Las Vegas Business Press

August 6, 1990

SECTION: Vol 7; No 15; Sec 1; pg 1

LENGTH: 1062 words

HEADLINE: State Engineer Controls Fate of LV Water, Growth

BYLINE: Rick Healy

DATELINE: Las Vegas; NV; US

BODY:

Pity Mike Turnipseed.

It took him "quite a while" to get through college.

He entered his profession almost against his will.

He's seriously understaffed for the work he oversees.

And, now, as Nevada's state engineer, he's saddled with the burden of having to make decisions so important to the state's economic and environmental future -- and so contentious -- that no matter how fair or justified those decisions might be, he could very well become some kind of villain among masses of people throughout the West.

Probably no other Nevada official today, elected or otherwise, has a greater say in the just how far this state's urban development, economic growth and wildlife preservation efforts will go -- because no other official here has as much power to approve or destroy the Las Vegas Valley Water District's controversial bid to pump hundreds of thousands of acre feet of unclaimed groundwater from rural regions of the state to Southern Nevada's booming metropolitan areas.

"I suspected that this was coming even before I became state engineer (in February, 1990)" confides Turnipseed, a 46-year-old amateur photographer and fisherman who "just couldn't stand" the hydrology jobs he pursued while studying engineering at Utah State University in Logan. But after graduating in 1972, he worked with the water departments of Utah and Idaho, and built up an affinity for his field before coming to Nevada five years ago.

Turnipseed's suspicions about the great and terrible task that awaited him as state engineer were first aroused, he says, around October, 1989. It was then that rumors emerged about a "massive block of filings" that Las Vegas would submit for unappropriated water throughout the state.

The 146 applications that eventually arrived at his Carson City office in the fall of 1989 were massive indeed; they accounted for 865,000 acre-feet of subsurface water in Nye, Lincoln, White Pine and northern Clark Counties -- roughly half of all the untapped reserves in the state.

The plan, described by its supporters as a "brilliant" way to sustain Southern Nevada's economically vital urban expansion well into the 21st Century, released a flood of anger in its wake. Nearly, 3,000 formal protests filed thus far with Turnipseed's office by government wildlife agencies, rural county and city officials and hundreds of ranchers, conservationists and businesses have made it the most contested water request in Nevada history.

"It's beginning to look like we could have 4000 to 5000 protests (by the August 11 deadline), which is hard for us to handle," says Turnipseed. "We typically take about 100 applications per month." His seasonally fluctuating crew of up to 75 people, which routinely inspects hundreds of mostly earthen dams spread out across the state, is not able staff up because of budgetary restraints.

Adding to the workload, says Turnipseed, are the press and other interested parties who devour about "half of our staff time" with questions about the project. Many of the visitors are incumbent or aspiring elected officials from the rural counties. They're "vehemently opposed" to the plan, says Turnipseed, but also eager to "become more informed on the issues."

Surprisingly, Clark County politicos have never "visited or talked" with him, he says.

Sitting in the center of a maelstrom of controversy doesn't, in truth, seem to have sucked Turnipseed into the depths of despondency. He admits that he does "lose a little sleep" over the issues he faces, but he remains noticeably upbeat when talking about his department and duties and appears happily inclined to keep the issues before him at a comfortably distant perspective.

"I've read a few of (the protests)," he says. "They're fairly general in the fears that they'll be drying up the basins. But I haven't done a lot of research as to whether the project is viable or not. I've maintained some kind of insulation from it, and I will until I have to become involved in the hearing process."

The decisions he makes, he adds, will rely "a great deal on the evidence presented at the hearings."

Those hearings will be held sometime this fall. Each application will be considered one by one. Some cases could be extremely technical and take "several months" to decide, but the law, notes Turnipseed, "is very specific on guidelines we have to follow. We have to make three findings in order to approve (an application)."

Those findings must consider the source of the unappropriated water, whether the appropriation would interfere with any existing rights, and whether the appropriation is "in the public interest."

That last consideration is the "catch-all," says Turnipseed. Urban and municipal claims for water enjoy the "highest use priority," while agriculture gets the lowest. "But wildlife doesn't consume a lot," he quickly adds, "so they're usually on the highest, too." Deciding which of these uses is truly in the "best public interest" is not going to be easy, particularly when bonafide public interests can clash.

"Nevada law is something we feel comfortable with administering," says Turnipseed, "but we don't want to be in the land-use or growth-management business."

It's too early for Turnipseed to predict if enough of Clark County's applications will survive to make its plan viable. But he's sure that if the project goes through, that it will, as rural county dwellers fear, rob them of some future growth.

Turnipseed doesn't find much validity in the frightening comparisons often made between Southern Nevada's water bid and Southern California's environmentally disastrous Owens Valley water project. Nevada's long-standing groundwater law protects against that kind of wasteland creation, he says. But he seems a little bothered by the Las Vegas Valley Water District's vagueness as to just how much initial "water mining" it intends to do in lower basins.

"We're sort of getting mixed signals in that regard," he says.

Turnipseed acknowledges that the water application rulings he renders are almost certain to make some people extremely unhappy, but he remarks that his decisions are appealable in district court and that appeals do "happen a lot"

But legal assistance from the attorney general's office and "extensive findings in preparing" water rulings have given his branch a "pretty good success rate," he adds.