By:  Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President

Regardless of what Samuel Clemens might have said about what you do with water and whiskey in Nevada, agricultural production doesn’t happen without water.  All forms of Nevada agriculture are linked to water…whether the operation is a ranch depending on a spring or ephemeral stream – or an alfalfa producer relying on an irrigation district or well and center pivot.

The right to use water is a critical property right in Nevada, which agricultural producers consider as possibly their most valuable…not necessarily because of the fiscal worth (although in places it has become quite valuable in those terms), but likely so valuable because of its necessity.

Agricultural producers still own the majority of Nevada water rights.  This is the result of the state’s “first in time – first in right” approach to determining water right ownership.  Being the first to put the water of an area to a beneficial use (another tenant in state water law), farmers got to where they are in terms of owning most of the water rights in Nevada through a natural outcome.

Noteworthy aspects of Nevada’s agricultural water system are three irrigation districts, formed in a historical perspective where the emphasis of society was oriented to productivity.  The first reclamation project in the United States, the Newlands project, was launched at the turn of the century (1900-ish) and was based on bringing farmers to the Fallon area to make the desert bloom.  Organized around a system of ditches and canals which distributed water from two rivers (Carson and Truckee), the whole idea was that putting water to a productive use, irrigating crops and growing a community, was a good thing to do.

The same basic concepts fit the purpose for establishing the irrigation systems in the Smith and Mason Valley areas (Walker Rivers) and the Pershing County Irrigation district (Humboldt River).

Over the past twenty years of my experience in Nevada, each of these irrigation districts have been challenged and sometimes scorned because of the way in which their fundamental purpose – putting water to productive use – is no longer a societal priority.  In the cases of two of the irrigation districts, putting water into desert terminal lakes and having the water available to evaporate has been identified (at least by one of our state’s U.S. Senators) as a more worthy use of water than making it available for growing crops and area economies.

Ranchers and their use of water for livestock grazing have also drawn the askance attention of those who suggest that beneficial and productive use of water sources shouldn’t really be something private interests should own.  Under the Clinton Administration, Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt proposed a set of “reform” ideas for public lands grazing that included “to the extent possible by state law” that all water available on the public lands would become the property of the United States.

Nevada’s legislature, responding in advance of the reform move, initially attempted to codify a scenario that had been in place prior to Secretary Babbitt’s water grab. 

This system provided for “ownership” by whoever put up the funds to put the water source to beneficial use.  If a rancher did the work and invested the funds for developing the water (be it a spring or well) – the rancher would own the water.  If the government agency did the developing, they would own the water.  And, if the project was a joint effort, the water would be jointly owned.

Although locking this rather simple approach into law would appear to be easy enough, there were far more intelligent forces who thought otherwise and in the end the solution, passed by the Nevada Legislature was to prohibit the ownership of livestock water rights by the Federal government.  Since they (the Feds) didn’t own any livestock – they didn’t need to own any livestock water rights.

Challenged in courts (which is the place where lots of Nevada water management is worked out) and then revisited about 10 years after the first stock water rights legislative solution was initiated, almost no further waters have been developed on public lands. 

The most recent threat to Nevada’s agricultural water has come in the form of growing and very thirsty urban populations – a topic deserving it’s own and separate coverage…in the next blog.