Solution notes #1: Buying back groundwater rights
Nevada launched a pilot program, and so far there is demand.
Hello, and welcome to Western Water Notes.
Back in Reno after a short trip last week to the Nevada Water Resources Association annual conference in Las Vegas. I was part of a panel focusing on the very issue I wrote about in my last edition: Managing surface and ground water when science shows the two are connected.
I’ll be writing more about that, the Nevada Supreme Court’s recent water decision and what it means/does not mean soon. First, in this edition, I wanted to write about a deadline that came and passed — quietly — but could matter for how water is managed in Nevada going forward.
Finally, thank you to everyone who has subscribed to this newsletter last week. I appreciate your support, and as always, please let me know if you have any tips or ideas. My posts and emails are free to all, but if you find my reporting valuable and want to support it, you can do so below. You can also support this newsletter by sharing it with friends or on social media.
And a big thank you to The Nevada Independent and Sierra Nevada Ally for reposting my piece last week. Both publications do essential work. Please consider supporting them too.
Cheers,
Daniel
Every so often, I’m hoping to use this newsletter to look at solutions to water issues across the region. It’s easy to be critical. And sometimes when I hear the word solution, my first reaction is “what’s the catch?” But a lot of communities are developing unique ways of reducing water use. Solutions are complex and often specific to geography. What works in one area might not work well in another. Yet stories about solutions often get so lost in the media landscape. So, I’m hoping to use this feature to look at some of the ideas people are testing. That doesn’t mean putting a positive spin on the news or advocate for one solution over the other. I hope instead to explain and scrutinize solutions, looking at what works and doesn’t. What are the benefits and opportunities? What are some of the challenges? If you’re interested, you can read more about this type of approach, known as Solutions Journalism, in a blog post here.
It’s a common refrain that I’ve come to repeat over and over: In many places across the West, there are more legal rights to use water than there is water to go around.
How this happened, as a matter of history, is a tale that is specific to each place. In some cases, officials knowingly allowed water to be overused by handing out more legal rights to water than existed. Others turned a blind eye to the science, hoping for the best or to find a backup supply one day. In other cases, it was more unknowing.
But in all cases, we live with the consequences.
Many rivers, as with the Colorado River, are stretched thin and face the impacts of a drying climate — more variability and even less water to go around. But overuse is not just limited to the rivers and streams that flow above ground. It plays out in the large volumes of water stored in underground aquifers. Here in Nevada, groundwater stress is a big issue. Globally, studies have found humans over-tapping the subsurface supply.
So, with many watersheds facing what feels to be a tipping point, what can be done?
I’m focused here today on groundwater, and on one solution that has been gaining a lot of momentum in Nevada: Buying and retiring groundwater rights. Last year, the state gave $25 million to a pilot program to buy back state-issued water rights and retire them, an effort to reduce overuse. Wipe them off the books. The program is targeting places in the Great Basin where groundwater overuse has created conflicts, depleting rivers, affecting wildlife habitat and causing long-term aquifer declines.
Under the program, the state — using $25 million in federal dollars — will fund the purchase of water rights in places where past regulators gave out too many. Taking the rights off the state’s ledger would help bring aquifers into balance. At the same time, irrigators could get compensated for using less, or in certain cases, they could resolve a conflict before facing a future regulatory action, such as cuts to their use.
It’s what some water officials are calling a “soft landing” in a transition to using less.
For the program, Feb. 1 was an important date. It was the date that a list of interested sellers was due to state officials. And it turns out that there is quite a bit of demand.
Four groups were selected to fund groundwater rights buybacks: The Humboldt River Basin Water Authority, the Central Nevada Regional Water Authority, the Southern Nevada Water Authority and Walker Basin Conservancy. According to presentations at the Nevada Water Resources Association conference last week, many of them saw significant interest from irrigators who wanted to sell at least a portion of their water rights, at a total value far exceeding the $25 million that the state initially allocated.
Here’s a sample:
Water users across the overused Humboldt River Basin expressed interest in selling ~12,000 acre-feet of water rights (one acre-foot is the volume of water needed to fill an acre of land — about a football field — to a depth of one foot.)
In the Walker Basin, irrigators expressed interest in selling ~21,000 acre-feet of rights to groundwater. There, overuse can deplete the flows of the Walker River.
Irrigators in Central Nevada, a region that spans nine counties, also expressed interest in selling ~12,000 acre-feet of groundwater rights. Notably, all of the interest came from Diamond Valley, Nevada’s only Critical Management Area.
The demand is impressive for several reasons, not the least of which is that this pilot program came together quickly. Early in 2023, water users and environmental groups pushed lawmakers to pass a bill creating a statutory buyback program. Despite what appeared to be bipartisan support, the legislation had faltered by May. Instead, state officials funded a pilot program using dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Six entities applied to the state for funds and requested a combined $65 million. The state ultimately picked four entities in the fall, making the turnaround for applying to participate a matter of weeks. By the end of January, the entities had to provide the state with a list of willing sellers. Now contracts must be completed by September.
The pilot program is far from over, and this post is likely not the last I’ll write about it. But the Feb. 1 date marked an important deadline, the first indication of what demand for such a program might look like in Nevada. With it still in a pilot phase, these are the three (or four) questions I’ve been thinking about when it comes to what’s next:
How do you bring people to the table? Peter Stanton, the executive director of the Walker Basin Conservancy, showed an interesting slide at the conference. The slide looked at how long the conservancy had been working with irrigators who expressed interest in selling back groundwater rights. The majority had working relationships with the conservancy that went back 2-4, if not 10 years. Stanton’s takeaway: “Relationships take time.” But people are willing to come to the table.
The fact that there was so much interest for selling in Diamond Valley was also telling. Groundwater in the valley is overpumped. And it’s Nevada’s only Critical Management Area, meaning irrigators must reduce their use in accordance with a groundwater management plan or face even more punishing cuts in the future. It is notable that there was so much interest in Diamond Valley, suggesting perhaps that the threat of regulatory action is a motivator to bring people to the table. It’s worth noting that the program only applies to places where there are issues with groundwater use, where it is unsustainable or conflicting with other water rights.
Clearly there is demand, so what might the Legislature do? I’m curious to see what happens at the state level. Will lawmakers look to adopt — and fund — a more formal groundwater program in the future. This gets to a related question: What is the government’s culpability and its responsibility to irrigators and communities that have formed around overuse? This is a question I’ve heard tossed around a lot, and I’ve heard arguments on all sides. The law conditions water rights in many ways, and they are subject to other existing rights. In non legalese, that means that water rights are subject to regulation and cuts. Should taxpayer dollars be going to buy back water rights that can be cut off by the law?
But it’s more complicated than that: State regulators over-issued water permits while the federal government actively promoted land policies meant to irrigate arid places (some of these laws are still on the books!). Do they now bear some responsibility for these policies? On a practical level, regulations can take years, if not decades, to actually change things. When new regulations are inevitably appealed, the courts weigh in, and litigation can result in more expenses for all involved. Retiring water rights can be done in months and with less conflict.
What happens after the water goes away? This is perhaps the most important question. It’s one that has to grapple with not only economics, but also ecology and communal change. What does taking agricultural land out of production mean for a tax base? A local economy? What does it mean for the future of the landscape? The state’s pilot program looks to prioritize projects with a plan for “the mitigation of noxious weeds or environmental impacts due to the retirement of water rights.” But a post land-use plan is an important piece of the puzzle.
Some of these tensions and questions were on full display when I went to a public meeting on retiring groundwater rights in Smith Valley and hosted by the Walker Basin Conservancy back in January. The audience raised concerns about what the area might look like if active water rights were retired, in addition to those that the conservancy had already acquired for boosting water levels at Walker Lake.
Those are some of the questions I’m thinking about right now, but let me know if you have thoughts too. I’ll be writing more about this as I continue to do more reporting.
Some other threads:
The latest news on record rainfall hitting California, via the L.A. Times.
A new study from the Desert Research Institute and the University of Montana looks at the impacts of irrigation and climate change on watersheds. It was published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment. And here is the press release on it.
What a smaller Colorado River could mean for what you see at the grocery store. E&E News’ Jennifer Yachnin looks at the Colorado River and effects on produce.
With the idea of exporting water always floating around, Missouri is considering a law to keep water in Missouri. “You may hear about states like California and Kansas in the news having water shortages,” said one state senator. “We don’t want to lose our water because they’ve mismanaged theirs.” More from the Missouri Independent.
So maybe Utah isn’t the second-driest state? KUER reports.
“It would cost tens of millions of dollars for humans to rebuild these creek banks and restore these marshes. The sea otters are stabilizing them for free in exchange for an all-you-can-eat crab feast.” Courthouse News reports on the return of sea otters.
The Reno-Gazette Journal reports on plastic litter in Lake Tahoe.
The Pacific Institute released a report last month looking at how climate change is affecting water and sanitation. From the report’s overview: “It offers a synthesis of these impacts, highlighting the disproportionate burdens shouldered by frontline communities. It aims to provide a foundational understanding of the complex relationship between climate change, water, and equity…. “
Great Basin snowpack is now above average, though it lags in Western Nevada.
