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Demovictory9

(32,324 posts)
Sat Mar 20, 2021, 08:32 PM Mar 2021

Nevada town sues for rights to water leaking from canal, Fed wants to stop leaks

FERNLEY, Nev. (AP) — A Nevada town founded a century ago by pioneers lured to the West by the promise of free land and cheap water in the desert is trying to block the U.S. government from renovating a 115-year-old earthen irrigation canal with a plan that would eliminate leaking water that local residents long have used to fill their own domestic wells.




A federal judge denied the town of Fernley’s bid last year to delay plans to line parts of the Truckee Canal with concrete to make it safer after it burst and flooded nearly 600 homes in 2008.

Now, lawyers for the town a half-hour east of Reno have filed a new lawsuit accusing the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation of illegally failing to consider the expected harm to its municipal water supply and hundreds of private well users who tap into the groundwater based on what they say are binding water allotments, some dating to World War II.

Safety aside, the bureau says the loss of federally owned water from the dirt canal is a waste of U.S. taxpayers’ money. The city says the government shares responsibility for their dependence on the unintended subsidy provided by the seepage, partly because it’s never before objected.

“Fernley has a right to continued recharge from the Truckee Canal under the public use doctrine because the seepage conditions have continued for 115 years,” the lawsuit stated.

Over time, local users have become “utterly reliant on seepage from the canal to keep the aquifer recharged and in a healthy condition,” the suit said. It says Fernley spent $40 million on a state-of-the-art water treatment facility based on that reliance.

https://news.yahoo.com/nevada-town-sues-rights-water-153956947.html


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fernley-sues-for-rights-to-water-leaking-from-us-canal/ar-BB1eNfW9

FERNLEY, Nev. (AP) - A rural Nevada town founded a century ago by pioneers lured to the West by the promise of free land and cheap water is suing the U.S. government over the way it plans to renovate a 115-year-old earthen irrigation canal.

The canal in Fernley burst in 2008 and flooded 600 homes.

The Bureau of Reclamation wants to line part of it with concrete because it’s leaking and wasting taxpayers’ money. But the city of Fernley says it’s been using that extra water to fill domestic wells for decades. It says it established water rights long ago and the government has never objected before.

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