Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
September 8, 2008
GREAT BASIN RANCH: WRANGLING OVER WATER :
Landscape rules on how much lawn is enough differ by city: Depending on what city you live in (and sometimes what part of your city), the rules vary that govern how much greenery you have . Best to check before ripping out the grass and pouring concrete.
The
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GREAT BASIN RANCH: WRANGLING OVER WATER :
When the branding begins, Brandon Humphries is on horseback, his lasso turning slow loops in the air above a herd of nervous calves.
One by one, he snares the animals by their hind legs and drags them to a waiting group of ranch hands, who go to work with vaccine guns and an electric iron.
The air fills with white smoke and the smell of scorched hair.
After about an hour of this, Humphries climbs down from the saddle and right into the path of a calf that has slipped away from the ground crew. He wrestles the 200-pound animal to the ground, then pops back up with a grin on his face and a splash of green manure across the front of his long-sleeved work shirt.
He looks down at the stain and shrugs. "Shirt was going to get dirty eventually anyway," he says.
A scene like this is not unusual in the lonesome valleys of White Pine County. This kind of work has been going on here for more than a century.
What's strange is who Humphries' boss is.
Last year the Southern Nevada Water Authority hired him to run the string of ranches it now owns in
Humphries' job is to oversee Great Basin Ranch, a collection of seven agricultural operations the authority has snapped up since 2006.
The water agency's holdings in
The authority also has acquired more than 1 million acres of federal grazing rights, including a sheep range that stretches more than halfway to
The purchases were made to support a scheme to tap groundwater across eastern
By as early as 2013, the authority hopes to start sending water south through a pipeline that is expected to cost between $2 billion and $3.5 billion. Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy has described
The water project has stirred fierce opposition, and so have the purchases in
Critics say the authority paid way too much for the ranches and now runs them with a mixture of incompetence and reckless spending.
Rancher and Assemblyman Pete Goicoechea considers it public money down the drain.
"If they had to pay for those ranches with the way they're running their livestock, they'd be broke in three years," says the Republican from
But water authority officials insist the deals make sense in the proper context: They didn't buy the ranches for the livestock or the land.
They weren't looking to break into the cattle industry or set up a rural retreat where city folk could play cowboy for a weekend. They were after one thing.
"We're paying market value for water," Humphries explains. "We're not buying a ranch for a ranch."
And if authority officials have their way, at least some of their new groundwater holdings in Spring Valley will be sent down the pipeline to
Beyond that, the authority hasn't developed a long-term plan for the ranches yet. Though they are projected to operate at or near the break-even point starting this year, it might not make sense to keep them running as they are forever, officials say.
One idea is to open up the land to the state's university system as a sort of living laboratory for agricultural and environmental research. Another idea involves setting aside a portion of the property as a public natural area.
Authority Deputy General Manager Dick Wimmer says some changes undoubtedly will be made, but it's too early to say what those might be.
In the meantime, authority officials have one very compelling reason to keep ranching and farming on their property: Under
The team
In the first two hours of branding, the water authority's calves stop lowing only once, when a single clap of thunder crashes down from a dark cloud gathering over nearby
The animals wait in stunned silence for a few seconds to see what might happen next. Then they start up again.
The ranch hands greet the thunder with a holler.
Now it's a race against the weather. As any rancher will tell you, it's damned hard to brand a wet calf.
Most of these cows and steers were born in
In addition to the brand burned onto its right hip, each animal gets two vaccine shots. The males get castrated.
When it's over, the calves are turned loose to rejoin their mothers, which seems to calm them instantly.
The whole process takes about a minute and moves in a way that suggests an assembly line or a pit stop at a NASCAR race, with one key difference: Cars don't fight back.
"It's interesting to see how they do their business, how quick it is," says water authority biologist Zane Marshall, who stops by the corral to watch for a few minutes.
After snapping some pictures on his digital camera, he tries his hand once with the branding iron, then heads back out to continue his work.
The goal is to catalog the existing flora and fauna so any impacts from the groundwater transfer can be tracked more easily once the pumps are turned on.
"It supports long-term monitoring," says Marshall, who manages the authority's Environmental Resources Division.
His team is also tracing the movements of sage grouse in the valley. Five of the birds have been fixed with radio telemetry collars, a process that sounds a lot easier than it ought to be.
Basically,
"Def Leppard or Metallica," he says. "It depends on when you were born."
Then you just scoop up the stunned birds with a net.
Humphries, who went along on one of the grouse roundups, says ranchers and wildlife biologists don't often mix, let alone collaborate as they do at Great Basin Ranch.
"Usually he doesn't like what I'm doing, and I don't like what he's going to do," Humphries says of a biologist like
On the ground
At about 25 miles wide and 110 miles long, it runs north-south between mountain blocks that rise sharply on either side like Cenozoic parentheses.
To the west is the
The so-called "
The authority bought its first ranch here in 2006. Within a year,
The almost $79 million buying frenzy has led some to predict that the authority could one day own all of the private property in Spring Valley.
The water authority's Mulroy won't rule that out, but she doesn't think it will be necessary.
"The strategic ranches we needed to protect sensitive species in the area we got. And the ranches with the greatest opportunity for reinjecting water into the groundwater table, we got those, too," she says.
As Wimmer explains it, Great Basin Ranch is "not looked at as a profit center" but as a "holistic" way to manage
Already, the authority is busy upgrading equipment, examining ways to improve water efficiency, and opening the property up to a small army of hydrologists and biologists whose primary mission is to make the pipeline pay off.
The authority's opponents see a more sinister motive at work.
"The only reason they bought those ranches was to provide a buffer. If they own them there's no one there to cry foul" if the water table drops, Assemblyman Goicoechea says. "They can say what they want, but that's why they bought the valley."
The cowboy lawmaker does agree with
"There's some things they've done that have some people in the industry grinning," he says.
At a recent livestock auction, for example, Great Basin Ranch agreed to some unusual sale conditions for its calves that could needlessly stress the animals and reduce their value when they are weighed for delivery in the fall, Goicoechea says. "They were the laughingstock of the auction."
Not everyone is upset by the authority's presence in
Dennis Eldridge ranches on neighboring land that has been in his family since 1917. He thinks the authority is "doing fine" so far.
"They do things a little differently, but they've been fine with us," he says. "They've been a good neighbor."
It should be noted that the Eldridge family is in talks to sell its 6,300-acre spread to the authority. It should also be noted that Dennis Eldridge has a reputation for speaking his mind.
He says some fellow ranchers are jealous of Great Basin Ranch's new equipment and bottomless financial backing. Others just don't like change.
He says people are always anxious at first when a "foreign entity" moves into the valley, especially one affiliated with the government, which he jokingly refers to as "the big thumb."
As far as Eldridge is concerned, though, it's the people on the ground who count.
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Along with Humphries, the authority directly employs three ranch hands, two of them college graduates with degrees in plant or animal science.
About 30 contract workers make up the rest of the staff. Some are here from
There's plenty of work to go around, especially on branding day.
Several members of the day's crew were up before the sun, moving wheel lines that keep the alfalfa green and tending to the two dairy cows that keep the ranch supplied with milk.
Ranch hand Latara Pickering has logged 127 hours of work in the last two weeks.
Her brother, Matt Pickering, literally can't remember the last time he had a vacation. Ask him, and he has to think about it for a minute. "I went and picked up my brother at the airport," he finally says.
To brand every new calf on the ranch takes six full days scattered over three weeks. After that, the animals are turned out for five months to graze and pack on about 250 pounds each.
In early November, the animals will be loaded into trailers and trucked to their final stop before the slaughterhouse: a ranch near
Humphries says the cattle operation near
When a smaller group of cows and steers were sold and shipped off the ranch last fall, the line of cattle trucks stretched for a mile, he says.
Back in the saddle
A water utility with ranch property is not as unusual as you might think.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California leases some of its land for agricultural use. So do Denver Water, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and several municipal water companies in
What makes the arrangement in
For Humphries, that meant a new opportunity at an opportune time.
"At that point, I needed a job," he says. "I knew the ranch, and they needed someone to look after their investment."
Humphries moved to Spring Valley eight years ago from
When his uncle sold the place to the water authority in April 2007, Humphries suddenly found himself out of work.
Mulroy says Humphries seemed like the natural choice to look after the authority's livestock.
"It's not like we plucked somebody who has never done this before," she says. "We're going to the people who know how to do these things.
"The decisions on running those (ranches) are
Before he landed in Spring Valley, Humphries ran a landscaping company, a Mormon bookstore, and a side business that sold old railroad ties in
But cowboy life is in his blood.
When he was a kid, his family used to spend part of the year on a spread near Gunlock,
Humphries first climbed into the saddle at age 6, and within a year he was spending whole days on the range with his grandfather. He rode with blocks of wood taped to his stirrups so his legs would reach.
Today, the 36-year-old Humphries lives with his wife and five children in a house with a white rail fence and a sweeping view of
"Basically, I went from operating a 600-acre farm for my uncle to operating a ranch with 1.2 million acres" of rangeland, he says. "It was quite a change."
Show 'em
On this day, Humphries and his branding crew get lucky. The clouds hold off until the last calf is done.
When the sky finally opens up around noon, what comes down is snow, a rarity for early June on the more-than-mile-high valley floor.
The weather is a mixed bag, Humphries says. It's good for the hay crop, but it also means two guys will have to go out on graders the next day to make sure the roads through the ranch are passable.
"In the ranch business in
Reaction to Humphries and his employer in
Humphries predicts the anger and suspicion will fade over time, as "people come to realize we're here to be part of the community."
Until then, he knows only one surefire way to silence the critics: "Show 'em."
"That's what we do day by day," Humphries says. "We're under the microscope."#
http://www.lvrj.com/news/27968154.html
Landscape rules on how much lawn is enough differ by city: Depending on what city you live in (and sometimes what part of your city), the rules vary that govern how much greenery you have . Best to check before ripping out the grass and pouring concrete.
The
By Diane Wedner, Staff Writer
KEEPING that thick, verdant blanket of grass watered in these dog days of summer is about as economical and conservation-minded an enterprise as gassing up the family SUV for the weekly commute or a long-distance vacation. It costs a bundle, and pretty soon you have to do it all over again.
But before yanking out the
Equally confounding is that some cities are promoting water conservation, while still requiring that yards be at least half grass. Officials are scrambling to catch up with a conservation movement that many of its residents already have embraced.
"It's hard, because changing the zoning ordinances is a long process," said Jesse Brown, assistant planner for
Add to that the different philosophies among city planning departments, and headaches are born.
"We have almost no regulations whatsoever," said Michael O'Brien, a planning associate for
"If you want to plant a drought-tolerant garden, you can," said
And therein lies the rub, or shrub, if you will: If you're going
Longtime
He tore out their tired turf and replaced it with flowering paprika yarrow, lilac verbena, red California fuchsia, deer grass and oak trees, all anchored by redwood mulch. Window planters are filled with succulents.
The driveway, once a solid mass of concrete, now is made of pebbles and broken recycled concrete. A brook filled with recycled water flows through the backyard and spills into a pond stuffed with goldfish that feed on mosquitoes and algae.
The Dells got fired up to make the changes after attending a
A trip to the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants in
"Our neighbors love our garden," Margie Dell said of her new landscaping, which requires watering only twice a year. "They want to know how to do it."
Jim Brophy's neighbors had a different reaction when he ripped out the expansive front lawn of his new home and went native in the Park Estates neighborhood of
After learning about the benefits of water conservation, he planted manzanita shrubs, a palo verde tree, rosemary, Russian sage and other native species, which provide color year-round and require limited water. He's reduced yard clippings, he said, and is proud that with no edging or mowing, he's doing his part to cut down on the use of fossil fuels.
His neighbors, however, haven't shared his enthusiasm.
"The homeowners association said that I hadn't talked it up to the board, and at an open house I attended, I heard remarks that my yard was weird and ugly," Brophy said.
"The irony is that people visiting the house for sale next door to me now stop by my house and tell me they love my garden. They want to know who did it and how."
In
Currently, the rules vary by neighborhood, he said, but lawn is required on a fair-sized portion of residential properties.
"We don't want 100% hardscaping, because we're big on open space here," Beck said. "But we do encourage environmental responsibility, and we will encourage more drought-tolerant landscaping with native plants."
To find out about your city's landscaping and lawn-watering rules, visit city websites and click on the links to planning or community development departments.
Here is a sampler of some Southland cities' regulations:
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Note, also, that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently signed an ordinance that doubles fines for residents who repeatedly violate the city's "drought buster" rules, including a ban on watering lawns between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
For more information, go tocityplanning.lacity.org/.
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http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-water6-2008sep06,0,6938785.story
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