Nevada’s Water Debacle, Or

Why Laws Don’t Plug Leaks

Now, it’s a strange thing about water—man can harness it, hoard it, fight over it, and even try to legislate it, but he sure can’t make it.

And for all the bills and acts and official declarations made from the marble benches of Carson City, not one of them ever crawled down a pipe and fixed a leak. It’s known that you can’t patch a dry well with a committee vote.

Back in 2014, when the sun had its fist around Nevada’s throat tighter than usual, the farmers in Mason and Smith valleys found their wells sucking air. The good folks in Diamond Valley got told to either hatch a plan to manage their vanishing groundwater or kiss what’s left of it goodbye. That’s a hundred miles apart and two valleys in the same leaky boat—both having drawn more from the earth than Mother Nature ever deposited back.

The business of overdrawing the water account ain’t new. Nevada’s been writing water checks that it couldn’t cash for decades. You see, the state handed out more water rights than there is water to back’em—like giving out tickets to a sold-out show and then wondering why there’s a riot at the door.

In 2023, some enterprising lawmakers got the idea to buy back water rights—pay folks not to use the water they were legally allowed to use– called it “retirement,” as if those acre-feet of water had earned a pension. Senate Bill 36 and Assembly Bill 104 are the latest shots at this, giving willing water holders a chance to sell their rights and take a seat on the porch while the land dries up without them.

The state gave the retirement idea a trial run with a $25 million federal fund. Nevada’s politicians called it a pilot program—though the only thing flying was money out the door.

Folks signed up faster than expected because nothing says “dry,” like a check for $850 per acre-foot. Waterholders sold off their paper rights, which is a fancy way of saying they weren’t using the water anyway.

Paid for nothing, in some cases. That’s government efficiency for you—two men digging a hole, three writing about it, and four passing laws saying to fill it.

Meanwhile, lawmakers now wrangle over whether they should make the buyback system permanent or at least let it stagger along until 2035 before they pull the plug again. Ten years to fix what took a century to break?

That’s mighty optimistic—like putting a patch on a barrel of gunpowder and calling it a safe room.

There’s one thing all the hydrologists, ranchers, conservationists, and bureaucrats agree on–the problem ain’t going away with good intentions or recycled bill numbers. Nevada gets nine inches of rain yearly–if the clouds feel generous.

And of that, just a sliver finds its way back underground. The rest gets swept away by sunshine and wind like loose change on a gambling table.

And yet, half the state’s freshwater now comes from groundwater—water that used to sit beneath our feet before we got the notion to suck it up and sell it like soda. Experts say the basins are draining faster than a bottle in a bar fight.

And we know about experts–they’re the ones good a breakin’ everything and callin’ it fixed.

While legislation can frame a picture, it can’t paint the water back in. We can retire rights, redefine standards, and rewrite laws till pens run dry—and they still can’t make it rain.

And a law has never yet stood at the edge of a cracked basin, looked into the dust, and known the feel of drought. So, as long as we believe that paper promises can wet the roots, they’re liable to keep passing bills and watching wells go dry.

Truth be, you can’t fix a water crisis with a fountain pen, and that’s the kind of plain-spoken arithmetic any farmer could tell you—if he hasn’t already packed up and moved east.