Lovelock was the right place to discuss water issues according to officials at last week's Central Nevada Regional Water Authority meeting. CNRWA Executive Director Steve Bradhurst designated Pershing County as "ground zero" in the state's three long years of devastating drought conditions.
That was no exaggeration - this year, unlike luckier farmers in other counties, local growers received zero irrigation water for crops and their declining harvests are impacting local jobs and the economy.
"During the last few years, Nevada's most severe drought has been located in the Pershing County/Churchill County area. The District has seen its surface water supply disappear the last two years and the drought has been a major contributor to the problem," Bradhurst stated in a staff report.
Occasional precipitation helped tough, deeper-rooted alfalfa survive but the perennial crop will not last another year without irrigation meaning some farmers could face bankruptcy if the drought continues in 2015. Unlike dry land farmers in the Midwest, Nevada producers cannot depend on water from the sky.
Annual declines in the Lovelock Valley's "life blood" - namely the lower Humboldt River - is also due to groundwater pumping upstream by mines, power plants and agriculture according to a USGS study. Pershing County farmers are at the end of a long line of surface and ground water demands in the basin.
CNRWA officials from eight counties in the Central Hydrographic Region, the largest in the state, are considering ways to protect water resources impacting their local economies and natural environments.
Pershing County Water Conservation District Secretary/Manager Bennie Hodges presented CNRWA board members with possible man-made causes of declining flows in the lower Humboldt River. After 26 years with the district, Hodges said this was the first year he's had zero irrigation water for farmers.
"We've had similar droughts but we'd still get something - some water would flow down the river," he said. "This is the first year I can see with a zero allotment. What we're seeing lately is, even with a decent water flow (upstream) the percentage of the water getting here is way below what it should be."
The decline is due not only to drought but to over-appropriation of groundwater for agriculture and "temporary" mine dewatering in the Humboldt River Basin, Hodges told CNRWA officials. Mine dewatering requires pumping of unwanted ground water into pit lakes with little or no permitting or restrictions and much of the water is lost to evaporation, he said.
Hodges submitted a list of seven pit lakes in the Humboldt River Basin including those at Goldstrike, Gold Quarry and Lone Tree mines with a total water volume of 1,051,609 acre-feet/year and total evaporation of 9,702 acre-feet/year. The natural recharge of aquifers, known as "perennial yield", is less than water demands meaning basins east of Winnemucca are over-appropriated, he told officials.
"Mine dewatering, classified as temporary, is not factored into basin water budgets resulting in vast over-appropriation of basins," Hodges said. "The solution is to bring water appropriations in line with the re-charge of hydrographic basins."
Hodges suggested greater observation of water use in all hydrographic basins within the Humboldt River Region with annual pumpage reports, water resource budgets and groundwater level reports to "allow water users within the Humboldt River Region to readily observe water level declines."
The Lovelock Valley's relatively low-dollar crops, including alfalfa, alfalfa seed and wheat, may not support the infrastructure costs of underground "banking" in a conjunctive water management system and local ground water purification systems appear cost-prohibitive, Hodges said. High salinity and elevated levels of boron and other minerals make the valley's ground water unsuitable for agriculture.
Nevada State Water Engineer Jason King told CNRWA officials there isn't always a direct correlation between ground pumping and surface water flows and the variable relationships need further analysis.
"This notion that every gallon of groundwater being pumped upstream in the basin is taking a gallon of water from the surface water is not correct. My concern is what is that amount? Is it one half or a third? If that can be proven then that's what the senior water rights users should be entitled to and that's something we need to get our arms around."
King disclosed that some of the basin's head water regions may be closed to new water appropriations.
"Our office is trying to help flows in the Humboldt River Basin," he said. "We're looking at closing some of those head water basins not fully committed with the idea of protecting those sources so hopefully more of that water stays in the river and goes downstream."
In the future, all underground water diversions including domestic wells could be metered, King said.
Due to numerous residential wells, ground water is declining in the Diamond and Pahrump Valleys.
"There are a number of basins where all the underground water diversions are not being metered," he said. "I've heard, especially here in the Humboldt River corridor, that every diversion should be metered so we know how much ground water is being used. We're in the 21st century so why not?"
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