In the months before Nevada's top water regulator was fired, major mining companies and others complained about him to Gov. Joe Lombardo's office, accusing him of "coercion" and slow-walking communications as the state inched to a nuclear option in water policy — curtailing rights in Nevada's largest basin.

The complaints, which came in the form of nearly 200 emails, letters, attachments and meetings reviewed by The Nevada Independent, largely centered around a draft order to reduce groundwater pumping in the Humboldt River Basin. It's an overappropriated watershed in Northern Nevada where the state is undertaking its first major, large-scale application of conjunctive water management; a strategy to coordinate surface and groundwater use. Some of the missives warned that an adverse decision would jeopardize mining projects that could create "thousands of high-paying jobs." 

The documents underscore the enormous resistance the state engineer, tasked with applying Nevada water law and responsible for determining whether there's adequate water to satisfy a permit, faced from major developers, mining companies and other groups, including Nevada Gold Mines — a joint venture between Barrick and Newmont that controls 22 underground and surface mines in Northern Nevada.

Nevada Gold Mines operates a large number of mines in the Humboldt River Basin, including the Carlin Trend complex, which is one of the world's largest gold-producing modern mining operations. 

The company employs more than 7,000 people, along with thousands of other contractors, with the vast majority living and working in the basin, which includes Elko, Carlin, Battle Mountain and Winnemucca. 

Curtailment, critics warned in communications to the governor's office, could affect the region's economic stability, jobs and future growth. 

"It's misleading for the state engineer to suggest a draft curtailment order with accompanying bulletins is just a way to '...get everyone to the table,'" a lobbyist representing Nevada Gold Mines wrote in an email to Lombardo's chief of staff on Nov. 12. "It's coercion masked as collaboration. Barrick/NGM has not only actively participated in all discussions, they have offered bona fide solutions to the problem of down basin surface flow reductions only to be ignored by the agency. This style of coercion, whether intended or not, affects capital markets in a significant way."

None of the emails reviewed by The Indy directly requested that the governor take action to remove then-State Engineer Adam Sullivan, though certain records were redacted, including details of a meeting between Lombardo and representatives of Nevada Gold Mines, as well as emails regarding canceled water rights permits. Nevada Gold Mines has also been a major donor to Lombardo's campaign, including giving half a million dollars to a supportive PAC in 2024.

Christina Erling, an executive with Barrick, told The Nevada Independent in an email that all personnel decisions are in the purview of the governor's office and that Nevada Gold Mines respects the office's decisions. 

"Any decision regarding water has an impact on the state," she said. "It's incumbent on affected parties to bring their concerns to the Governor's office."

In the driest state in the country, the state engineer plays a critical role that typically ends in voluntary retirement — Sullivan was the first state engineer to be terminated since 1981. News of his firing took the broader environmental movement by surprise; one activist lauded his "willingness to confront difficult issues."

Other clues behind Sullivan's termination lie in a March 30 deposition of James Settelmeyer, the former director of the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which oversees the state engineer's division. In the deposition, which surrounds an unrelated legal case, Settelmeyer said he had received complaints from the Cattlemen's Association and other similar groups with concerns that Sullivan's division was not issuing decisions promptly. 

"Generally, due to my relationships with individuals, people would call me up and say, 'hey, you know, especially in the governor's office, we're not happy,'" Settelmeyer said in the deposition. He added that people wanted faster decisions, regardless of whether they were pro or con, and the division was a "black box" when it came to decision timelines.

Settelmeyer, who resigned the role last month to run for an open congressional seat, expressed frustration that people were unable to get information about applications for certain water rights — a policy that stems from a requirement to include all relevant parties in communications to ensure fairness and avoid influence from outside parties.

In a previous interview with The Nevada Independent, Sullivan said he was told by Settelmeyer and two deputy directors that he was being terminated because of complaints about his decisions, that he was difficult to read, and that timelines for his decision-making were unclear. He provided his personnel file to The Indy, whichcontained no records of reprimand or disciplinary actions.

Sullivan said when he was fired, he was given the example of the Humboldt River Basin, where there are ongoing conflicts between long-standing existing rights known as senior rights and newer, more junior rights. Senior water-right holders who were entitled to certain water deliveries were not receiving them, he said.

The draft curtailment order for the basin was not intended to be a final decision, Sullivan said, but rather a "starting point" for public input. Experts familiar with communications around these issues indicated that it's fairly standard for conversations to take place outside of official channels.

Settelmeyer acknowledged in the deposition that from July until the firing, he was involved in meetings with the mining industry regarding angst over the Humboldt River draft order — the heart of many of the complaints outlined in the records reviewed by The Nevada Independent. 

Though Sullivan had said there was pressure to rescind, accelerate or withhold decisions, and his dismissal did not come as a complete surprise, Settelmeyer pushed back in the deposition. He said that there was a desire for the agency to issue more decisions, but attributed the problem to lack of resources rather than delays, and the department has been working to address that through additional personnel and other changes.

Ryan Cherry, the governor's chief of staff, forwarded the Nov. 12 email from the Barrick executive to Settelmeyer and Chase McNamara, who was then Lombardo's natural resources policy adviser.

"See below," he wrote.

A month later, Sullivan was "no longer serving" as the state engineer. 

Water law and the legitimacy of complaints 

Nevada law gives the state engineer discretion to administer water rights and authorizes them to conduct administrative hearings, with organizations and other groups able to appeal the engineer's decision through the judicial system.

"As long as there is substantial evidence to support the state engineer's decision and there is no indication that the decision was arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable, their determination will be upheld," UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law Professor Tom Romero told The Nevada Independent. 

When it comes to the state engineer's decision-making, there's broad latitude within their hydrological expertise to consider environmental and economic impacts, Romero said, noting that the overall goal is to "achieve the maximal and reasonable use of the state's waters." As for whether the mining companies' fears and complaints were legitimate, Romero said it'd be up to a court to decide, assuming the decision was appealed.

Much of the debate over the Humboldt River basins stems from a 2024 Nevada Supreme Court decision where justices found the state "has authority to conjunctively manage surface waters and groundwater and to jointly administer multiple basins" — overruling arguments from developers that the state water engineer (Sullivan) had overstepped his authority.

The difficulty with managing surface and groundwater conjunctively, Romero said, is that groundwater is based on predictive modeling. There are different ways to classify groundwater, and the relationship between how the pumping of groundwater affects pre-existing surface water rights is still unclear. 

In an ideal world, Romero said the state engineer should be like an umpire calling balls and strikes.

"I would like them to be nonpartisan and impartial arbiters who, because of their training and their position, are making informed and sound judgments based on the best available data they have in front of them," he said.

As far as the draft curtailment and backchannel communications between mining companies and the governor's office, Romero said there is often a lot of jockeying that happens "off the books" outside the established hearing and judicial process. 

Erling, from Barrick, said Nevada Gold Mines has a "decades long track record of partnering with the state on these topics," and many industries and individuals alert the governor's office if there's something taking place that affects the state.

Gina Gilson, a postdoctoral political science researcher at UNR, said the mining companies' complaints are legitimate, but the general perception among those involved in the Humboldt River Basin is that the process they're using to make them sidesteps formally recognized channels.

The problem, she said, is that the state engineer was initiating a process (publishing a draft order) that would have included a public comment period, during which, she said, mining companies would be expected to raise these issues — as they had in other state-led working groups and meetings.

Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, characterized Sullivan's tenure as a "willingness to confront difficult issues," pointing to the former engineer's efforts in the Humboldt River Basin, well users in Pahrump and other topics.

"There didn't appear to be a specific political or economic ideology driving his office," Donnelly said, adding that Sullivan's actions weren't pro-mining, but there were water rights allocated to mining companies that Donnelly and other advocates opposed. 

"Adam was, I would say, ushering in a new era of water management in this state," Donnelly said. "So it's just very sad that we're losing that because I think there was real optimism that we could solve some of these long-standing problems."

'The state engineer knows his stuff.'

Personnel files shared with The Nevada Independent by Sullivan contained no records of reprimand or disciplinary actions — only a written termination agreement  

Settelmeyer said during his deposition that Sullivan's personnel files were clean, but he had expressed frustration with him over the timeliness of paperwork processing and responses to queries from him and, separately, the governor's office.

In a February 2024 interview on Nevada Newsmakers, Settelmeyer had even gone so far as to praise Sullivan's work, saying the state engineer had done a "fantastic job of creating maps" showing over-pumped and over-appropriated water basins. 

In the deposition, Settelmeyer said he fired Sullivan because "he was not a great leader." He said he repeatedly requested information on notices of intent, proof of beneficial use and other documents. He alleged that Sullivan took two years to provide that information, adding that the governor also had to wait on requests.

Settelmeyer said he understands that aggregating information takes time, but Sullivan took too long. He added he was the one who decided to let Sullivan go.

"His inability to control his office and respect of incident personnel [were] issues I looked at, things of that nature," Settelmeyer said in the deposition. "It all coalesced and the continued desire to push forth a draft curtailment order which was based on what I considered to not necessarily be the strongest science."

Settelmeyer acknowledged he has no experience or training with water modelings, is not a hydrologist and does not know how to read a model. He said during the deposition the hydrologists he spoke to had been hired by the mining companies.

The reason for the hesitation around the curtailment order, Settelmeyer said, was because it made assumptions about the capture of water that he did not feel "was an appropriate starting point," and he worried about opening the state to litigation. 

Sullivan's model was put together by Nevada's nonprofit Desert Research Institute (DRI), Settelmeyer said, adding that mining also contributed. Settelmeyer said the mining models were generally accurate, but DRI's "had problems."

Settelmeyer said he didn't have any other concerns with the science Sullivan relied upon for the curtailment order and had no issues with Sullivan's past work. 

He acknowledged that under Sullivan's leadership, the department had never lost a case in the Nevada Supreme Court.