Sage and Sand: Weathering the Storms

The wettest year in recorded history in the desert hasn't put a damper on our fights to save biodiversity

Aug 30, 2023

Weathering The Storms

It was an exciting week in the Mojave Desert as the remnants of Hurricane Hilary pummeled us with rain and wind. We got about 2.3 inches here on the east side of Death Valley, which is actually considerably less than other locations got. However it is still about 66% of our annual rainfall – a huge bounty of precipitation for the desert. The washes were flowing, the mighty Amargosa River peaked at about 1,600 cfs, and we avoided major infrastructure damage (though all the highways were closed for a while). All in all, could have been worse. I enjoyed photographing the flood and I floated a raft on the rejuvenated Lake Tecopa, which was a really wonderful experience. Flood is as much a defining feature of the desert as aridity. It’s such a treat to get a front row seat to the action.

Floodwaters channel across the Tecopa Basin after Hurricane Hilary

The flooded Amargosa River at the Highway 178 crossing at Shoshone.

The ephemeral resurrection of Pleistocene Lake Tecopa.

Yours truly floating living my best life.

The Moapa Dace Heads to the Supreme Court

Every fish has their day, and the Moapa dace had its day in court earlier this month, as the Lower White River Flow System (LWRFS) litigation had oral arguments in front of the Nevada Supreme Court. The LWRFS is a tightly interconnected groundwater aquifer spanning numerous topographic basins in the northern Mojave desert, northeast of Las Vegas. The aquifer is much coveted by numerous interests, including the developers of the proposed city in the desert, Coyote Springs. The Moapa dace also relies on the aquifer, which discharges in the beautiful springs that form the Muddy River. And finally, 2.2 million people in the Las Vegas Valley also rely on that aquifer, as the discharge from the Muddy River flows into Lake Mead, where SNWA has water rights on it, and banks it for future use. We all have a stake in the LWRFS.

At issue is a ruling from a lower court judge which invalidated the Nevada State Engineer Order 1309. Order 1309 was an attempt by the state’s water czar to rein in overpumping in the LWRFS and prevent new uses which would negatively affect senior water rights holders or the environment. Uses like, oh I don’t know, a new city of a quarter million people, for instance. Order 1309 was overturned at the district level by Judge Bita Yeager. We take strong exception with Judge Yeager’s ruling, finding it highly deficient in its understanding of and interpretation of statute.

So we appealed to the Supreme Court. Along with 16 other parties! It’s 17 party litigation, which is a staggering amount. It’s far and away the most complex litigation I’ve ever been involved in – it’s got to be one of the most complex water cases in the history of the state. And I haven’t even been in the trenches – our Nevada staff attorney Scott Lake has probably read thousands and thousands of pages of briefs and expert testimony. The volume of paper is just staggering.

The Supreme Court hearings were actually a relatively rote affair. Since we are in a position of defending Order 1309, we are on the same side as the State Engineer and SNWA. Our side was argued by a deputy attorney general and venerable Nevada water rights attorney Paul Taggart, who represents SNWA. The other side was argued by attorneys for Coyote Springs and Georgia-Pacific/Republic Services. The justices gave the respondents a pretty hard time – asked a lot of pointed questions and knocked them off of their delivered remarks. We all felt pretty good walking out of that courtroom.

One interesting side note was a personage in the audience – none other than the husband of the district court judge whose ruling was being appealed. Who just so happens to be the Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, Assemblyman Steve Yeager. It would have been highly unorthodox for the district court judge herself to be in the audience at a Supreme Court hearing for their own case. Having the husband of the district court judge, who happens to be one of the state’s most powerful political figures, was untoward. Was he there to exert political pressure on the justices, who have to run for election every four years? If he just had an abiding interest in the case he could have watched from home. Why was the district court judge’s husband who is one of the most powerful political figures in the state conspicuously present for a Supreme Court hearing?

At any rate, now we, and the Moapa dace, wait for a judgment. We hope we prevail, and that it is a nail in the coffin for Coyote Springs.

It’s the Dixie Valley Toad of Butterflies

Good news from the feds last week as the bleached sandhill skipper, a rare butterfly found only in Humboldt County, Nevada, will be advancing to a full 12-month evaluation for Endangered Species Act protection, based on a petition the Center submitted last year. The bleached sandhill skipper lives at just two alkali wetlands, one along Pueblo Slough near Baltazor Hot Spring, and another at Gridley Lake, an ephemeral alkali lake south of Baltazor by a dozen miles or so.

I first caught wind of the bleached sandhill skipper because of, you guessed it, a geothermal power plant. BLM permitted the Baltazor Geothermal Project for none other than Ormat. The project if built would exploit the same geothermal aquifer system that creates Baltazor Hot Spring. And, based on evidence accumulated at Dixie Meadows, its entirely possible that the geothermal power plant will dry up the springs that create the habitat that the butterfly needs to survive.

Last summer I went out to do further investigations in the field, and surveyed the second population at Gridley Lake. There I found a highly diminished habitat, severely impacted by cattle, with satellite imagery showing Gridley Lake drying over the years due to agricultural diversions. It was clear this species is in dire jeopardy of extinction.

We’re pleased our Endangered Species Act petition for this rare creature is moving forward. It’s not just about geothermal, it’s also about agriculture and the general jeopardy faced by our groundwater dependent ecosystems. We’re confident the full 12-month review will result in an endangered listing. The science clearly backs that up.

National Monument Proclamations Are the Antidote to Malaise

Don’t look now, but the tribally-led effort to permanently protect the Swamp Cedars in Nevada’s Spring Valley, or Bahsahwahbee, appears to be gathering steam. Senator Jacky Rosen recently made a visit to the proposed Bahsahwahbee National Monument in White Pine County, accompanying tribal leaders as they showed her the site and described their history there to her. This follows up on a similar visit from Senator Cortez Masto earlier this summer.

I’m going to write a bunch of exposition here but if you haven’t seen it yet I would urge you to drop whatever you’re doing and spend the next ten minutes watching this extremely compelling and heart-rending video from the three tribes working to save Bahsahwahbee: https://www.swampcedars.org/

Tribal elders and officials from the Ely Shoshone Tribe, the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation have been pushing to get Bahsahwahbee, (the Sacred Water Valley in Newe), designated as a National Monument for several years, after successfully protecting the area against the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s (SNWA’s) proposed water grab and pipeline, which would have destroyed the swamp cedars and the rest of the groundwater-dependent ecosystems in Spring Valley.

Bahsahwahbee, the Sacred Water Valley, is a traditional place of gathering for the Western Shoshone or Newe people. In pre-settlement times, bands from around the Great Basin would converge in the Sacred Water Valley to hunt and hold ceremonies. The abundant snowfall in the Snake Range and Schell Creek Range on either side of the Valley meant creeks flowing off the mountains and springs on the valley floor – an abundance of water bringing forth an abundance of life. Incidentally, this is precisely what made it so appealing to the SNWA.

The Swamp Cedars are a grove of ecologically unique valley-bottom Rocky Mountain juniper trees which grow in Bahsahwahbee. They are a highly unusual occurrence of this plant because normally, Rocky Mountain junipers grow on, well… rocky mountains. Or on hills, benches, anywhere with some elevation. Valley bottoms in the Great Basin are usually reserved for alkali flats and seasonally inundated playas, wetlands or meadows, or phreatophytes like greasewood or saltbush. It’s extremely unusual to have a very large stand of juniper trees growing on the valley floor. All the more unusual when one considers that this particular valley floor is an area of very shallow groundwater. These junipers, rather than deriving their sustenance from precipitation falling on mountains, derive their sustenance from shallow groundwater. And because early Mormon settlers improperly referred to junipers as cedars (a biblical thing I suppose), the Rocky Mountain junipers of Spring Valley have been known as the Swamp Cedars since white settlers arrived.

Because Bahsahwahbee was a gathering place for the Newe, it unfortunately became a target for the brutality and cruelty of the white settlers. There were three massacres that occurred in Bahsahwahbee in the 19^th century. The Newe believe that the spirits of their ancestors live in the Swamp Cedars. “We come to visit our relatives here,” said the late Goshute tribal chairman Rupert Steele.

The Swamp Cedars and Bahsahwahbee became a focal point in the fight against the SNWA pipeline. While the Tribes and the Great Basin Water Network worked to highlight the cultural significance of the area, College of Southern Nevada Professor David Charlet did research on the Swamp Cedars themselves and their potential vulnerability if the pipeline were to be built. You can see his 2006 report here. At one point in a 2011 administrative hearing in front of the State Engineer, a contract attorney for SNWA infamously referred to Newe spiritual beliefs at Bahsahwahbee as akin to believing in “the boogey-man.” This press release from the Tribes and their attorney from 2013 after a court victory provides some interesting contemporaneous perspective on the Tribes’ long-running fight for Bahsahwahbee.

Now, with the pipeline proposal dying in 2020, the Tribes have pushed forward with a campaign for permanent protection of their sacred site. They have asked for Bashahwahbee to be protected as a National Monument to be managed by the National Park Service. You can see a map of the proposed monument here: https://www.swampcedars.org/map It encompasses most of the northern Swamp Cedars (there is another grove south of highway 50 which is not included in this proposal), as well as the mountain where Rose Bat Guano Cave sits, perched above Bahsahwahbee, an important site for the protection of bats.

Senators Cortez Masto and Rosen have enthusiastically supported the Tribes’ campaign thus far. Back in April, the two Senators sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland urging her to work with the Tribes to protect Bahsahwahbee. A recently released poll shows over 70% of Nevadans support designating a Bahsahwahbee National Monument. The stars are aligning and this is looking like a real win for President Biden if he moves to designate this monument. Keep your ear to the ground because demonstrations of public support will be necessary in the near future!

Read more: Cortez Masto Visits Bahsahwahbee press release; Rosen Visits Bahsahwahbee press release; The Nevada Independent on new poll; SwampCedars.org.

If National Parks Are America’s Best Idea, then Nevada Lands Bills Are America’s Worst Idea

Gabby Birenbaum from The Nevada Independent has a two-part series which came out on Sunday that digs deep into the Nevada lands bill scene, examining the history of lands bills as well as their future prospects. These articles ask the question – is the Harry Reid model of lands bills still relevant in Nevada? Of course you know my answer to this question. We oppose pairing wilderness designation with public land sell-offs for sprawl.

I think perhaps one of the most interesting things about Ms. Birenbaum’s pieces are some of the cracks appearing in the façade of lands bills being The Nevada Way. Fish becoming cognizant of the water. Former DCNR chief Brad Crowell’s quotes are illuminating. These pieces are well worth your time, so give them a read.

A Public Land Giveaway that Rural Nevada Doesn’t Like (?)

It’s the logical extension of the Lands Bill Industrial Complex. When the idea is put forward over and over again that the highest and best use of public lands is to sell them off to developers, then don’t be surprised when private interests come a-knockin’, looking for public lands to privatize. Enter: Kroenke Ranches. One of the largest private landowners in the Western US, Kroenke recently vastly increased their holdings by purchasing the Winecup Gamble Ranch in northeastern Elko County. The Winecup Gamble, a legendary spread of pinyon-juniper woodlands and sagebrush filled valleys and bubbling springs and tumbling creeks, is some of the best country in Nevada and is surrounded by lush and productive public lands favored by the hook and bullet crowd in Elko County.

Now Kroenke is proposing a huge public lands swap – the largest public/private land swap in the history of the BLM if it went through. The Winecup Gamble, like many private land holdings in Nevada, consists of many checkerboard parcels. They propose consolidating the checkerboard by swapping 85,000 acres of private land for 235,000 acres of public land. Say what?? They claim the private land the feds would be getting is “higher value” than the public land they’d be taking in, and must be “priced” accordingly. Sounds like a scam to me.

Well people in Elko County are hopping mad. It also seems like Kroenke hasn’t exactly done the right amount of outreach to the community so they’re not doing themselves any favors. Because of the concerns of the public and the sheer scale of the proposed land transfer, Kroenke would prefer not to go through the pesky environmental review process. Instead, they are asking Nevada’s benevolent congressional delegation to introduce federal legislation to bestow upon them their public land bounty. But will the mostly Democratic delegation bite, in the face of vocal opposition locally? Stay tuned.

There’s Very Little Oil Here Anyway

A couple of interesting happenings on the Nevada oil industry front in recent weeks. First, BLM Nevada held an oil and gas lease sale and… nobody bid. This lease sale was much ballyhooed because they had excluded a number of low-potential parcels. This is one of the recent reforms to the oil and gas leasing program that the Biden administration implemented – to exclude from leasing lands with no or low potential for oil. Most of Nevada falls into that category, so it looks like the days of huge, multi-hundred-thousand-acre lease sales may be over. BLM excluded a number of parcels from this lease sale and got praise from various conservation interests.

Not from us though. The parcels they left in the lease sale include those in Railroad Valley. Railroad Valley has some current oil and gas activity, but it is also a place of exceptional biodiversity, with numerous endemic species and beautiful groundwater dependent ecosystems. Biden offered thousands of acres of Railroad Valley for lease and was cheered by conservation interests, imagine it.

Anyway, nobody bid – apparently the action in the oil industry is elsewhere right now. And so we soldier on, and wait for the next time the Biden administration violates their campaign promise to end public lands oil leasing.

Speaking of which, the aforementioned Sens. Cortez Masto and Rosen took some action on oil leasing recently. Folks may remember our campaign to save the Ruby Mountains from oil and gas leasing in 2018-2019 – a cause celebre that garnered attention across the state and boxed the Forest Service into an incredibly awkward political position and they finally relented and denied leasing the parcels. Part of that campaign was Senator Cortez Masto’s introduction of the Ruby Mountains Protection Act in early 2019 – a bill to withdraw the Ruby Mountains Ranger District from oil and gas leasing. This gave us leverage to help force the Forest Service’s hand to deny the leasing.

The Ruby Mountains Protection Act has kicked around for a few years since, surfacing in omnibus Northern Nevada lands bills mostly. Then recently, the good Senators sent a letter to the Biden administration, asking them to administratively withdraw the area from oil and gas leasing. This would accomplish the same thing as the Ruby Mountains bill, without the hassle of having to get it through Congress. Seems like a good idea!

Unfortunately, the main threat to the Ruby Mountains is not oil and gas. It’s mining. And as we speak, right now this moment!, BLM is permitting the expansion of the Bald Mountain Mine just south of Overland Pass on the south side of the Rubies. This mine severely affected a key mule deer migration corridor and has harmed sage-grouse habitat. THAT’S the real concern out there, not oil and gas. So while we support the legislation and this request made of the administration, we think it doesn’t go nearly far enough, and the only way to protect the Rubies is with a full mineral withdrawal. After all, there’s not exactly oil rigs lined up at the doorstep of the Rubies, but the mining companies are already trashing them.

Briefly…

McEwen Mining, owners of the Gold Bar Mine in Eureka County, posted a loss last quarter. According to the Elko Daily, their all-in costs for gold production are about $2,500 per ounce, which is more than they’re able to sell the gold for since the current going rate for gold is about $1,900 per ounce, give or take. Mining companies have ups and downs so this is hardly huge news, but it sure does stick in the craw. Gold Bar Mine ruined a huge chunk of the beautiful Roberts Creek Mountains and has introduced huge amounts of disturbance to some of the best greater sage-grouse habitat in the state in the Bean Flat area. If they end up going broke and leaving a path of destroyed habitat in their wake that will never be cleaned up, it would be a travesty. It already is a travesty.
This Las Vegas Sun Q+A with Wild Horse Education’s Laura Leigh is definitely worth a read. Ms. Leigh is probably the most prominent warrior fighting for Nevada’s wild horses, and has been a huge thorn in BLM’s side for many years. I don’t necessarily agree with her stances on these issues but you’ve gotta respect her game.
Reno activist Bob Fulkerson has a good op-ed in the Nevada Current on the dubious climate credentials of the US Chamber of Commerce and their even more dubious recognition of Rep. Mark Amodei for his “sustainable business” advocacy. Given that he’s a firm friend of fossil fuels, as is the Chamber, the whole think is a ridiculous charade, and Mx. Fulkerson is not afraid to call it out.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has sued BLM for approving a potash mine on Sevier Lake in the West Desert of Utah. The project will affect the regional groundwater aquifer which is already imperiled by local municipal and agricultural use. I’m glad SUWA is protecting aquifers, but man the story of Sevier Lake is really sad. The Sevier River is overappropriated that many of the springs and groundwater dependent ecosystems there are already nuked. Still, important to protect what’s left.

Thanks for reading, and keep on down that long and dusty trail,

-Patrick

Sage and Sand

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