Nevada rancher, water authority opponent Dean Baker dead at 77

Rancher Dean Baker talks strategy with fellow Snake Valley residents at a 2009 meeting in advance of a hearing on plans to pipe groundwater to Las Vegas from across eastern Nevada. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)

By Henry Brean
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Dean Baker was a rancher, a pilot and a businessman, but most people knew him as a thorn in the side of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
The dogged opponent of the authority’s plans to siphon water from across eastern Nevada died Saturday at a St. George, Utah, hospital from complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 77.

“He was driving around the ranch on dirt roads a week before he died,” said Baker’s oldest son, Dave. “It meant everything to him.”

Baker was born Dec. 19, 1939, in Delta, Utah, where he learned to farm, ranch and fly an airplane solo by the age of 16.
In 1959, he moved to Snake Valley, on the Nevada-Utah border 300 miles northeast of Las Vegas, to help run a ranch his father had acquired there a few years earlier.

The town they settled in was also called Baker, but that was just a coincidence.

Dave Baker said his dad never finished high school but still earned a business degree from the University of Utah.
“He was a good businessman, and he recognized opportunity,” Dave Baker said.

Under Dean Baker’s direction, his son said, their cattle and alfalfa operation more than doubled in size over the past 20 years, consolidating what used to be a dozen separate ranches into a single, family-owned corporation operating on more than 12,000 acres on both sides of the state line.

Fighting MX missiles

Baker’s first taste of activism came during the Carter administration, when the federal government floated plans for a system of mobile nuclear missiles mounted on railroad tracks to be laid across 35,000 square miles of Nevada and Utah.

Dave Baker said the MX missile project would have “swallowed up a bunch of our winter range,” so his dad joined the brief, successful campaign against it.

A decade later, Baker found himself in another David-and-Goliath fight when Las Vegas water officials launched a sweeping grab for unappropriated groundwater across rural Nevada, including Snake Valley.

Baker spent the better part of the next 20 years commenting at meetings, writing letters, serving on committees and joining lawsuits in hopes of blocking the water authority’s still-pending, multibillion-dollar pipeline proposal. The effort required countless trips — often in his own airplane — to Las Vegas and Carson City, where he registered as a legislative lobbyist so he could plead his case directly to lawmakers.

In the process, he became the unofficial spokesman for the opposition. Reporters from across the country and around the globe painted him as a folk hero — the humble rancher fighting to protect his spread from the insatiable thirst of Las Vegas. And Baker was happy to oblige — anything to spread the word about their struggle.

“It’s just because I’m a bullheaded, opinionated old goat,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2013.

Longtime Nevada activist Abigail Johnson fought alongside Baker against both the MX missiles and the water authority’s pipeline. She later got to know him as a neighbor after she bought a place in Baker.

“He was a very courageous man and a very principled man,” she said.

One of his strengths, Johnson said, was his ability to work with and even befriend people from very different backgrounds, including a few rabid environmentalists who liked to argue with him about livestock grazing on public land. “He started out as a conservative rancher, and he was always a conservative rancher, but he had an open mind and he wasn’t afraid to change,” she said.

Once after a water meeting in Las Vegas, Johnson caught a ride back to Snake Valley in Baker’s plane, which he landed on one of the long dirt roads at the ranch. “He showed me all kinds of things on the way,” she recalled. “He just loved flying. That was just his favorite thing.”

Baker is survived by his wife of 19 years, Barbara; his daughter, Chris Robinson; sons Dave, Craig and Tom; stepsons Gary and Dennis Perea; and 18 grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, Fredrick and Betty Baker, and his brother, Carl.

Baker was buried Monday in the same cemetery as his parents, about two miles from the ranch in Snake Valley.

His family is planning a public memorial service at the ranch on June 24.

Court rejects Las Vegas' groundwater rights to rural valleys

Nevada decision fails to protect water users, including those in Utah’s Snake Valley, judge says.

View of Spring Valley from June, 2013. (Brian Maffly | The Salt Lake Tribune)

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune

Las Vegas’ 25-year effort to import groundwater was dealt a major legal blow this week after a Nevada state judge invalidated the desert metropolis’ rights to the water under four eastern Nevada valleys.

In his long-awaited decision Tuesday, Senior District Judge Robert Estes ruled that state engineer Jason King did not adequately investigate whether the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s proposed groundwater scheme would pump these basins dry or conflict with existing water rights.

Nor did his award of 61,000 acre feet from Spring Valley establish measures to protect ranchers and other water users, including those in Utah’s Snake Valley.

"It was a huge victory for the opponents of SNWA’s pipeline project," said attorney Simeon Herskowits, who represents a diverse group of ranchers and environmentalists fighting Las Vegas’ water ambitions. "The judge ruled in our favor on all the fundamental issues we have been asserting for years."

He argued SNWA’s latest legal setback could be "the death knell" for the groundwater scheme, which includes a $15 billion, 285-mile pipeline to move billions of gallons from the Dry Cave, Delamar, Cave and Spring valleys. Water authority spokesman J.C. Davis could not be immediately reached Wednesday.

Groundwater from the aptly named Spring Valley supports not only rich vegetation such as its famous swamp cedars, but also feeds Utah’s Snake Valley, situated just to the east and 1,000 feet lower.

Because several agricultural communities there rely on aquifers and springs, Millard and Juab counties and other Utah interests are among numerous parties challenging King’s water-rights decision.

Also fighting it are The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which operates a big cattle operation in Spring Valley, several Indian tribes, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Great Basin Water Network.

"By setting the clock back to 1989, the court has provided an opportunity for the Water Authority and its board to explore previously ignored alternatives to this destructive project," said the Center for Biological Diversity’s Rob Mrowka. "Rather than robbing the desert of its precious little water, we should be looking at sustainable ways for Las Vegas to live within its means without destroying the environment and rural communities."

Estes heard arguments over two days in June in White Pine County’s courthouse in Ely.

He ruled that the water under Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar appears to be already appropriated. For Spring Valley, where there is far more water, Estes found little assurance that the proposed water withdrawals would be safe.

"Granting water to SNWA is premature without knowing the impacts, conflicts or unreasonable environmental effects so that mitigation may proceed in a timely manner," he wrote.

The judge remanded the decision back to King to recalculate how much water is available. He is also to include Juab and Millard counties in any mitigation plans for Spring Valley.

Estes was concerned that state engineers could not determine when Spring Valley’s groundwater would achieve its new equilibrium between discharge and recharge once pumping began. He instructed King to structure appropriations so that such equilibrium would be achieved in "a reasonable time."

Rejecting Nevada water deal hurts Utah, critics say

Snake Valley » Officials wonder if state’s stance could complicate proposed Lake Powell Pipeline.

Dave Baker, a third-generation Snake Valley rancher, looks at the Stateline Spring which is a critical source of water for farmers and ranchers near the towns of Baker, Nev., and Utah's Garrison and EskDale. The Utah Water Development Commission on Tuesday voted to ask Gov. Gary Herbert to reconsider his rejection of an agreement with Nevada that would equally divide the Snake Valley aquifer's water between the two states. (Brian Maffly | Tribune file photo)

By Brian Maffly
Salt Lake Tribune

When Utah Gov. Gary Herbert vetoed a water-sharing agreement forged with Nevada over Snake Valley’s groundwater, he said he was acting in response to locals’ desires and to ensure that water that flows into Utah stays in Utah.

But the governor’s move, which was hailed by both West Desert ranchers and environmentalists, could jeopardize Utah’s own aims on the Colorado River, according to critics in the water-development community. By failing to cooperate with an important neighbor, Utah could sacrifice a positive tradition of bi-state cooperation and invite trouble as it seeks to divert some of the Colorado to feed its own growing desert metropolis.

That’s according to Ron Thompson, general manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District and an influential figure in Western water circles. He is now publicly linking Las Vegas’ interest in Snake Valley groundwater with Utah’s proposed 139-mile pipeline that would deliver nearly 100,000 acre feet from Lake Powell to Kanab and St. George.

"It’s hypocritical for us to tell Nevada not to develop a water project. Ultimately they will figure out how to do it," Thompson said. He is concerned Nevada, which has its own interest in the Colorado River, will be less inclined to support Utah’s campaign to secure water rights, regulatory approvals and rights of way needed for the Lake Powell Pipeline.

Thompson raised these concerns last week at a meeting of the State Water Development Commission. Most of the commissioners, including Thompson, voted to formally ask Herbert to reconsider his decision.

Nevada officials likewise hope an accord is still within reach, although they declined to discuss their state’s leverage on Utah water projects.

"Gov. Herbert has committed to continue to work with Nevada to identify options for addressing this issue. That said, we believe this agreement is good for both states and we would welcome reconsideration from Gov. Herbert with regard to signing it," said Leo Drozdoff, director of the Nevada Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency proposing to pump and pipe Snake Valley water to Las Vegas, declined to comment for this story.

Meanwhile, conservationists ridiculed Thompson’s position as a self-serving gesture to protect the controversial Lake Powell Pipeline proposal, calling this project both costly and unnecessary.

"It has nothing to do with need. They are doing it so other states won’t be able to use the river," said Utah Rivers Council Executive Director Zach Frankel. "Ron Thompson is not an objective source on this. He is looking out for his agency’s interests."

Frankel, as well as local officials and business owners, contend the proposed agreement with Nevada would not truly protect Snake Valley from Las Vegas’ thirst once it begins pumping. Groundwater depletion could turn the valley into a "dust bowl," yet the agreement fails to anticipate air quality impacts, critics say.

"Pieces of paper are worthless and most often in these circumstances, are written to placate the opponents at the time only to be broken in the future," Terry Mascaro, a Baker, Nev., business owner, wrote in an open letter castigating the commission’s recent vote. "A 39-page paper document will never stop the stated destruction to us out here."

Millard County’s elected leaders oppose the agreement, reached without an opportunity for public comment, because it would promise groundwater to Nevada that they believe is not there. Once impacts from pumping become apparent it could be too late or too costly to fix the damage, they say.

But many on the water development commission question whether Utah could secure a better agreement than the one Herbert has rejected. That pact would have safeguarded the valley’s existing water users in a tiered water-sharing arrangement and featured several provisions to protect the landscape and monitor environmental changes, backers say.

"We had long indicated we would sign, then backed out at the last minute. It looks like our word is not that good. It was a strong agreement in Utah’s favor," Thompson said. "It’s a false premise that if Utah doesn’t come to an agreement, Nevada won’t be able to develop its water interest [in the Snake Valley]."

Thompson believes Nevada’s water troubles are an accident of history that began in the 1920s when the Colorado River Compact was established, allocating the Silver State a relative trickle of the mighty river’s flow. Back then, no one envisioned subdivisions, much less water-guzzling tourist amenities, blooming in the Las Vegas Valley.

Nevada’s 300,000-acre-foot annual apportionment hardly lines up with its territory’s contribution to the Colorado’s flow or its current needs, while nearly one-third of Utah’s 1.4 million-acre-foot share has gone undeveloped. (About 326,000 gallons, an acre foot of water supplies two to four households annually.)

For years, Utah and other basin states have opposed renegotiating the compact and encouraged Nevada to tap sources inside its borders.

"Utah has a long history working with all the basin states and Nevada. We have a long border and history of comity. Those [border] communities have been interrelated since they were developed," Thompson said, noting St. George’s own extensive ties to the Nevada economy.

The states are the nation’s two driest, as well as among the fastest growing, suggesting the competition for water may only get more intense. But what if Utah leased its unused share of the Colorado River to Nevada?

Conservationists say such an arrangement would make Utah money and help solve Las Vegas’ water woes without developing a destructive groundwater pumping scheme. In the mid-1990s, Utah’s then-Gov. Mike Leavitt proposed as much, but the idea did not get much traction among policy makers.

"That’s narrow-mindedness. That’s myopia," Frankel said.