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March 28, 2024 4:47 pm
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BLM Resource Management Plan: How The BLM Plan Might Affect Local Utilities

The Bureau of Land Management is currently revising the Las Vegas Resource Management Plan. The plan will provide management direction for 3.1 million acres of public land in southern Nevada managed by the BLM for the next 15-20 years. This is the fifth in a series of articles which looks into some of the specifics of the plan as it could especially impact residents in the Moapa Valley communities.

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

With the communities of northeast Clark County almost completely surrounded by public land, management policies on those lands can have a significant impact on the way that local utilities serve the needs of their customers. Last week, we spoke to the general managers of the three public utilities that service Moapa Valley residents, asking them what effects the draft Resource Management Plan (RMP), recently released by the BLM for public comment, might have on their future operations.

Perhaps most directly affected by the RMP is the Moapa Valley Water District (MVWD). MVWD general manager, Joe Davis, pointed out that most of the district’s water tanks and distribution pipeline are located on BLM land. To do anything new on those lands is a long process, Davis said.

One example is a long standing MVWD proposal in the Meadow Valley Wash, north of Moapa. The district has a permit on 5000 acre-feet of water in that area. A significant resource, this would be enough to supply roughly 5000 new households in the Moapa Valley communities. The MVWD currently serves only around 3000 households.

In 2001, the district applied to the BLM for rights-of-way in an effort to start the process of putting Meadow Valley water rights to use. A little later, the district applied for a federal grant to drill exploratory wells in the Meadow Valley Wash area. They were awarded the amount of $800,000 for the work.
“It was free money for us to drill some exploratory wells and see if they were going to work for us,” said Davis.

That funding sat waiting for the BLM’s response to the district’s 2001 application. A decade went by, and the district still hadn’t received a permit.
“They hadn’t even moved off of dead center on whether they were going to approve it or not,” said Davis of the BLM. “By 2011, when there wasn’t even any word that the BLM was going to move forward, the government (grant program) finally said, ‘We’ve got to give this money to someone else.’ So we lost that money and lost the opportunity to drill and see the best way to get this water.”

Under the proposed RMP, that difficult process would become even more laborious, Davis believes. In the RMP, the Meadow Valley Wash is being considered as an area eligible for ‘Wild and Scenic River’ status. This would most likely place additional restrictions on the area, Davis said.

A Wild and Scenic River designation would have to be approved by Congress, but if the potential is identified in the RMP, Davis fears that the BLM would tend to manage it that way even without the formal designation.

Another difficult area for the MVWD has been its Arrow Canyon facility. Currently the district maintains two vitally important wells on the site. But the MVWD board has identified a strong need for a new water tank above the Warm Springs area. The land adjacent to the Arrow Canyon facility would make the most sense for that tank, Davis said.

Currently, a system of pumps and specialty valves provides enough pressure to service the Warm Springs area. But a problem arose in 2010 when wild fire broke out on the twelve hundred acre Warm Springs Wildlife Area owned by Southern Nevada Water Authoriy (SNWA). The fire knocked out power to the area which caused the MVWD pumps and facilities to stop working.
“So now, the district loses power and can’t supply any water to fight the fire,” Davis said.

A new water tank on the hillside, near the Arrow Canyon site, would allow water to be delivered by gravity flow. There would be no need for power, Davis said. And it would be beneficial to customers in the upper Muddy on a daily basis, he said.

Davis explained that it would already be a difficult process to get the necessary land permits to build the proposed tank. But the RMP is identifying the Arrow Canyon land as an area with “Wilderness Characteristics.” It is also rated high for its “Visual Characteristics.” Davis fears these things will make the permitting process nearly impossible.
“It’ll take us years and a lot of money, all at the ratepayer’s expense,” Davis said. “And when it’s all done, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be granted the permits.”

Overton Power District (OPD) general manager, Mendis Cooper, said that he faces similar problems in getting rights-of-way for power transmission lines across BLM lands. It’s already a tremendously difficult process, he said. But with the RMP’s newly proposed Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) and other designations it could become even more difficult.

Eight years ago, OPD submitted its long term plan to the BLM, Cooper explained. It included enough infrastructure to take the district through the next twenty years or so. Cooper said that the plan was a proactive effort to be ready when the district’s future growth needs were felt. But trying to plan ahead with the BLM has been fraught with frustration, he said.

“We asked (the BLM) what their concerns were so we could make adjustments to our designs now,” Cooper said. “But they would not tell us what their concerns were. Their process was: You have to design your line and once you’ve decided where it will go, then we’ll tell you if there’s a problem with it.”

That means that the OPD would have to hire engineers and surveyors to go out and create a preliminary design without ever knowing if it will be approved.
“So we spend all this money to do this and when we send it in, they will say, ‘You can’t do that’,” Cooper said. “They pick it all apart and tell us we need to make changes in this area but they can’t tell us where or why.”

Recently, the OPD has been working on the problem of seed collection. Cooper explains that the BLM requires the district to collect so many tons of seed in areas that would be affected by the rights-of-way. This would allow them to reseed those areas with native plants once the project is completed.

“Our consultant has gone out and collected seeds on this acreage,” Cooper said. “He has said that there is no way, in these areas, to collect the amount of seeds that they’re asking for. They just aren’t there.”
The district has offered to supplement by buying seeds on the market. But BLM officials have declined this, saying that the seeds must be native to the area, Cooper said.
“So they ask for things that can’t be accomplished, but they themselves don’t know how to accomplish them,” Cooper said. “They have all these regulations in place, but they don’t have the staff, manpower, or even an understanding of the things they are asking us to do.”

With telephone lines mainly running through developed areas of Moapa Valley, Moapa Valley Telephone Company (MVT) is not required to deal with the BLM as often as MVWD and OPD. But MVT President, John Lyon, admits that the dealings they have had in the past have been “kind of a nightmare process.”

In the early 1990’s, MVT participated in a cooperative effort to run fiber-optic network across public lands to connect in with Las Vegas. Lyon said the process took nearly three years and dealt with various federal agencies.
“It was a lengthy and time-consuming project with a lot of hoops to jump through,” Lyon said. “We learned that you have to plan far in advance and take into consideration a lot of time and cost.”

Lyon said that he remembers that BLM staff members had worked hard and tried to help the company through the process as best they could. But a web of regulations had often tied them down.
MVT is currently in a good spot as far as new infrastructure is concerned, Lyon said.
“Right now, we are pretty much built out and can facilitate what we need to do without going to the BLM,” Lyon said. “But if we have some growth and we had to think about upgrading our fiber-network to Las Vegas, it might take a little longer.”
Lyon admitted that he hadn’t reviewed the RMP in much depth. But he said he hadn’t seen anything in the plan that would make things any easier for MVT in the future.

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