Last Thursday, the Moapa Valley Water District (MVWD) Board of Directors held its last meeting of the year. It was a brief meeting. Not much of any real note appeared on the agenda. In fact the business of the meeting was conducted rather quickly in order to allow board members and staff to travel to the annual MVWD holiday party which was held right afterwards in Mesquite. Still, this humble board meeting was a landmark occasion for the district. It was, in fact, the final meeting for three outgoing Board members who have served long and well for the district and for their community: Glen Hardy, James Robison and Guy Doty.
Of the three, Glen Hardy has served the longest. He has occupied a seat on a local culinary water board for around 42 years now. His service began well over a decade before the MVWD was even formed; when there were two separate water companies serving the Moapa Valley: one in Logandale and another in Overton.
When Hardy began his service on the Logandale water board there were only about 375 water customers valley-wide. A small, rickety, eight-inch pipeline had only recently been built to convey spring water from Warm Springs down to the lower valley. Back then, the source of that water was just a single small spring, bubbling onto a one-acre parcel which had been donated to the community for that purpose.
It is remarkable that during Hardy’s 42 years of service, the number of households in the local service area has increased nearly 10 fold to more than 3,500. During his time on the board Hardy has helped oversee the acquisition of sufficient water resources, infrastructure, equipment, staff and economic wherewithal to adequately service that growth.
James Robison began his service on the Overton Water Company board over thirty years ago. This was only a short time before the two separate water entities merged to become the Moapa Valley Water District. Hardy and Robison are the only two remaining charter MVWD board members left serving on the board.
Since that merger in 1983, these two men have helped bring the MVWD from a small, backward operation; held together largely with spit and bailing wire, and run on a shoestring budget out of Jay Whipple’s Logandale home; to the important and influential force in regional water issues that it is today.
Guy Doty first joined the MVWD board a little over twelve years ago in 1998. Since that time, the community has seen its biggest growth boom in history, followed by the sharpest economic decline felt since the 1930s. Both ends of this spectrum, happening in such relatively quick succession, have brought unique challenges to the district. Doty and the other two veteran board members have had to work through all of these challenges and have met them head-on.
Hardy, Robison and Doty have each had a direct role to play in the laying of groundwork for the future of Moapa Valley. Sometimes their positions on the board have been unpopular and the resulting actions of the board have moved into rather controversial territorial. Nevertheless, over countless hours of unseen and largely unsung labor, these men have helped forge agreements and negotiate complex contracts that should ensure water resources will be supplied to this desert community well into the future.
In performing their many years of service, these three community leaders have not sought for recognition or acclaim. And, indeed, they have seldom gotten either. The work of the MVWD board is complicated and difficult for the general public to understand. Few in the community have paid much attention to it at all. Though the board positions are elected posts, and board member’s names are required to appear on the ballot each term, campaigns have often been conducted quietly and unassumingly. In fact, these three have frequently run unopposed; and perhaps, many times, continued to serve only because no one else would.
But the unsung nature of their service doesn’t make it less important. These men have faithfully filled difficult positions that have been fundamental and vital to the well being of the Moapa Valley community.
In the world of today, so many civic leaders seem to be in it for the fame and fortune. The prevailing question from many in the public sector often seems to be: What’s in it for me? Despite all of that, Hardy, Robison and Doty have stood apart as true public servants in the most honorable respect. Indeed, these men have typified that favorite phrase that always appeared on the desk of former President Ronald Reagan: “It is remarkable how far a man can go and how much he can accomplish when he doesn’t care who gets the credit.”
The Moapa Valley community owes a debt of gratitude to these three humble, unsung public servants for their countless hours of work on our behalf.
