Nevada high court ruling upholds state authority to make key groundwater decisions
Source: Associated Press
Nevada high court ruling upholds state authority to make key groundwater decisions
BY KEN RITTER
Updated 7:48 PM EST, January 26, 2024
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada’s top water official has authority to decide how underground supplies are allocated, the state Supreme Court said this week, in a ruling that could kill a long-stalled proposal to build a sprawling master-planned city north of Las Vegas and boost chances of survival for an endangered species of fish native only to natural springs in the area.
The unanimous ruling Thursday by the state high court followed oral arguments in August about whether the state engineer could protect the Muddy River drainage basin and habitat of the endangered Moapa dace by considering several aquifers beneath a vast area including parts of Clark and Lincoln counties as a single underground basin.
“We hold that the State Engineer has authority to conjunctively manage surface waters and groundwater and to jointly administer multiple basins,” the ruling said.
The legal language established a precedent seen as crucial to regulating pumping rights and water use in the nation’s driest state amid climate change and ongoing drought in the U.S. Southwest.
The state had appealed the case to the seven-member court after a judge in Las Vegas sided with developers planning an immense master-planned community called Coyote Springs. ...
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/groundwater-nevada-coyote-springs-fish-desert-af6b7b39874010f819dfcbb6aa28c35a