Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
purchased 23,000 acres of ranch land in northern and central
Nevada, which came with hefty water rights. However, if the district
doesn't use those rights, they're history.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority isn't the only ranch-owning
utility in the Southwest. El Paso (Texas) Water Utilities claims close to
75,000 acres, divided among two ranches and three big farms, on its
balance sheet, according to Ed Archuleta, the utility's executive direc-
tor. “Like many cities, we have invested in farms and ranches outside
El Paso County, so we have the water rights and could import water in
some crisis,” says Archuleta. “That's an insurance policy for the future.
We acquired the land now because in Texas, you must own the land to
have the right of capture underneath for the groundwater.”
FEDERALLY RESERVED WATER RIGHTS
AND THE NATIVE AMERICAN EQUATION
One big—and defi nitely contentious—variable in Western water
allocation laws is and has been federally reserved water rights. They
are associated with most lands managed by the federal government,
including national parks and monuments, national forests, military
reservations, and Indian reservations. According to the U.S. Bureau
of Land Management (BLM), and affi rmed by the Supreme Court,
these lands are mostly immune from state water laws and thus are
not subject to the typical rules dealing with diversion, benefi cial
use, and nonuse requirements.
By far the biggest unknown when it comes to federally reserved
water rights is the Indian reservations in the West. The tribes on these
reservations are a source of real “water power”—and confusion. When
the federal government established the reservations by “reserving” the
land and the right to it on behalf of the tribes, it also reserved rights to
suffi cient water. The meaning of
suffi cient
has been open to discussion.
“Native American water rights have been pushed under the
rug,” says Sandia National Laboratories' Mike Hightower. “They're
not discussed openly, but they could be a major bone of contention
in the future.”
In the
Winters
Doctrine, stemming from a 1908 Supreme Court
case,
Winters v. United States
, the federal government reaffi rmed
this federally reserved Native American right to current and future
