Hazen, farms left high and dry by canal closure
Hazen, NV is a very small town close to where I live. Tiny little place, nestled between two somewhat larger cities, Fernley and Fallon. It rests along Route 50 Alternate, which combined with I-80 is the shortest way to get from Reno to Fallon, so it gets a fair amount of drive-by traffic.
Did you know it’s possible to shut off water to an entire town? It happened to Hazen in November. Frank X. Mullen wrote a long piece in today’s Reno Gazette-Journal about it, and how they won’t have water again until June:
The Truckee Carson Irrigation District delivers Newlands Irrigation Project water that flows in the canal from the Derby Dam to Lahontan Reservoir. On Jan. 5, 2008, the canal breached in Fernley, affecting hundreds of homes and displacing more than 1,500 residents.
In 2008, the irrigation district shut down the canal but used tanker trucks to provide water to the pond that feeds Hazen’s domestic system. The water kept flowing through the pipes.
But the district shut down the canal in November, and the federal Bureau of Reclamation won’t allow water to flow again until repairs are made. Officials are awaiting federal approval of the repair plans and predict the canal could start flowing again sometime in June.
It was ruled in 1991 that the community has no water rights, so the official position from the manager of the irrigation district is “that’s your toughie.” Even for the farms and such that do have water rights.
“The residents are responsible for their own water,” [Kate Rutan, office manager for the Truckee-Tahoe irrigation district] said. “If I buy a house, it’s up to me to find out what (the water situation) is. I’d look at the deed. It has to be in there. It’s their responsibility to find out how water comes out of those taps.
“Just because you’ve been doing something for 100 years doesn’t create a right or give you an entitlement.”
She said the farms and ranches with water rights should be getting water, but because the canal can’t be reopened until it meets federal standards those fields remain dry.
Hard to believe stuff like this happens in this day and age.