By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
The Mesquite City Council spoke out in defense of access to the city’s spring water rights in the Virgin Mountain Range in a resolution passed on Tuesday night, June 27 in Mesquite. But mixed in with the resolution was one of the region’s most controversial issues: the Gold Butte National Monument.
Resolution 927, passed with a 4-1 vote of the council, sought to make changes to the boundary of the new national monumen. The monument was designated by proclamation in December 2016 by President Barack Obama. The proposed boundary changes would, in essence, carve out areas of existing VVWD spring water rights from inclusion within the national monument boundaries. The council members hoped that, in doing so, access to the spring water rights might be better preserved for the future of the city.
But the resolution went further than just dealing with water rights. While it stopped short of requesting a complete reversal of the national monument proclamation, it was nevertheless critical of the lack of Congressional approval or local stakeholder approval employed in its designation.
Furthermore, the resolution expressed support for an executive order, issued in May by President Donald Trump, instructing the Dept. of Interior to complete a review of all recent national monument designations to determine their compliance with the original intent of the federal Antiquities Act of 1906. That review is currently underway and includes two Nevada monuments: Gold Butte and Basin and Range in Lincoln County.
The resolution also took the position that the size of Gold Butte National Monument, at about 350,000 acres, exceeds that justified by the language of the Antiquities Act. The Act states that such designations should be “confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
Furthermore, the resolution expressed support for legislation introduced by Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) and Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) in January of this year which would prohibit the future use of the Antiquities Act in Nevada without the express authorization of Congress.
Finally, the resolution expressed support for adding a requirement that any future land designation include a sufficient funding source to carry out the intent of the designation.
These positions had the effect of stirring up a firestorm of controversy in the days leading up to the meeting. Both the mayor and city council members commented on the large volume of email, text messages and phone calls they had received in reference to the agenda item. Many of those expressing opposition to the resolution had reportedly become somewhat aggresive and personal in their comments.
“I have been very disappointed with many of the emails and other communications that I have received on this,” said City Councilman David Ballweg, who was the one who had written and presented the resolution to the council for consideration. “Many of them were very abusive in a way. There were a lot of anonymous emails that I could not respond to. It was disappointing.”
City councilman Gino Withelder said that he had been dealing with this issue for nearly a decade and had yet to see a clear consensus in the community. But even he was surprised by the aggressive nature of the opposition. “With the amount of emails that I have gotten in the past week, it is unbelievable the kind of rhetoric we have heard from the people that don’t want to see this passed,” he said.
In his comments at the beginning of the meeting, Mayor Al Litman said that he had been fielding calls all week long about the issue. But the mayor tried to put the resolution into perspective. He said that it would not be a binding law or action, but rather just an opinion from the city council.
Litman pointed out that this would be the fourth resolution about Gold Butte that had been passed thus far. Over the years, the issue had brought a lot of work for city staff and council members alike, he said.
“I won’t give all the details about the hundreds of hours that our staff and lobbyist, as well as myself and several council members, have spent trying to seek a legislative solution for Gold Butte,” Litman said. “But all that we did, didn’t work. In the end, President Obama paid back the Harry Reid machine for favors owed and gave him this national monument that he and his organization wanted. Nothing we did mattered.”
Litman said that it was his opinion that the monument was too big. He also believes that studies which have shown that the designation would bring economic benefits to Mesquite were flawed. But both of these points are moot, he said.
“We are not going to change it from here,” Litman said. “The real problem is Washington. It is not Mesquite or Bunkerville or anywhere around here. They don’t care about our resolutions in Washington.
They have never cared about them before and I doubt that they will care about this one either.”
Despite all of this, the mayor stated that the water issue was a valid concern. “If you read through this resolution, the most important thing, as I see it, is the right to protect our water,” he said.
Virgin Valley Water District (VVWD) General Manager Kevin Brown framed the urgency of the issue in a comment to the council. He said that, based on current growth rates and the district’s existing ground water rights, the district’s currently developed water resources were projected to max out within about 20 years. At that point, the district would need to turn to developing its significant spring water rights in the Virgin range to supply additional growth, Brown said.
The worry was whether the district would be able to access those rights, secure rights of way and install necessary pipeline infrastructure across the National Monument when that time came, Brown said.
District staff had thought they had negotiated with Reid staffers, the adequate language in the proclamation to ensure iron-clad future access to the rights. But the final version of the proclamation ended up being far less clear on the matter than needed, Brown said.
“It is vaguely close to what we needed,” Brown said. “But it didn’t include everything that the district had asked for when we were corresponding with Senator Reid about it.”
Brown said that vague language might suffice when working with familiar federal officials who remember the intent of the language. “Unfortunately, people change jobs and politics change and memories fade,” Brown said. “In 20 years, who knows who will be in charge, what the politics will be and who will remember the verbal promises made today.”
Members of the public, speaking in opposition to the resolution, said that the language of the National Monument proclamation was plenty clear about accessing the water rights.
“We believe that the proclamation provides (VVWD access to their water rights),” said Jaina Moan, Executive Director of Friends of Gold Butte (FOGB) organization. “Moreover we feel that the spring water rights are better protected because they are specifically protected in the proclamation language.”
“This is not going to solve the water problem,” said Mesquite resident Ann Bly of the resolution. “I would suggest that the VVWD go to the BLM and engage in some kind of agreement on how their facility can be used on the National Monument as opposed to this all-out war against the Antiquities Act by the city.”
Moapa Valley Water District Board member Lindsey Dalley of Logandale commented that the realities on the ground were not always that simple. Dalley said that he had attended meetings, as a MVWD board member, where BLM officials had simply refused to grant access to state alloted water rights held by the district.
“This would have been just to evaluate the rights; it wasn’t even actually to pump them but just to evaluate,” Dalley said. “And we are talking that it was literally 20-30 feet off of a routinely bladed county road. We just needed the right of way to drill a test well. It wouldn’t have disturbed more than about 100 sq feet of ground. They just wouldn’t allow it.”
Dalley added that this requested access was across BLM land that was designated merely as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), not a National Monument. “When you add the overarching layers that go into a National Monument, there is so much more momentum to refuse everything, than there is to look for a reasonable solution,” he said.
Mesquite city councilman George Rapson said that he supported the resolution with the primary goal of protecting access to the water rights. He said that drawing the VVWD water rights areas out of the monument boundaries would amount to less than 5 percent of the total monument area being changed. This would be the safest way to ensure future access, he added.
“What I am most concerned about is our water,” Rapson said. “If there is a change in administration or staff, all those little things that have been promised can be ignored, rescinded, overwritten or whatever. But if it is not even in the National Monument anymore, that can’t happen.”
Many members of the public opposed to the resolution commented that they were frustrated with the city council getting involved in national politics of the Monument review process.
“You have chosen to get into the middle of a highly charged national debate,” said one Mesquite resident. “We as a country are deeply divided on many issues. I don’t understand why this council wants to enhance the division in our city.”
Moan said that FOGB would oppose any effort to reduce the size of the monument. “In fact, we think that the monument should have been larger to include the northern bajada of the Virgin Range,” she said. “This area is critical habitat for the tortoise which is a living antiquity to be protected.”
Some council members said that they would be more comfortable if the resolution had stuck to the water issues only and left out the more contentious national issues.
“I would like to see the language a lot softer in this and push the water issue a lot more,” said councilman Brian Wursten. “But the issue at hand with the water and keeping our access to it, that is critical and it scares me a lot.”
“My concern is also the water only,” said councilman Rich Green. “If there is any chance that our rights, these very valuable assets on federal lands; that we can’t access them; that would be a major concern for me. But getting involved in these national issues, I’m not so interested in that.”
In the end, Ballweg made a motion to adopt the resolution. The motion was approved with a 4-1 vote. Withelder was the only ‘no’ vote.
