what's it like to live in ely, NV?

[nickw252]

Originally Posted by NVDave

The reason why the coal plant was shut down was Harry Reid's machinations for the water rights that the power company purchased from umpteen different farms and ranches north of Ely. Reid's son and the people at the SNWA want that water... all they have to do is extend the pipeline a little bit further, right up to Lages' Junction, and they'll have it.

This has nothing to do with power, coal, air pollution or anything else. This is a water grab by Clark County.

I'm not entirely familiar with Nevada politics yet, do you have any sources or other reasons to assert that aside from political animosity?

I haven't heard anything about water rights but I do know that Reid is onboard with limiting carbon emissions.

[NVDave]

Originally Posted by nickw252

I'm not entirely familiar with Nevada politics yet, do you have any sources or other reasons to assert that aside from political animosity?

I haven't heard anything about water rights but I do know that Reid is onboard with limiting carbon emissions.

Yes, but they're personal meetings with people involved in the power plant project and their perfection of the water rights. I'm not going to further complicate their lives and mention names at this time. I was involved in water rights issues in central/eastern NV for several years before selling our farm and leaving the area and I know the players. As the power companies were seeking to perfect their water rights, (which are ag underground rights), they needed to talk to someone about the scale of the farming job ahead of them to get the land into production and thereby perfect the rights until such time as they got the permit for the power plants approved and they could apply to the state engineer to convert the rights from ag to industrial.

Since I was one of a very few (like, you could count on one hand) EE's in central NV who was also a farmer, the engineer(s) in charge of the power company's projects to farm the lands they bought to perfect the rights were sent in my direction by the extension co-op agent in White Pine County at the time. I was also on the Central Nevada Regional Water Authority.

There's not much for investigative reporting out in the sagebrush - at least not until it is too late. So believing the best out of Reid until you see something in the press is not going to keep people informed. Reid depends on this, as well as his time-proven tactic of voting on lands bills at the end of a Congressional session, at night, on a voice vote.

If you spend some time skulking around White Pine, Elko, Lincoln and Eureka Counties and talking to people, you can learn all manner of interesting things about the SNWA, their plans and the Reid clan's involvement in same. The SNWA was seeking to take their pipeline clear up to the Elko County line when they first proposed it - and it wasn't just to sit there, unused. They were quite obviously looking at the water available in Elko County as well. All you had to do was a little bit of basic math - look at the size of the proposed pipeline, the pumping system, the number of acre-feet they had applied for, and you could easily see that the pipeline was going to be vastly overbuilt for the amount of water the SNWA already had applied for.