August 7, 2017

Chair Dave

Hall expressed the importance of the Water District Governing Board Members attending these presentations.

Commissioner John

Koenig stated he would like to see more extensive testing other than just for Nitrates depending on cost. f. Report from other individuals, groups and or agencies regarding water- related Issues; for informational purposes only. I. Darrell Lacy Darrell explained the Death Valley Regional Flow Model that looks at everything from Eastern Utah all the way down to Death Valley to include a series of large Aquifers that start in higher elevations and run down into Death Valley. The Death Valley Model and SAM (Southern Amargosa Imbedded Flow Model) started 5 years ago. Models all had a nexus to Yucca Mountain. Within the Death Valley Regional Flow Model, they were looking at 1500 meters for Death Valley and 500 meters for the SAM Model to try and get a better understanding of the details in the area downstream of Yucca Mountain, Amargosa and Pahrump. When the County had money from Yucca Mountain, and grants; that money was used initially set up the Water District, and it was directed to fund the SAM Model. The SAM Model recently did not give them the detailed answers they were looking for and the third iteration of the Death Valley Regional Flow Model was going to be able to go down into the smaller grids that SAM was doing anyway so essentially the SAM Model is going to be dropped without going to final completion and Darrell will be issuing a report on it. Darrell added that the Death Valley Regional Flow Model DV-3 will replace the SAM. Darrell stated he was involved with USGS and BLM as to how to use that Model to assist BLM in their updates to their Resource Management Plan. Darrell felt that water issues are a State and Local issue and should not be a part of the BLM discussions but will aid in understanding the impact of the BLM’s decisions. The BLM will run some assumptions through the Model to see what it looks like as part of the growth in the valley or land disposal issues arise from the Resource Management Plan. Mary Ellen Giampaoli is contributing information to the Model that arose from the Water Resources Plan. Oz stated that although a population projection should include a buffer, the population projection used by the USGS and BLM is too high and thought some corrective action was being made. Darrell stated that some push back was given to help them understand that the County ordinances and the State Borders in Pahrump and Amargosa Basins are managing the water. They ran assumptions that were ran through the Death Valley and SAM Model that ignored order 1197 from the State, ignored ordinances of a five acre minimum parcel size, dedicated water rights to do land division, and assumed a lot of new wells would be drilled, and water rights are not taken from other places to support the land division, so there is a misunderstanding or lack of attempt to understand how we are managing the water in our Basins, as a result the incorrect data that is entered into the Model; results in skewed data outcome. The BLM and USGS is now requesting assistance to acquire resources to incorporate more accurate data for inclusion to the Model.