city three hours southeast.

“This is a huge development for anybody,” said Leslie Klusmire, the county planning director, from her office in tiny Independence, not far from Mt. Whitney. “And it’s complicated because we’re not only separated by all those miles, but by a mountain range. And Death Valley is the only way to get there from here.”

Sheer size may not be the county’s biggest problem with the proposed new city, Klusmire said. “The question is whether there is a reliable water supply out there,” she said. “Water is always the problem in Inyo County.”

The Charleston View proposals have also raised the eyebrows of state officials in Sacramento and Carson City.

“Some large new towns have been proposed in California, but not straddling the state line, and not this big,” said Terry Roberts, a director in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research in Sacramento.

Beyond California’s strict environmental laws, the developers must follow a 2001 state law that requires large new subdivisions to prove a reliable long-range water supply without harming their neighbors, Roberts said.

In Nevada, State Engineer Hugh Ricci said he’s concerned because Charleston View shares the same depleted water basin as neighboring Pahrump, population 33,000. That fast-growing Nevada township was using more water than could be naturally replaced even before its population quadrupled in the last 15 years as a suburb of Las Vegas.

The Pahrump Valley’s natural springs, fed by runoff from the towering Spring Mountains, dried up years ago because of farming. And Nevada officials have denied applications for new water allocations in the valley for decades.

But unlike Nevada water law, California’s generally gives a landowner the right to drill a well without a permit, Ricci said. So California landowners could potentially pump from new wells even if that turned wells in Nevada to dust, he said.

“If this development occurs in California, there’s nothing my office can do about it,” Ricci said. “But my question to Inyo County is, how do you guarantee there will be sufficient water? This would be the size of the third or fourth largest city in Nevada, just springing up from nothing.”

Hydrologist Tom Buqo, a consultant for Nye County, where Pahrump is located, said that even without construction at Charleston View, water levels beneath Pahrump are dropping about one foot a year. In addition, Pahrump’s population could at least triple if all existing water rights were exercised, he said.

Already, the loss of underground water pressure has begun to crack and crumble the earth, a problem called subsidence. “Foundations on houses are starting to break,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of catastrophic failures.”

A city at Charleston View would mean the days of cheap water are over in Pahrump, Buqo said, because owners of about 9,000 existing wells would have to redrill them at about $10,000 each.

Developers say such concerns are premature, as they’re still doing studies of flood dangers and water availability to determine how large their projects could be.

“We’re not even mapping yet,” said Steven Scow, a Las Vegas attorney who represents the family trust of former Clark County Dist. Atty. Roland H. Wiley, who died in 1993. The Wiley trust owns the bulk of private land in the Charleston View area, more than 10,000 acres, and has discussed building 40,000 to 50,000 homes there.

“That’s our dream, our hope,” Scow said. Las Vegas’ explosive growth of nearly 7,000 new residents a month makes Charleston View, with its panoramic vistas of snow-capped Charleston Peak, a perfect site for a new city of commuters and retirees, he said.

There are 11 shallow water wells on the Wiley property, Scow said. But developers know they’ll have to drill into a huge regional aquifer thousands of feet below to pull enough water to sustain a new city. “We know we have water,” Scow said. “We just don’t know how much.”

Las Vegas building firm Rhodes Homes had hoped to find out in June, when it drilled a 1,540-foot test well that came up nearly dry. Rhodes then dropped its option to buy about 1,200 acres from the Wiley Trust and build 5,000 to 10,000 homes. But it’s still looking for opportunities in the area, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a development firm based in the Philippines hopes to build 2,500 homes around a golf course on 2,100 acres, a representative said.

“We were the only ones planning anything out there,” said Kelly Bradley, consultant for Golden Ridge Corp. “Now we’re kind of like the tail on this huge elephant.”

Golden Ridge’s analysis shows that part of its property is suitable only for a golf course because of flooding. But the company can develop the rest if it can tap into the massive “carbonate aquifer” that stretches from western Utah through Nevada and into California, Bradley said.

“There’s an aquifer with 21 million acre-feet of water 4,500 feet below us,” Bradley said. He plans to spend $100,000 to drill a 3,500-foot test well by the end of August, he said. An acre-foot of water is enough to supply two average households for a year.

Greg James, former Inyo County Water Department director, said he thought developers would eventually find the deep aquifer beneath Pahrump Valley. “There will probably be enough water to meet their needs,” he said. “The question is, what is the cost environmentally?”

James, now a consultant for the Nature Conservancy, which owns property in the area, said the deep aquifer could supply water for the hot springs in nearby Tecopa. It’s also a potential source for the Amargosa River and for springs in Death Valley National Park, which has a southeast boundary just 20 miles from Charleston View.

Park Supt. J.T. Reynolds said he sees the Charleston View proposals in the same light as plans by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to pump groundwater in rural counties near federal park and wildlife preserves in Nevada. He fears these initiatives could dry up oases that keep desert plants and animals alive.

“This growth is just out of control,” Reynolds said. “It’s a nightmare on top of a nightmare. For those of us who live here and have a responsibility to protect these resources, it’s heartbreaking.”

Kay Brothers, deputy general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said the Las Vegas water wholesaler plans to pump only a small amount of water from wells 39 miles from the national park’s Devil’s Hole, a rock-bound pool where a unique species of purple pupfish has survived for 20,000 years.

“We found there would be no effect on Devil’s Hole in 100 years,” she said.

And if much larger authority wells in central and eastern Nevada draw down wells or springs, the state engineer requires the water agency to stop pumping, she said.

At the same time, Brothers said she sees the Charleston View proposals as “very dangerous,” because developers would be drawing so much water from an already depleted basin.

Water law experts say Charleston View has the earmarks of a potential lawsuit if Inyo County approves large-scale development. Potential litigants include Nye County, Pahrump water users, the state of Nevada and federal agencies.

“If water is drawn down in areas we are monitoring, I can almost guarantee you these folks will be hearing from us in court,” Reynolds said.

For its part, Nevada has twice rejected ambitious building plans on Wiley’s Hidden Hills Ranch near Charleston View in Nevada, because the proposed hotel-casino and golf course would have harmed water users.

The state first refused to grant Wiley any water allocations, then in 1993 it rejected an application for a permit to pump water from his California holdings across the state line.

“Substantial evidence supports the state engineer’s conclusion that the hydrological health of the Pahrump Basin constitutes an important state interest,” the Nevada Supreme Court ruled in 1998, rejecting an appeal by the Wiley estate.

Water law expert Roderick Walston, former U.S. Interior Department acting solicitor and a longtime deputy attorney general in California, said groundwater disputes are increasingly common among states, as residents on each side of a border lay claim to the same asset.

“That is especially true in cases where there is a groundwater basin underlying two states,” he said. “Then the two states duke it out in the [U.S.] Supreme Court.”

Officials in Nye County said there’s no question construction of a large Charleston View project about 20 miles away would harm local residents, nearly all of whom have their own water wells.

“What kind of idea is this?” said Michael Maher, the county manager. “Is this just merely to get somebody worried, or get into a fight? In the West, whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting. So, OK, is somebody wanting to get into a fight here?”