Although one can question the appropriate involvement of the U.S. Federal Government earmarking nearly $400 million of taxpayer dollars for buying out water rights being used for the productive production of food and fiber to put into a lake for evaporation…or, wonder about where the Nevada University System found license in their mission to play real estate, money launderer for acquiring the water rights under the guise of a research endeavor…but, in the final analysis the end result will be determined by water right owners who decide whether to sell their water rights.

Options are coming together for the possible use of a lease program involving the Walker River Irrigation District with the U.S. Senate authorizing $26 million of previously authorized funding for this lease program.  It isn’t completely finalized, but there is good reason to suspect that the conference committee between the U.S. House and Senate will be able to sign-off on the differences in the appropriations bill to move this project forward.

When completed, the lease program will provide water right owners with the ability to determine that they can offer up their water for the Walker Lake restoration effort without giving up their water right ownership in the process.

As much as it would have been better for the Bureau of Reclamation’s (BOR) “Walker River Basin Acquisition Program” Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), to have been more complete and honest in its presentation…perhaps even mattering in the first place…the findings reported show that Walker Lake objectives can be accomplished through a lease program with the available funding that’s in the ability of the University System to spend.  Partnering with the Walker River Irrigation District would only expand on this win-win approach.

Whether that is the direction taken will depend on the University System’s willingness to buy-in on the idea of not having to purchase water rights (which it seems they aren’t going to own anyway), but in the end if no willing sellers come forward to make the agreements for water right sales – it won’t matter what the University decides. 

Any non-willingness of participation will probably be met with Senator Reid attempting to find other leverage methods to extract water and improving the willingness of sellers to sell, but that will more than likely be an approach taken even if there are sales.  It is still our belief that the long-range goal is to completely destroy the ability of water right owners to use their water for agricultural production.  Crashing the system won’t require the acquisition of all the water, just enough to make it too expensive to maintain the system, after taking enough of the critical amounts out of the system.

If this goal is accomplished there will be plenty of entities responsible for the destruction, but it will all start with those who make the decision to sell their water in the first place.  Water right owners have the ability to decide what they will for their property.  Hopefully, they will also give consideration to the long-term needs of their community as well.