Water

In his second week in office Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons is sticking his foot in it. Today's Review Journal has this funny article. Or it would be funny if it was in Mad Magazine. Alas it is for real and run in a would-be newspaper.

The basic points are that Gibbons thinks the state can pay for it's highways by selling the water rights under the existing highways. We do understand that as a long-time friend of the mining industry Gibbons might think water rights are somehow similar to mineral rights. Even then, however, one would think he would know that the ownership of underground minerals doesn't go with the surface rights. Then again none of this matters.

In Nevada water rights are held by the state. They are granted to parties upon approval of the application and proof of beneficial use. As the article states "the Nevada Division of Water Resources' Web site shows that the Transportation Department owns numerous water rights in basins throughout the state." The web site they are referring to is this one. It does indeed show that the Transportation Department has water rights in several basins around the state. However even a cursory look through those applications suggests many are either for wildlife or are very small allotments (some even as small as 1 Acre Foot per year) of quasi-municipal water rights. It would be easy to surmise these are related to the maintenance of residences at state highway maintenance yards and rest areas.

Perhaps the whole state highway system can end up looking like this.

The Nevada Supreme Court published their opinion in Bacher v. State Engineer on Wednesday. The case speaks to several critical areas of Nevada water law and incorporates the "anti-speculation doctrine" in interpretation of Nevada water law.

The court also gave indications of a number of items around beneficial use like the following footnote:

Some projects, including the theme park, had contingencies attached to them. In other words, the projects may be speculative in nature. Although we do not reach whether contingent projects may be considered in evaluating a need for water under NRS 533.370(6) because we conclude that the State Engineer abused his discretion on other grounds, we note that speculative evidence of development projects is not sufficient to survive a substantial evidence inquiry on review.