By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Representatives from several government agencies travelled to Warm Springs on Thursday to meet with residents there about ongoing flooding problems.
Residents of the Saltbrush Lane neighborhood have been complaining that flooding through their area has gotten much worse in recent years, since the major flood in September of 2014.
At least in part, they blame practices of government agencies for the problem. Work crews from BLM and Southern Nevada Water Authority had been clearing invasive tamarisk from along the river in the years leading up to the 2014 flood. Those cuttings had simply been left in piles on the ground to dry for a future burning, neighbors say. But when the 2014 flood came through, those huge piles were picked up, carried by the water downstream and ended up plugging up the stream flow at various points in the river. This caused a breach of the stream channel at several critical points and a significant change in the river flow at flood stage, neighbors said.
“Now anytime it rains a little bit, instead of staying in the channel like it used to always do, the water just flows through our neighborhood,” said resident, Butch Schraft.
Representatives from the BLM, Clark County Public Works, Clark County Flood Control District, Southern Nevada Water Authority and others took of a tour of the area listening to the neighbor’s concerns. The meeting was coordinated by Janice Ridondo of County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick’s office.
Areas where the stream channel had been breached were on segments of the river managed by the BLM.
BLM officials said that the piles of tamarisk had been left in the area because there were short windows of time during the year when the piles could be burned. Because weather conditions have not been right at those times, those windows had been missed.
“We have plans to burn them as soon as possible,” said Jonathan Smith, BLM Restoration Project Manager. “But we can’t burn in the summer, and we have missed the spring window. So it won’t be until fall at the earliest.”
Smith said that the BLM has been removing the non-native tamarisk and replacing it with native plants such as willows along the stream. This is being done in an attempt to restore the habitat to a more natural condition, he said.
But the piles of tamarisk may not be the overriding cause in the current flooding problem, Smith said. He pointed to a system of old agricultural berms and earthen levees that had been holding the river in the channel, possibly for decades since being built by ranchers when the land was being farmed.
“Those aren’t permanent flood control structures,” Smith said. “And when you have a 1,000 year flood like we had in 2014, they are just not going to hold. If anything, we have learned that water is going to do what it is going to do. And that is just what has happened here.”
But neighbors said that it was still the responsibility of the land owner to set things right.
“If I do something on my property that causes my neighbor to flood, I’m sure that there will be people coming down on me to fix it,” said neighbor Chuck Harper. “Now the ranchers use to own this and they used to take care of it. They would maintain and fix those levees to control the flood. So who owns it now? They need to take care of it.”
Smith said that BLM officials would try to work in coordination with Clark County Public Works to bring in some material and rebuild the breached portions of river channel. But he emphasized that, even if this was done, it would not be a permanent fix.
“If you have another big flood, the river will come out of the banks again, it is guaranteed,” he said.
