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FeaturesWicked, Wicked Watering
Senators Fight
with the Navy Has Fallon Worried by Brooks Wallace The case in point, as usual with Senator Reid,
concerns the Newlands Project. The nations first reclamation project, the project opened in
1902an era devoted to opening up the West and developing a strong resource-based
economy. The government was advertising Irrigated Homestead Lands with a
permanent and assured water supply. Water rights were bought and sold at $60
per acre and held as real property. Eventually, roughly 70,000 acres were under
cultivation. In the 1950s, when the Navy bought 3,000 acres around the perimeter of its
Fallon Naval Air Station, the land had already been farmed since the early 1900s. The NAS Green Belt The Naval Air Station (NAS) is the premier training facility and home
of the Top Gun school for naval aviators. The surrounding farmland was purchased to ensure
the safety of pilots, the public and the militarys expensive taxpayer-owned
airplanes. Such green belts are standard buffer zones around military air bases,
says Anne McMillin, the NAS public affairs officer. The belts guard against fires and
prevent foreign objects from blowing with the wind out on the airfield and getting
sucked up into an engine, she says. Those objects could be anything from a
paper cup, to a bolt, to a weed. While the air stations green belt sounds uncontroversiala
good way to protect young American pilots and decrease risks to the public and the
publics propertySenator Reid wants it removed. His complaint is that the belt is leased to Fallon farmers and
irrigated with Newlands Project water rights the Navy purchased along with the land. In
Reids view, those water rights should be turned over to the Pyramid Lake Paiute
Indian tribe. The Navy has cooperated with Reidup to a point. Further
reduction of the green belt, say Navy representatives, would compromise safety. The
service cites several studies showing that foreign object damage (FOD in military jargon)
would go up if the green belt is removed. Reid, though, makes it clear he does not take
seriously the alleged risks to pilots, the public and the taxpayers aircraft. Experienced military aviators, the senator said in the
Lahontan Valley NewsReid himself has never served in the militaryhave told him
that greenbelts are marginal to airport safety and that few airports have
them. Reid noted that McCarran Airport in Las Vegas lacks an irrigated greenbelt and
pointed out that McCarrans traffic is much heavier than Fallons. The rejoinder from the Navy was that McCarran is surrounded by the
city of Las Vegas, which performs the same FOD-reducing function. The Navy also notes that
recommended practice for airports has long been to have an Accident Potential Zone (APZ)
where the land is to be managed for the safety and protection of people under the flight
path. And in these zones the recommended land uses are agriculture and open space. Lots of Navy Green Belts While Reid continues to act as though there is something wicked about
the NAS green belt, the stations public affairs people note that the Fallon
agricultural outlease program is paralleled by many others around the West. Listed by the
Navy are three examples in Californiathe Naval Weapons Station in Concord, the Naval
Air Station at Crows Landing and the Naval Air Station in Lemooreand one in
Washington statethe Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island. But Reid insists on seeing the Naval air station buffer zone entirely
in the context of his decade-long fight to demolish the Newlands Project. That historic
projectnow the foundation in many key ways of the Lahontan Valley economy and
communityhas been publicly declared by Reid a mistake. For the past 10
years, using all the tools available to him within federal government, Reid has worked
methodically to pick the project apart. His chief means has been legislation, especially Public Law
101-618the bill that Reid pushed through Congress in 1990. Sometimes known in
Northern Nevada as Senator Reids Negotiated Settlement, the law in
essence pitted well-funded and professionally represented upstream
interestsprimarily Sierra Pacific Power, the Pyramid Lake Indian Tribe, Washoe
County and the Cities of Reno and Sparksagainst the small Fallon and Fernley
communities. Reids law is also the starting point for the senators
current tussle with the Department of Defense. Included in its provisions, along with many
other assaults on Newlands Project water rights, was a directive to the Secretary of the
Navy to undertake a study regarding the NAS green belt. The Secretary, said Reids
legislation, should develop a plan to achieve dust control, fire abatement and
safety, and foreign object damage control
in a manner that, to the maximum extent
practicable, reduces direct surface deliveries of water. Any water saved by these
measures was then to be divested by the Secretary of the Navy and passed to the Secretary
of Interior, to be managed to benefit both Pyramid Lake and the Lahontan Valley wetlands. In compliance with the law, the Navy did conduct such a study, and
has to date divested itself of almost 40 percent of the water that had been going to
irrigate and support the NAS green belt. But Nevadas senior senator has not been satisfied. Despite the
Navys judgment that more reduction of the green belt would be dangerous to its
pilots, the public and the expensive taxpayer-owned planes and equipment, Reid has been
obdurate. And his campaignwaged on multiple frontshas not been pretty. A favorite Reid ploy has been to repeatedly accuse the Navy of
breaking the law. Since that, if true, would, make any official so convicted subject to
heavy sanctions, Reid implicitly is
threatening the destruction of the careers of service personnel. I want to find out why they [Navy officials] havent met
their original commitment, Reid told the Associated Press in April. At the time he
was announcing a request that the General Accounting Office audit the Navy installation in
Fallon. Reid wanted the GAOthe investigative arm of Congressto
investigate whether [the Navy] is currently in compliance with his law. Reid, wrote the AP, was especially concerned about the
irrigation of greenbelts on the base he says are supposed to be reverting to traditional
high desert land. Though Reid clearly assumed the GAO findings would go against the
Navy, he was wrong. The findings to this
point have, in fact, gone against Reid and his public insinuations. The GAO preliminary report found that the Navy was in compliance with all directives in lawas well as a 1995 memo of understanding with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Regarding the green belt, the GAO found that total average annual water consumption had indeed been reduced 40 percentfrom 2,934 water-righted acres to only 1,914 acres in the 1998 irrigation season. The final GAO report is to be issued by the end of this year. You have to give it up Foiled in one avenue, Reid has tried anotherusing as leverage
the Navys desire for more Central Nevada land and airspace. The senator told a
Senate panel in April that he would oppose the expansion of the Fallon bases flight
training area unless the Navy gave up more of the greenbelts irrigation water. I said I wanted something in return and everybody said there is
no land to give up, he told a reporter. The water is something they have to
give up. Reid also has used his legislative position to whipsaw the Naval Air
Station. In May the senator said he was going to recommend to the U.S. Senate
Appropriations Committee, on which he sits, that it fund the construction of a $7 million
hangar at the Fallon air base. But when the appropriations bill came out, the $7 million
was nowhere to be found. Instead the language in the billeventually signed by
President Clinton Oct. 4requires the Navy to limit water rights to the maximum
extent practicable, consistent with safety of operations,
currently not more than
4,402 acre-feet of water per year. Because the water needed to keep the air stations green belt
alive is some 3.5 feet per acre, this newest diktat from Reid means the Navy can only
water 1,257 acres of the 3,000 it owns. Last year I was concerned about the slowness in which they were
moving to give up their water, so I put language in an appropriations bill for them to do
it, Reid told the Associated Press. The Navy now finds itself without the much-needed hangar because it
did not cave in to the senators demands. Further, the service has to give up more
water and shrink the green belt more than it deemed safe. If Reids behavior regarding the NAS green belt seems
increasingly bizarre, consider the quality of arguments he has been giving the media. Saving Taxpayer Dollars In May, when asking the GAO to investigate how the air station was
using its water, the senator said that the Navy, using clean surface water, has
created an artificial agricultural oasis in the middle of the desert which it uses to make
money through grazing leases. And all at taxpayer expense. But the reality is that the green belt leases help the Navy save
taxpayers money. Were the Navy itself to maintain the buffer acreage to control
foreign object damage, it would need to hire a contractor at substantial public expense.
(And even then that contractor, to keep down wind-borne debris, would probably have to
plant the area with vegetation.) What bugs the senator so much about the green belt, say
some long-time Reid-watchers, is simply that it keeps demonstrating the Newlands
Projects continuing economic viability. Another hole in the senators talk about taxpayer
expense is his own agenda for the Navy green belt. It has largely been written in
red ink. Navy compliance with P.L. 101-618 has to date cost approximately $1.5 million.
Further water conservation projects for the greenbelt are to cost another $2.5 million. Something also is off-center in Reids complaint that the
Navy
has created an artificial agricultural oasis in the middle of the
desert. Characteristically for the senator, the statement ignores the individual
farm familiesthe people who pay the leases, buy the seeds, plow the dirt, cut and
bale the hay and then hopefully feed it to their cows all winter. It also totally ignores
the whole history of this particular artificial agricultural oasis in the middle of
the desertthe fact that it was the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, not the Navy,
that created farming in the Nevada desert. And at that time the BOR was acting
very similar, in many ways, to the federal agencies that currently carrying out
Reids agenda in the Lahontan Valley. In the early 1900s, however, the agencies were
implementing the conceits of another Democratic U.S. senator from NevadaFrancis G.
Newlands. For his part, Reid seems increasingly unable to conceal something
very like fanaticism. The senator shakes and shudders as if an artificial
agricultural oasis in the middle of the desert were a horror that must be
eradicated, no matter how many Nevada families now depend upon it. His is a premise that
would require 90 percent of Las Vegas and most of the cities of the American Southwest to
be removed from the map. While many environmental extremists want to make large areas of
the American West human-free, it is rare to see such misanthropy so close to
the surface in an elected politician. Fallon folks side with the Navy Most Fallon residents appear to see Reids insistence that the
green belt around the NAS revert to barren desert as simple payback from a powerful and
notoriously vindictive politician. In this view, Reid is still resentful that Lahontan
Valley citizens have tried to resist his plans for their lives. In this frame of reference, Churchill County residents are cheering
on the Navy, seeing it in a much stronger position vis-à-vis Reid than some of the
unfortunate Fallon farmers who, under federal pressures, had to sell their water rights to
avoid financial ruin. First, as the GAO probe showed, the service has indeed been following
the law. Second, Navy lawyers get their pay from the same federal apparatus that employs
the lawyers fielded by Bruce Babbitts Department of Interior. So the old DOI tactic
of running up court costs wont work as well in this case as it has on the small
farmers who need their water to make a living. For average people in the Lahontan Valley,
its satisfying to at last see someone in the community able to stand up to
Reideven if the someone turns out to be a branch of the U.S. military. But there is evidence that Reid has bigger goals in mind than mere
payback for past slights. The ambition that has fueled Reid all his life clearly still
burns and burns hot. At this stage of his life, however, the form it takes is the question
of legacythe ultimate significance of Reids career as a public figure. That
question, as interpreted by the senator, is why the people of Churchill County still have
good reason to fear. From all indications, the ideas that have driven Reid for the last 11-plus years can be expressed as two propositions:
To the degree that Reid holds these two propositions to be the case, the importance of what he is doing, and thus the magnitude of his legacy (as he interprets it) has to rise. From all available evidence, Reid believes what he is up to is very, very very important. It would follow, therefore, that Reids estimate of the magnitude of his legacy must be correspondingly high. This could explain something Churchill County residents have long
wondered aboutwhy Nevadas senior senator has for so many years appeared
utterly indifferent to the impact erasing the Newlands Project is havingand will
haveon some 30,000 of his own constituents. The answer would appear to be that to the degree that Reid can see
his goals as far more important than the well-being of a mere 30,000 Nevadans, to that
degree the value of his legacy rises. Its the old you have to break eggs to
make omelets hubrisif you have amassed enough power to do the breaking, then
youre a giant and other human beings are mere eggs. Does anything lend credence to such harsh speculation? Unfortunately,
yesan implicit contradiction embedded in P. L. 101-618 that has never received much
public scrutiny. Reids law says water reclaimed from water rights purchased from
willing sellers in the Newlands Project is to go both to Pyramid Lake and to
the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, north and east of Fallon. But Reids
original legislative intentions for that provision were different, say sources
knowledgeable about the drafting of P.L. 101-618. Reid himself, so goes the account,
wanted all the water to go back to Pyramida complete reversal of the Newlands
Project. The provision allocating at least some of the water to Stillwater was forced on
Reid by environmentalist allies he needed to
bring Eastern senators on board the effort to pass his bill. But under Reids preferred scenario, the Stillwater National
Refugewhere hundreds of thousands of migrating birds inspire birdwatchers and Ducks
Unlimited memberscould virtually dry up. This could happen because the water that
sustains the Stillwater marshes is in part the surface water that comes in from the
Truckee River through Derby Dam as part of
the Newlands Project allotment. No Truckee water, no Stillwater to speak of. The
implacable, cold-eyed radicalism is arresting. This line of argument would suggest that the curiosities of Reids behavior over the Air Station green belt result not just from pique, but from a long-standing intention, apparently still fierce, to insure that all Truckee water is eventually returned to Pyramid Lake. But that goal, achieved, could destroy the Fallon community. Reid's Looming Legacy: The reasons have to do with the aquifer upon which the Navy, the City
of Fallon and well owners throughout the county depend for their drinking water. According
to a water study released in 1994 by the U.S. Geological Service, that aquifer is directly
affected by the amount of surface water that flows through the Lahontan Valley. This means
it is the Newlands Project irrigation canals, including those that serve the Navys
water rights, that directly recharge the valleys drinking water. Take away water flowing through the irrigation system, and one takes
away the source that replenishes the Lahontan Valley aquifer. A lower water table means
that Fallons long-standing problem of native arsenic in the soil becomes much
bigger. Implementing the EPAs mantradilution is the solution to
pollutionbecomes impossible. Lahontan Valley drinking water could easily
become too highly concentrated with arsenic. Thus, Reids goal of removing Truckee River water from the
Newlands Project will not only seriously impact the Lahontan Valleys farms but even
its drinking water. This means a major hit on not only the first leg of the Fallon
economyfarmingbut also its second legthe viability of Naval Air Station.
How long, then, can the community survive? In Churchill County, Reid is sometimes accused of wanting his legacy
to be barren wind-blown desert where once were thriving green farms. To the ears of
outsiders, the charge sounds like overheated hyperbole. But for decades the acknowledged
goal of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribes lawyers has been to reverse history by
demolishing Derby Dam and erasing the original Newlands Project from the face of the
earth. Increasingly, evidence suggests that Nevadas senior senator has long shared
that goal. Reid says he has a long memory, but historys is longer. The senator needs to worry thatonce the passions and the politically correct fanaticisms of this day have wanedhis name does not come to stand for an infamous will to destroy a small, politically vulnerable Nevada community. NJ Brooks Wallace writes from rural Nevada.
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