Above Photo: A stand of trees in northeastern Nevada known as the swamp cedars is considered sacred by a number of Shoshone tribes. (Photo: Benjamin Spillman and Sam Gross)
There’s a stand of trees in Nevada’s Spring Valley that are sacred to native people. They’re worried a water pipeline to Las Vegas would destroy them. Reno Gazette Journal
Opponents argued pipeline would decimate rural communities and drain water from trees that are sacred to Shoshone people.
Rupert Steele says he’s looking forward to his next trip to Nevada’s rural Spring Valley.
That’s because Steele, chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, will be bearing good news for his relatives.
He was talking about a recent ruling by District Court Judge Robert Estes that dealt a severe blow to a proposal to pipe groundwater from the Spring Valley and other spots in eastern Nevada to Las Vegas.
Steele was among Shoshone people opposed to the plan because, they said, it would drain water from a stand of trees in Spring Valley known as the Swamp Cedars.
The valley was the site of a series of massacres of Shoshone people and Steele and others see the trees as a living link to their murdered ancestors whom they still visit today.
“As far as my relatives who are still out there … I feel good about them,” Steele said, adding that he’ll use his next visit to the trees to share the news. “I’m going to do that soon.”
More: Las Vegas water pipeline battle is life-or-death fight for Shoshone sacred site
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Steele is part of a rural coalition of American Indians, ranchers, environmentalists and non-native local governments such as White Pine County, who are celebrating the 35-page decision.
“This is the heart of the project,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, an anti-pipeline organization. “Spring Valley is essentially the foundation for the project.”
Although the decision is just one step in a battle that’s been ongoing for decades it’s considered significant because it covers some of the core aspects of the proposal the Southern Nevada Water Authority once viewed as a lifeline for the future of Las Vegas development.
In a written statement responding to the ruling, SNWA downplayed the need for the pipeline in the short term.
“Through SNWA’s proactive water resource management and the community’s achievements in water efficiency, there is no scenario in our Water Resource Plan where this project would be needed within the next 30 years,” spokesman Bronson Mack wrote. “Moving forward, SNWA will evaluate its Water Resource Plan, which is done annually, to continue ensuring reliable water supplies to meet current and future water demands for decades to come.”
It did not say whether SNWA would appeal.
Estes March, 2020 pipeline ruling. by Benjamin Spillman on Scribd
The decision affirmed earlier denials of SNWA water rights applications in the Spring, Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys.
It also rejected the monitoring, management and mitigation, or 3M, plan SNWA proposed as a way of overcoming potential problems with the applications.
The plan, Estes said, lacks evidence it would be effective at offsetting problems from pumping groundwater and it lacks accountability metrics for enforcement.
“SNWA’s plan yet again will determine, unilaterally, if its own pumping is the cause of the shrinking shrubland,” Estes wrote. “There is no data or explanation in the ‘Plan’ to describe exactly how it shall be determined.”
Crucially, Estes did not send the 3M plan back to the state engineer to allow for another attempt.
The Nevada Division of Water Resources, which houses the State Engineer’s office, declined to comment.
“They were trying to say they were going to monitor, manage and mitigate their way around,” said Simeon Herskovits, an attorney for the Great Basin Water Network. “Never have the judges called it out like Judge Estes did in these rulings.”
Patrick Donnelly, Nevada director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the ruling affirmed arguments that pumping significant amounts of water from rural Nevada valleys would cause widespread environmental damage that couldn’t be offset, or mitigated, by creating or conserving springs and wetlands elsewhere.
“They would have to find hundreds of springs and thousands of acres of wetlands,” Donnelly said. “Those do not exist.”
Southern Nevada officials have pushed for plans to pipe water from rural Nevada to Las Vegas since 1989. The authority says the pipeline, with a price tag of roughly $15 billion, would supply water for 170,000 new homes.
In 2010, the state Supreme Court struck down two previous rulings that gave the water authority almost 79,000 acre-feet a year from the same valleys. In that ruling, the high court directed the state engineer to hold new hearings on the authority’s groundwater applications.
A year later, then-state engineer Jason King approved the authority’s plans. But after another appeal, Estes ordered him to recalculate whether there was enough water available in the valleys’ groundwater basins to match the proposed supply demands. That eventually led to the state engineer grudgingly rejecting the proposal last year.
The most recent Estes ruling shreds nearly every argument the state made in describing how it could manage SNWA’s plans.
“This really should send a resounding message it is time to abandon this project,” said Roerink.
Although the court affirmed previous state engineer decisions tied aimed at conserving the swamp cedars and rejected 3M plans tribes feared would be inadequate to protect the trees, it wasn’t a total victory for the tribes.
Estes upheld an earlier state engineer’s denial of tribes’ motion for dismissal over inadequate participation from the Department of Interior.
Tribes, including the Goshute, Duckwater and Ely tribes, argued the Interior Department was inadequate in representing tribes’ interests.
“I don’t think they have been doing a good job,” Steele said of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is within Interior. “That is bothersome.”
Delaine Spilsbury, an elder in the Ely Shoshone tribe, said she’s happy about the decision but isn’t ready to declare victory.
“It has been 30 years, I’m numb,” Spilsbury said.
Spilsbury is the granddaughter of Mamie Swallow, one of two little girls who survived an 1897 massacre in the swamp cedars, which Shoshone people call Bahsahwahbe.
She’s worried that even if the pipeline idea dies under the current proceedings, it could be reconstituted in the future.
“If SNWA stops there is probably someone else going to be in line to do the same thing,” Spilsbury said.
Steele said he, too, is concerned that as urban expansion and climate change fuel demand for more water in cities the water supply for the swamp cedars and rural communities in general will remain vulnerable.
“I was in Las Vegas last week and it is going crazy down there,” Steele said, mentioning the low level of water in the Colorado Reservoir that supplies Southern Nevada’s urban demand.
“You look at the bathtub ring on Lake Mead, it is sickening,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Benjamin Spillman covers the outdoors and environment in Northern Nevada, from backcountry skiing in the Sierra to the latest from Lake Tahoe’s ecosystem. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com right here.