By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
After more than five years of legal wrangling, an urban Clark County jury issued a verdict in favor of the owners of Wolf Creek Golf Club over the Virgin Valley Water District in a complicated case involving the district’s lease of Mesquite Irrigation Company (MIC) water shares to the golf course.
The verdict was issued in Clark County District Court on Monday afternoon, June 5.
The jury found that Paradise Canyon, LLC., owner of Wolf Creek, had a reasonable expectation for leasing the irrigation shares at a “local market rate” rather than being affected by the rates being paid on MIC water by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) in Las Vegas.
The jury awarded Wolf Creek a total of $811,000 in damages. The verdict also set the rate for the VVWD shares at $300 per share.
The VVWD board had set the rates at $1,250 per share in keeping with what it found to be a more general market rate being paid by SNWA as well as other local golf courses.
More information on the resolution of this case will be published in next week’s edition of The Progress.
3 thoughts on “VVWD Loses Jury Trial vs Wolf Creek”
Water is not a marketable product like real estate. It is a natural, publicly-owned resource necessary for life. Using public funds to inflate the value of water share for the profit of the few is antithetical to public policy. The jury arrived at the $300 for polluted river water share by comparing it to the price for effluent (wastewater), a higher quality product for irrigation set by the City of Mesquite without a profit motive. Today, the $300 applies to all Virgin River water. That works out to be about $42.67 per acre-foot, ($300/7.03 acre-feet annually) which is, by happenstance, close to the overall average for irrigation water in Nevada. The average price of irrigation water in Nevada is $39.06 per year.
I take exception to describing the jury as “urban”. These were dedicated citizens who gave up 5 weeks of their life to sit through testimony of more than 15 witnesses, review minutes of VVWD board meetings, read contract language, assess appraisal analysis from experts with charts, not to mention opening statements and closing arguments. They were schooled in THE LAW throughout the trial and were given 65 jury instructions before deliberation. In a unanimous decision they found VVWD in violation of Nevada Contract Law and the Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing in charging Wolf Creek the inflated SNWA rate for water shares, and the ONLY 18 hole golf course in the city being burdened as such. Kudos to Cory Clemetson for exposing some pretty unsavory tactics of this water district. This trial was jaw dropping. It is public record now.
Get ready for higher water bills. Due to the mismanagement of water prices by VVWD that allowed lots of local to cash in big time on public water, we are now paying the price. As soon as prices start rising, heads should roll.