The Senate and Assembly are considering separate, but similar, bills that would implement a program to buy back and retire water rights in some of the state’s most over-appropriated basins.

Amid the effects of climate change and drought, agreements on how to divide river water are expiring. “Wide gaps” remain between stakeholders with just 20 months to act. 

Supporters of the project argue that pumped storage is the cheapest and most reliable way to provide the electricity storage needed for the clean energy transition and will help stimulate a rural community’s economy. 

Judge: Water regulators did not overstep in rejecting the company’s paperwork after discovering a conflict in the chain of title for water rights it bought in 2020.

A bill aimed at addressing one of Nevada’s most pressing issues — the overallocation of groundwater — remains stuck in a budget committee with less than two weeks left before the Legislature adjourns.

The Nevada Supreme Court issued a ruling in a major water case, an opinion that the court’s majority recognized “will significantly affect water management in Nevada.”

This week’s Indy Environment newsletter looks at the water supply for the Reno-Sparks area amid the ongoing drought.

Federal officials declared the first-ever shortage on the Colorado River, what experts described as a wake-up call for the roughly 40 million people who rely on it.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves the Las Vegas metro area, is tasked with implementing what its general manager said is probably “the most aggressive municipal water conservation measure that's been taken in the western United States.”

The Assembly Committee on Natural Resources voted Friday to advance a legislative proposal, pushed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, to require the removal of about 5,000 acres of unused grass, an action that could save billions of gallons of Colorado River water each year.

Last week, a state water official sent a letter to the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee backing away from a proposal to give the Court of Appeals original jurisdiction over water cases. As the state moves away from the proposal, Supreme Court Chief Justice James Hardesty said that he plans to look for ways to bring more water law expertise to the judiciary.

In the fight to stop the Las Vegas Pipeline there have been many strange alliances. There were farmers and ranchers working with big-city environmentalists, rural county governments mobilizing in lockstep with tribal officials, and faith groups working alongside scientists.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority board voted Thursday to withdraw its remaining permits and applications associated with its proposal to pump groundwater from eastern Nevada to Las Vegas -- a project criticized by environmentalists, ranchers, tribes and rural counties.

The decision means the water agency is shelving a development project that has long inflamed tensions between rural and urban Nevada, from the Legislature to the courts, and eclipsed nearly all other water issues in the state.

A District Court judge has once again scuttled the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s plans to obtain and pump rural groundwater about 300 miles from eastern Nevada, prompting one Clark County commissioner to call on the water authority "to look in a different direction.”

Environmental groups are raising concerns over a provision in draft legislation they believe could exempt the Las Vegas pipeline — a proposal to pump eastern Nevada groundwater about 300 miles to Southern Nevada — from further litigation and federal environmental review. When asked whether the lands bill prevented further environmental or judicial review of the pipeline, a spokesman for the water authority pushed back.