Water District Governing Board– Water District Governing Board Meetings - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order the August 6, 2026 meeting of the Nye County Water District Governing Board. And we're going to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. And Ernie, I'll let you lead that. Okay, the next item on our agenda is a roll call. I'm gonna start off with Michael Locke. Present. Malene Williams. Present. Ernie Jackson. Present. Michael Fott. Present. And we'll have area one representative Charles Miller will be with us by phone. Present. We got you there, Charles?

Yep, I'm here.

Okay, and then myself. Edwin Goodhart, area three, present.

Moving on to item number three, mission statement of the Nye County Water District Governing Board. Protect, provide, and preserve the water resources of Nye County. Moving on to item number four, approval or alteration of agenda for August 6, 2026. At this time, Mr. Chair, I have no changes to the agenda. Moving on to item number five, general public comment First, up to three minute time limit per person on matters not listed on the agenda. Topics of public comment shall be limited to matters within the authority of the governing board. Action will not be taken on matters considered during this period. We welcome you all here. We want you to know that your voices are heard and that you are cared about. If you're here to talk about the data center, it's on the agenda. It's the first agenda after I get through with a little bit of housekeeping, so we'll get to it right away. So if you want to speak about the data center, please wait until item number 11. If you have general comments that you want to talk about that are unrelated to the data center, please approach the dais, speak and spell your last name, And we'll work our way through this, folks. Ms. Rob?

MS. Good morning. Patricia Robb, RLBB. Excuse me. I just want to share something with you. I know that a lot of you do a lot of work behind the scenes that we don't know and a lot of investigations. And you're up to par with a lot of stuff, and I really appreciate that. But I don't know if you know about biotomy. I can hardly say that. But I would. If you can, write it down. If not now, maybe later. B-I-O-T-O-N-O-M-Y. Look that up. They are in another country, though. But I think that we can actually learn some things from other countries. that have had water problems, water scarcity, unable to get water. And I think that we can actually learn from them. I know that America has a lot of great education. And we've come a long ways with a lot of things. But a lot of our rules and procedures overlap to the point of confusion and constrict us in many ways. I think that education is very important. And perhaps having a course with Great Basin Water I'm sorry, the college, Great Basin College, in regards to alternative ways of using resources that matter. We have a lot of things going on. I know that, I think I've pretty much covered what I really want to say, but we're not the only ones having water issues. So we really need to be looking at other ways And I think Biotomy has a lot of great information that you'll find. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Paul Dela Cruz, D-E-L-A-C-R-U-Z. My question is, Mr. Horsford sent a letter to you guys a while back about an essential water shortage we have for a deep well that you're going to do for $2 million. I really can't find anything on that. So I'd like to know more information about what's the big problem here that we need to dig a super deep well here. But that's not. I got to go to Lake Mead later on because my boats, I finally get a covered slip and the water level's dropping. So guess what I get to do?

Thanks.

Anthony Greco, GRECO. So if I get to be Commissioner IV, I will do everything legitimately to help you guys because one of my platforms is to protect the private well owner. And that's the most important thing. Without water, we got nothing.

Thank you, Anthony.

Good morning. Ron Richardson, R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S-O-N. Just a general question. I don't know where to find the answer, but did this board vote previously 5-0 to not allow a data center or recommend against the data center?

We can't answer your questions. It's not a question and answer during this period, and we'd ask that you keep your questions related not to the data center, please.

Do you know, do our golf courses in this community use recycled water or potable water?

I would be happy to meet with you after the meeting, but we're not able to do a back and forth with you, sir. I can't give you answers now. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Lou Komorowski.

Ma'am, would you speak into the microphone and make sure the green light is on?

OK. How about that?

Pull it down.

Pull it down.

There we go.

That better? Yes, ma'am.

OK.

The reason I'm here is- Could you please speak and spell your last name?

OK. OK. My name is Lou Komorowski, K-O-M-O-R-O-W-S-K-I.

OK.

I live in this town 25 years. I built my house in the new water deep of 275. I think in that time it's deep enough. Two years ago, I have to spend $10,000 to do another drilling to make it deeper. My concern is I think 275 is different enough, but I have to drill at the 350. That is a sign that the water in town is depleting. Why would I have to do that? I hope everybody here has $10,000 to do your water, okay? So I encourage you who are governing board of the water, consider your people because your people live here. They don't want to move, but I heard they rather move when something else coming in here and not in their favor also. I'm not mentioning nothing. My concern is the water. Okay, please be diligent. Do your diligence for your people. If you are the governing, you represent us. And I hope, and I pray to the good Lord, that you guys will do your work. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. I just want to say thank you. My name's Janie Reeves, for the record, J-A-Y. N-E-E, last name is Reeves, R-E-E-V-E-S. I'm here just as well as a concerned citizen. I just want to thank you to the board for volunteering and taking your time, because I know these are some hot topics we're talking about lately. But I know the concern is about water, and that's why I'm here today. So I'm hoping that the board would consider doing some kind of program for our salt cedars in the valley that are truly the culprits of a lot of our water concerns because they have a root that taps into our aquifer. And a lot of people don't know, there's not a lot of education out there for salt cedars, but they grow into these massive trees and people are watering them and not realizing what resources they're stealing from our community, these salt cedars. So I'm hoping that maybe, sorry, I am a little nervous, That maybe the board could consider some kind of abatement program where we do a pilot program, maybe six properties a year. We could work with those individual property owners, help them take down those salt cedars, replace them with a different tree that doesn't suck up all of our water. And maybe that would help some economic development growth around here, but really just save the water for our people instead of just hundreds of thousands of gallons a day going to these salt cedars that are the size of our buildings. So I'm hoping maybe the board would consider doing some kind of program about that, and I would be happy to volunteer. I'm not an expert, but anyone can do their research on salt cedars to understand how poisonous they are to our aquifer and our valley. So, thank you.

Jamie, come see me in the office. Let's stand up a program, you and I, and we'll bring it before the board.

Thank you, sir.

Check your mic.

My name is Dwight Lilly, L-I-L-L-Y. I'm concerned going forward of the ability of our water district to protect the water of the residents here from the developers and their promises. And the reason I say this is that some years ago, Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club made numerous promises to the public of what they were going to do for this community if that racetrack was approved. Airstrips, shopping plazas, dirt tracks, All sorts of promises you can find, you don't have to search. None of them have been complied with and the Nye County ability to enforce any promises made under development agreements has been lacking. So right now we're facing a data center proposal that's been brought forth by a person that works in conjunction with the same people at Spring Mountain Racetrack. Promises made to the water district to maintain the quality of our water, the volume of our water being made to appease the residents here. My problem here to you people, and I support every one of you, is that you will not be able to enforce those promises because you will not have Nye County behind you to enforce the promises. The reason I say that is because they have not enforced previous development agreement promises made in order for development to come in. We just saw the ad event development get approved by the Knight County Commissioners. Lots of promises made. Who's going to enforce those promises? You guys? Do you have the money to sue to enforce them? Do you have the enforcement procedure? Anyway, that's what I've got to say. I'm concerned. You guys should be concerned about your ability to protect and preserve the water resources of Pahrump here at Basin 162. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Lisa Hemby, H-E-M-B-Y. And I just wanted to tell you that I'm concerned in general regarding any projects that impact Basin 162, whether proposed projects would draw from it or possibly contaminate it. I am concerned about my well, my expensive well that I paid for, and the number one reason my husband and I moved to Pahrump in the first place. I don't want to be forced to tie into any public system, nor do I want to be taxed or otherwise penalized for not doing so. I ask you to please preserve our aquifer from contamination or overuse regarding any projects proposed or even that are going on right now that might be overconsuming or contaminating. Thank you.

How you doing? My name is Kevin Ritchie. Last name spelled R-I-T-C-H-I-E. I've only been a part of this community for four years. Retired from Alaska. Grew up in South Florida. I'm here to tell you people, I work for one of the largest nuclear construction companies in the world, Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure, which is now restructured into the Shaw Group. They do all the hazardous cleanup for the government. I am here to tell y'all, if you allow this project to go through, you are endangering the lives of this community. Y'all need to step up, fight against this, and not allow it to happen, and not have people like Mrs. Strickland benefit at our sake. Now, my wife and I, we got heard of this. I immediately went out and purchased 56 acres in Ohio. I am a bear trying to be sleep and just enjoy retirement. But when you start affecting my livelihood, my grandchildren that I would not bring to this community once this is in because of what it's going to do to the water table. what it's going to do environmentally to the impact. Our Board of Commissioners has not done their research. You look at what's going on across this nation. Top producing cattle states. It's not Texas, it's Alabama. But what's going on? Cattle aren't producing. Stillborn cattle. Property values are going down. This committee has to do whatever they can and not allow this to happen. I am willing to step in and be an independent member. My PTSD is getting the best of me right now. To put forth my knowledge to help you all. And if you're willing to ask, I'm willing to help.

Thank you, Mr. Ritchie. Before we move on, folks, I appreciate everyone's passion, and we really appreciate you being here to participate. This is not a baseball game. We're not going to cheer. We're not going to boo. We're going to get through this like professionals. This is the people's house. I expect everyone to treat it with that sacred notion that this house belongs to everyone. We're going to be calm. We're going to be professional, and we're going to work through this. Please proceed, Mr. O'Brien.

Thank you, Dan. John O'Brien, O apostrophe capital B-R-I-E-N. Good seeing all of you again. Well drillers are on my property right now, putting another well in. Reason being, we had a well failure. Water level at my place, 28 feet in the last three years. That's since Hillary and the storms we had the spring following. I have records showing the water levels all the way along. We had a period from 1993 to 1997 where this valley saw no water at all. I have a National Weather Service weather station on my property. I have records that show clearly. And then when we compare them to the static well levels on my property, and I have four wells on the property that are active. farm in this community for 37 years in the spring all i did was open the valve up and i had artesian water flow didn't have to pay the electricity was mated went out we watered our fields today i have to pump every single drop out of the ground with electricity when we sit here and we look at the recharge rate we all understand the state over allocated us they call it 20 20 000 acre feet recharge when we know in fact it's probably around 16 15 14. we don't we don't know it all varies varies from the snow snow pack and from the rainfalls in the mountain i'm not going to talk until this next agenda item about the impacts on carpenter canyon wallace canyon in Wheeler Springs and the aquifer that was created by those washes coming down. 1992, I made a presentation to the Board of County Commissioners. We used a nuclear repository computer to make our evaluations and our equations. We literally told the entire gallonage coming off the mountain from Johnny all the way down to Carpenter Canyon. 17 places the water crossed. Go look that study up. They still have records. We need to know the facts before we move forward. We need to know what we have recharging our valley and how everything that we're doing affects it. We need to know about development on the fan and how it's going to affect everybody below the fan, including floods. You guys have to do with that, too. For the comment made on salt cedars, the Nye County already has on its books... a section for removal of salt cedars. Nothing was ever done on that. Go ahead and look it up. Thank you.

Angelina Jackson, JAC, KSON. I'm baffled at how they went from implementing having to buy water rights, that's on your God-given land that you've already pay taxes for to be able to drill a well, due to the fact of resources, the limitation that there is of it, now to just selling away 300 acres worth of water rights baffles me. How there is a board member that is a water oil driller, and a developer and brokers of water rights baffles me. How there is no concern, apparently, by any board members anywhere of the quality of water, like it's just going to be there and it's always going to be perfect as long as we keep building like we are. No. People in this community are in this community because they love it the way that it is. And all these developers are saying, well, you want to grow, you want to do this, you want to do that. No, that's why people move here. They don't want it to be like Vegas. They don't want it to be like the other bigger places. If they want somebody to assimilate, they can assimilate to the way the life is here and respect the people that have been here. I've only been here nine years. But it's just common sense. Wherever you go, you respect that community and their way of life. If you don't like it, the sign's that way. You know, and I don't know if anybody else has been keeping up here, but the cyber attacks on water across many states going on, we're fortunate enough to have the well water that we do. And we're going to just, I don't know where everybody's mind is at. I'm disappointed that every single board member of this board was not at the meeting on Tuesday. I mean, this community has no support, it seems like, of no representative that's out there for us. Representatives that have been voted in by the residents. Once you guys are voted in, that's it. Everybody's all talk, but nobody stands behind their word. Now, I don't know about anybody else, but I'm so sick and tired of people trying to act like we're as dumb as the people from the movie The Hills Have Eyes. We ain't that gullible. And people are mistaking us because we're quiet that we're not knowledgeable. You guys are poking the bear. And not you guys directly, please understand that. But in reference to our representatives in general, nobody stands up for us. Thank you.

My name is Carla Ely, E-L-Y. I've lived in Pahrump for 22 years. I would like to echo Mr. Lilly's sentiments about who's going to enforce whatever empty promises anybody gives you. When I moved to Pahrump in 2004, I bought an existing house in the Calvada region. This is one of the original developments of preferred equities, if you remember them. They came in when they bought 10,000 acres of land, and they promised they would provide water and sewer infrastructure to every parcel that they would develop, which they didn't. But in return for that empty promise, whoever was in charge gave preferred equities the water rights for all those parcels, including the water rights for my parcel. So although I had a well, I didn't have any water rights. So in 2021, I wanted to downsize, so I bought the lot directly across the street. It was still in Calvada subdivision. No water rights. I had to go purchase water rights and give them back to the state for me to drill my domestic well. By rights, when preferred equities went bankrupt in early 2000s, whenever that was, those water rights should have been returned to the property owners, but they weren't. To my understanding, they were given to Utilities, Inc. empty promises, screw the people, whatever. And just another aside, my home that I sold, the well was drilled to 140 feet, which is really what everybody did at that time. When my pump failed, my pump had been sitting at 80 feet, so I had it dropped to 120 feet because the water table was going down. On the lot directly across the street in 2021, They drilled my well to 260 feet because now that's the standard. If Great Basin would have done it, they would have gone to 300 feet. So that's how the table's dropping. And Lou mentioned she had to just increase the depth of her well and the other guy. Yeah, pretty soon lots of residents are going to have to increase the depth of their wells too. So thanks.

Good morning, everyone. Bruce Johnson, GOHN, SOM. Here's a question that I want you to ask on every decision that you make that has to do with all these water rights and what your remedies are going to be. The very first question is, where's your grant of authority established in the Constitution? And I'm not talking modern statutory stuff. I want you to dig deep, okay? And make sure that you have an understanding on that. Because when you start taking people's natural rights away from them, you start committing a problem. And that problem is a violation of people's constitutional rights. I can tell you there's a lot of people in this town that have actually had their water rights stolen from them. And it can even go back to the state that has done a lot of this. And I've been studying this because I'm working on trying to unravel a lot of this stuff for a lot of these people. Because there's a lot of people that have actually been harmed. And I actually have a piece of property also that I'm protecting the water rights on it. So I really, I want you all to dig into the original Nevada Constitution. Maybe dig up the 1873 and the 1879 and go through them. I just want you to make sure that you understand your authority before you make a decision that is going to impact the people within the community. Another thing that I want you to look into, and I'm going to instruct you to do this kindly, Because I want to report on all the weather modification that the county has actually been funding and part of for our spring mountains over here. Because I've been studying a lot of these chemtrails that take place in our skies day after day. And I've been studying the air quality. And it appears to me that we have some members that are within the governing board of Nye County that are overlooking the air quality for the people. because there's a lot of days that I see a lot of pollution that is going on that is actually being dropped from the sky from these jets in designated patterns. They're starting and stopping. So I don't want to hear any nonsense that they're just contrails because there's plenty of science that's already been exposed. It's readily available. I'll provide anything to you that you want to know. But I am instructing you to go to the people that are running dry, the desert research industry, whatever it is, and I want to report, since the day that this thing has been enacted, I want to report on all the weather, the numbers, the water numbers, and I want to bring that back to the people, please.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Kenyon Salzer, S-A-L-Z-E-R. I just want to say something to you five people up there. I've been watching you, and you all actually were looking at the people who were speaking, and I commend you on doing that. Because other committees, you see the people doing this while somebody's talking. You're giving respect to the people out here that are talking. I appreciate that. I'll have more to say when the other subject comes up. Thank you.

Thank you for your service, sir.

Hi, my name is Ruth Matthew, M-A-T-T-H-E-W. Members of the board, the laws I created in 2007 gave you one job, and it is written in your own chart in a single line. Provide, protect, and preserve the water resource of Nye County, not to provide it away, to protect it, and to preserve it. Today, I'm asking you to do exactly what your own mission demands of you. The paper rights to physical rights is the exact problem the state engineer issued the water ban on 2017. The water a data center uses is not borrowed. It is burned. It boils into the sky as vapor.

Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, I need you to keep your comments not related to the data center. We will have an item in just a few moments where you can address the data center.

All right, let me continue then. This is not a farm where the water seeps down to the well. This is a consumption. We'll skip that to the water center. But what is happening is water mining. There's a difference between what is water mined and what comes back. The groundwater, water mining is extracting the groundwater at a rate greater exceeding the natural recharge. The water they consume here is fossil water, rain that falls into this valley thousands of years ago that does not refill in our lifetimes. Our children or theirs, once it's spent, it is spent for good. We have all watched Lake Mead and Colorado rivers drop. You have seen that white bathtub ring around it, warning you, you can read from the highway. Now it faces Colorado river cuts. Our aquifers have no bathtub ring. A decline happens in the dark, hundreds of feet underground, invisible, until the day a pump pulls air and a family turns on the tap and nothing comes out. By the time we can see it, it's already too late to stop it. We do not have to imagine where the road ends. We can look. L.A. drained the Owens Valley, the one desert basin over from all of us. The water was mined. The town of Keeler withered to a ghost town, and the dry lake bed became the largest source of toxic dust in America, $2 billion and counting to hold down the topsoil. The aerial sea was the fourth largest lake on earth. It drained for someone else's profit. The fishing towns now sit rustic in a poisoned desert. This is recent history. This is the physics of pulling water out of the basins such as Pahrump. Cochrane, California, which has sunk more than 11 feet from over pumping. Homeowners are experiencing that now with foundations cracking with the poop dirt problem. The Great Salt Lake, whose exposed arsenic-laden bed now threatens 2.5 million people with toxic dust. The Ogalla aquifers in western Kansas are the little fossil water mining cases exactly like this. Farm communities losing populations as a non-renewable aquifer is spent down. Our own numbers already tell the story. This valley can sustain 20,000 acre feet a year. It has already promised 60,000, three times more than exists. 11,000 families draw from this aquifer. New wells have been banned since 2017 because you already know it's failing. We cannot afford this. Not the cost to our economy when the wells fall and the ground itself sinks. Not the cost to our health and the dust and the lungs in our town, the oldest town in Nevada. Not to the cost to the water or to the desert that lives on it. So I'm asking you, hold the line. Protect, preserve. This is not activism. This is your duty. Please do it.

Thank you for your comments. Mr. Chair, I see no further public comment. Moving on to item number six. Members, managers, comments. This item may include announcements or topics proposed for future workshops and agendas. Anyone on the board that has something they'd like to discuss?

I'd like to thank everybody for very positive public comment. I hadn't seen that recently in any of the other meetings that have gone on, but I really appreciate the decorum that everyone showed here in that public comment. On another note, I did meet with Great Basin regarding the water extensions. We discussed five or six different streets. I am going to look into The cost, once they get back to me on what they've already done with their design and their engineering, which is a large cost of doing this stuff, and then eventually come back to the board and say, here's what we're looking at, here's how it would work, here's how it might happen, and we would determine whether or not we want to try and take some of these lots that don't have utilities and turn them into lots that do have utilities. we don't have a giant budget so we have to be very careful with what we're doing but the idea is to work on a sid somehow with the county so that there's an improvement district that has to be paid back so that it could be a system that keeps on going on and going on and going on and i don't have enough information yet to really present it to the board with backup and spreadsheets and things that are going to help people understand what we're really looking at when i do And if we get to that point, you know, I will definitely have Dan put it on an agenda item and we'll all discuss it and determine if it's something that makes sense.

Anyone else on the board that has comment? Mr. Fott?

Yeah, first of all, I'd like to echo the appreciation for the positive way folks are speaking today and also let you know I'm new on the board. I'm coming from some background as a retired public works director, also on the Valley Electric Board. Looking forward to paying close attention to our water source here.

Any other members of the board have comment? Seeing none, I would like to take a brief moment and also reiterate my thank you to everyone in the audience for your professionalism and your respect for the people's house. Moving on to item number seven, disclosure of ex parte communication and possible conflict of interest. This item is for members of the board that may have had communications with anyone related to anything on the agenda that other board members may not have had. So if you are a member of the board and you've had communications, now would be the time to explain those communications or any conflict of interest that you may have. Board members?

I'll start it off. I have a five-acre parcel of ground in Pahrump. I do own water rights associated with that five-acre parcel. If I see anything that would have a material influence on my opinion, I would be sure to announce it, and if I had a material opinion on how I voted, I would recuse myself. Thank you.

I own water rights in Northern Nye County and properties throughout Nevada. I don't see any or throughout Nevada, actually, true, and Nye County. I don't see any reason to recuse myself from any of this. And I also want to state that I have met with Russ Meads and Tim Sutton in order to get agenda item number 11. My purpose of the meeting was that I didn't believe the people of Pahrump had heard anything on how they intended on tackling this water issue and said to them that obviously the board put a moratorium on because we care about the water here so i was very interested in how this would be some kind of positive thing for the town of peru and they were willing to come and discuss it and i think that any time we have somebody willing to discuss water use on any project in peru we should welcome it as a water board to discuss it in public so that we have information that we can then go back on and look if we believe it's factual, not factual, and do all this. I think up to this point, we've been working off of things that we don't have information on and having to go to the internet and look at different projects and do this stuff. This is by no means saying that we support something. This is saying we support finding out information on projects. And that's what I believe our job is because at the end of the day, as the Water Board, we are an advisory committee to the Board of County Commissioners. We can give them advice on what we've learned and what we understand. And I'll be the first to say that I don't think anybody on this board is capable of understanding the scope of a project that people are talking about, but that doesn't mean that we can't push to find out more information through really smart consultants that would look into these facts and look into this. And so for that reason, we have item 11.

Any other disclosure from board members or liaison?

This is Heath Miller. I also own water rights in Nevada, and if I see anything that's conflict of interest, I will recuse myself.

And I don't have water rights, but I own a piece of property that has a well, and again, I don't see any conflict. I'm also on the Valley Electric Board, and I don't see a conflict there, but if any were to arise, I would abstain from it.

All right, I'm the liaison, Deborah Strickland. Just a minute, please. Thank you.

Ernie, are you going to speak? No? Okay, I will speak. My name's Helene Williams, and I have no water rights. I have not met with anybody on any issue that comes before this board in the past and in the future. I am a member, or was a member, of the private well owners. I'm very, very supportive of the private well owners. over the years with the education programs that they do. If you want some education, join the private wellness. They meet once a month and they do some great education. Thank you.

Once again, Deborah Strickland I County Commissioner liaison to this board I'm very proud of this board and what work that they do As liaison I am NOT a voting member to any of these items I just simply am here because I am a licensed well driller and I'm also a water right broker So I'm hoping I could help in any way to bring knowledge to this Thank You Thank You mr. Glenn I Don't believe there are any other disclosures

Mr. Chair, I would ask that we preserve item number eight in case something comes up later and the board should have pleasure that we initiate an emergency item, so I'll move on to item number nine. Number nine, for possible action, discussion, deliberation, and decision regarding election of new Nye County Water District Governing Board officers for fiscal year 2026-2027 in accordance with the bylaws of the Nye County Water District. I would ask that these votes be taken individually through nomination to each A, B, and C.

I would like to nominate Helen Williams to be the chair of the Water Board.

I second that. Can a chair second the motion, or should I let someone else? You can second the motion, sir. Well, we have a first and a second, so I guess we can bring it up.

What I'd like to do is vote for each of these, and then once we're done and we've got an affirmative vote for each of them, then open it to the public for comment. So go ahead and pull the board, chair.

OK, pull the board on this particular appointment. On A. OK, I'll pull the board on item A, chair position. So how would you vote, Mr. Locke? Aye. Colleen Williams?

Abstain.

Ernie Jackson?

Aye.

Michael Fott? Aye. Charles Miller? Aye. Myself, Ed? Aye. So motion carries. 5-1?

5-1, extension. We would seek a motion for B.

Does that mean Ed moves?

When we finish this item.

I'd like to make a motion for Ed Goodhart to be vice chair.

You don't want to sit next to me anymore?

We have a first and a second on the floor.

Thank you.

We have a first.

I'll second.

Sorry. We have a first and a second. So naming Ed Goodhart as vice chair. So I will now poll the board. Michael Locke. Aye. Malene Williams. Aye. I will abstain. Ernie Jackson. Aye. Michael Fott. Aye. Charles Miller. Aye. Aye. Okay, motion carries. Five with one abstaining.

And we would seek a motion for item C. I'd like the motion for Ernie Jackson to be Secretary-Treasurer.

Thanks, Ernie. I'll second.

All right, we have a first and a second, so I will now poll the board for the position of Secretary-Treasurer. Michael Locke. Aye. Eileen Williams. Aye. Ernie.

Abstain.

Michael Falk.

Aye.

And Charles Miller. Aye. Myself, Ed Goodhart. Aye. Motion carries five with one abstaining.

Five zero, one abstain.

Mr.

Chair, I would ask that you open this item to the public. We could now move. I'll do that while the public is talking. So if anyone would like to make a comment about the changes of officers, now would be the appropriate time. I've got to do a little do-si-do, so please proceed as we go.

Congratulations.

I have a comment. My name is Leroy Booth, B-O-O-T-H. Why wasn't there a request for a second if there was more than one being voted for? It seems like if you have only one option, why wouldn't you ask for if there are any others? I guess there was two people that wanted the office. Ask them that. I'll look into that, sir. Thank you.

It's not necessary.

marianne hollis h-o-l-l-i-s i absolutely fully support helene williams as chair i don't believe that combined the entire board has as much experience in governance and water issues as Helene, and I think you made the right choice. As to your other choices, I don't know you that well, but I trust your fellow members would know that this was also the right choice. Helene Williams will not disappoint. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Seeing no further public comment, this item is Ms. Liaison.

Yeah, there was a comment from why not take a secondary nominee. There appeared to be no secondary nominees. You just move on.

It's not bad. I believe the process was followed. But Mr. Booth, I'll be happy to look into it and confirm that. And if you want to come into my office, I'd be happy to sit down with you. Moving on to item number 10. Presentation and report of expenditures, revenues, and cash on hand for the Nye County Water District Governing Board in fiscal year 2025-2026. Board, we do this every year. This is the closeout of my activities and financial process. What I would do is ask you to move to page number three of your backup. Before we move on, I would like to preference that... I'm not able to speak to every single line on every page of these reports. These reports were generated by Knight County Finance Team. The portions that I've highlighted are the portions that I will be speaking to. If any of the board members would desire to have an in-depth dive with the finance team, I will arrange that if you have more specific questions. And I'll explain why my report isn't exactly 100% clear yet. All right, so moving to item number three. On the left-hand side, you'll notice the beginning balance of last year. When we started the year, we had $1,009,439 in the bank. That was our cash on hand. At the end of this year, we have $1,037,606 in the bank. That's our cash on hand. So what I can tell you is that when we closed this year out, we had a little bit more money in the bank than when we started the previous year, which is where you want to be. Moving on to page number four, you'll notice that I've highlighted the very top. It's fund 61-101. This is the Nye County Water District's financial string, and we have voted to create a new grants fund, but the county has had its hands full. I have had initial communications with finance, and we will be establishing the grant fund, and what that will do is it will sequester all of my grant monies away from my operation monies, but for the time being, The grant money coming in and the grant money going out is flowing in and out of my professional services line in my 61-101. So it makes things look a little wonky. What I want you to know is that on page 5... the highlighted column three, the number $40,685. That is the total grand amount of money that the Water District spent that was beyond its revenue flow. We knew we were going into that when we established our budget for last year. After that budget had been established, we then hired a lobbyist in Washington DC to represent our federal appropriation money. So in fact, this $40,000 of excessive expenditure is actually less than I was anticipating. So essentially your house is in good order. We're spending the money that we make and all of the money that we're spending, you guys are aware of and voting upon. So I'm very confident that these financials are sound and solid. Every single transaction is in the backup. If the public or yourselves would like to do a deep dive, every single transaction is there. Next year when we have this conversation, my grants will be sequestered away from operations and hopefully everything is gonna be crystal clear, super tight. So we're doing what we can. I'm pleased with our financial progress. And if you have any questions that aren't in the minutia, I'd be happy to answer them now.

Just one quick question. Since the Faust money was thrown in there, it looks like the reason we ended up higher at the end of the year was due to probably more interest on the money we were holding in the account. Assuming that we got 3.5% interest, that would have been $35,000, probably offset the Faust money. Is that correct?

That is a good conclusion, and I suspect that it is a big part of the discrepancy that you're seeing. We did not generate the expected interest revenue due to market contributors. However, because other lines were underspent, it all kind of works out in the wash. The total $60,000 Faust contract hasn't actually cleared yet. That contract will renew in October. So there is money moving. There's always money moving in and out of the account. But yes, your conclusion is correct, Mike. There is some discrepancy because the amount of interest wasn't what we had budgeted for.

Thanks. And then on going forward in the future, if we have our own distinct grants funds account, would the Faust money come from still the normal professional services, or would that be distinct still from the grant money, or how would that be shown in the future?

You know, that's a discussion that will happen once the grants fund is created, and the comptroller's direction would be consulted at that time. Mr. Fott?

Typically, when you set up a separate grant. Closer, please. When you set up a separate grant fund, it'll have expenditure and revenue. So all the professional services under the grant should be covered under that.

Are there any other questions from the board?

Thank you.

This is a presentation, Madam Chair. You do not have to open this to the public if you do not like, but it is of your pleasure if you would like to.

Would anyone like to speak to this issue? Go ahead.

Please approach a dais. Speak and spell your last name. This is item number 11, correct? No, sir. We're still on 10. Oh, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Seeing no public comment on item number 10, Madam Chair, I'll move on to item number 11. Presentation by Double M Construction regarding the differences between a previously approved residential water use and a newly proposed data center development within Nevada Groundwater Basin number 162, including a comparison of anticipated water demand, project characteristics, and potential impacts on local water resources. So what we're gonna do here, this is a presentation item, but the board is gonna open it up to your public comment. We're gonna listen to the developer, and we're gonna try to learn what we can. When we've heard and we've learned what we can, then we're gonna have, This is Mr. Locke's item and he's gonna direct this. The chair is in charge of this room. We're not going to lose our cool here. So everyone's gonna stay cool. We're gonna stay calm. We're gonna answer and we're gonna question and we're gonna get some answers. I think this is what you want. This is what Mr. Locke wanted you to get, was an opportunity to learn what they have to say at length, right? We're not going to hold this to three seconds, okay? We're going to give this man an opportunity to speak. We're going to try to learn what he has to say, and then we're going to ask questions, and if it's appropriate and the church finds pleasure in it, then we'll get you some answers. So, Mr. Meads, thank you for being here. If you would like, would you like your backup on the screen? I think that would be fine. We could definitely do that. I can do that. I'll need just one moment. Now, all of this stuff that you have, I cannot present that. All I can present is what's in the book. And I can get you the book.

And Madam Chair, may I speak on this item? May I speak to explain this item?

Yes, please. In a minute. If I may explain, in our agenda we have an agenda information form and the sponsor of each item is listed. Mr. Locke is the sponsor to this item and he's going to be the one that directs it.

So, as I mentioned earlier, the purpose of bringing up this item or any item that we bring up from a developer in the future is to hear their side of it, their facts. We don't have to believe their facts. We don't have to take them for truth. We don't have to do any of that. But we are hearing them in public. So then we can take this information and we can go back and look at this information. Typically, and it's going to be up to the chair, typically the presenter will speak and then we'll call for public comment. Because this is discussion only, We don't have to call for public comment, but that's the whole purpose of this. So we are going to call for the public to come up and speak, but I would choose to do this slightly different because it doesn't have to be deemed public comment. public can come up and speak, I'd like to leave Mr. Meads sitting there so that after a person speaks, if he would like to clarify something, if he would like to say something, there's a little bit of back and forth. This isn't where they're debating. This is just where instead of hearing 30 people speak, And then he tries to address things at the end. We don't know who he's addressing. Then we're just guessing. Is he trying to address speaker number three? Or is he trying to address in, hopefully, if we keep decorum and we do it correctly, what we're going to have is a little bit of a back and forth. And he may choose not to do that. But what I would like to do is do it in a manner that's slightly different because this isn't typical because we're not voting on anything. What we're trying to do is we're trying to find out information. And remember, we're trying to find out information because as many people don't want this here in Pahrump, There's places in northern Nye County that want to see this stuff. They want this presented to them. So the information we find out here could go to use later. And as a water board, we're the Nye County water board. We're not the Basin 162 water board. So we have to listen to this stuff. And if we do it the way we did the initial public comment, I think we're going to learn a lot. And again, please, you don't have to agree. We don't have to agree with what we're hearing. What we have to do is just listen, write things down, and then, which is exactly what we're going to do as a board. We're going to listen. We're going to take the information we're told, and then we're going to go do our research and then say, hey, this is above my pay grade. We need to have somebody else do the research, and we need to find out more information so when we come back to our next board meeting, we have information that came from professional consultants or came from other places. So it's the pleasure of the chair if she would like to do it that way. That's what I would like to see, and we will see how that turns out. Thank you for coming.

and share board thank you for the invitation uh... my i really appreciate the opportunity to be able to come and to talk about a project that i have done a lot of research on and found very interesting and uh... that i have spent a lot of the last year and a half my life looking into and trying to understand so today We're here to talk about water use so and I think we're we're here to talk about maybe 2 things as it refers to water. So 1 is water. Quantity and the other would be water quality. Both, I believe, fall into the purview of this board that that you would understand and have a recommendation on both of those on how to move forward or what to think about it. So. Some quick background on this particular project and why we're here and why there's been so much discussion over the last little while. The project came to us and we looked at the project and realized that the existing Nye County zoning and master planning for this particular area was conducive for us to be able to build a data center without a zone change, without a master plan amendment, and without a development agreement. We chose not to go that route for the fear that we believe setting a precedent in that regard could open it up for anyone to do the same, and it could possibly be a mess for our community, especially as it came to the limited resource of water in our valley. in approaching Nye County planning and saying, I think it would be wise for us to present a zone change, which is a generalized layout of a project and a proposal, that we would couple it, and this is unusual, but we would couple a zone change with a proposed development agreement and make a special condition of approval that the zone change would not be allowed to move forward unless... the development agreement could be decided on from the Water Board and the Nye County Board of County Commissioners. That's what started this process of us being able to get into the forefront. In the process of that, we kind of jumped into a, and that was done previous to any moratorium or any thought of a moratorium. That was just our proposal. After that, this board proposed that maybe a pause, a moratorium, a pause of some sort be put on until some better understanding could come forward on not just this project, but just data centers in general as it refers to water use and water quality. So. Fast forward to today, nothing has changed as far as any applications or anything, but in the background, we have been doing our engineering and our research and our stuff in order to provide as much information as we could. There is still no platform out there to present this. This is the first time we've been presented or asked to bring some actual background and facts. So thank you for that. And I'm going to do a quick explanation of what I've brought here and what is here. I've brought the engineering studies that have been accomplished and have gone through. Great. So our big gigantic pile of junk, as I see it, unfortunate death of trees that I've brought forward here is the engineering that has to happen in order to create a summary. The summary that we have is a This little document here is the summary of all of this information that's down here. And this summary is by a company called WSP. It's an engineering firm worldwide. very large engineering firm, and they specialize in water systems, sewer systems, and they even do a lot of data centers and such around the world. That was the reason we chose them because that's kind of their specialty. And they've done, so to give them some background, they did all the engineering for the Mountain Falls subdivision that has happened there. They did the Spring Mountain Raceway. They've done a lot of the information and details for Great Basin Water Company over the years. So they're very aware and very good at understanding the unique situation of Basin 162. What I did and what is up on the screen is I took the summary that they provided and I made a summary that I believe is just a lot easier and probably more pertinent to what we want to talk about today and I brought all the rest of this because if someone wants to get really detailed I can maybe go to their summary and if we want to get more detailed I can get into the really deep stuff so in general The project, as we approached it, I really wanted to look at a 900 acre, it's actually 920 acres, and try to do some comparison thought as to what is actually proposed for this property and compare it to what is already approved for this property. So I brought with me today, so there were four public hearings for this property back in 2006 and 2007. for a master plan development coming into town, both sides of the highway. It was referred to as the Pahrump Gateway Project, the Gateway Master Plan Project. This was a developer who had put together the land and the water and the necessary items to be able to develop 920 acres, and it was an approved project by Nye County. So the zone changes were approved, the master plan amendments were approved, and a development agreement was approved, signed, and it is a legal binding document. And that was, and I'm gonna pull it right out so I don't mess up the number. So the acreage was broken down like this in the agreements. 99 acres for multi-family, 600 multi-family up to three stories, single family residential, 665 individual units up to three stories, 39 acres of general commercial, 29 acres of open space, Five acres, what they called Paseo, which was a new road that was going to be off of Highway 160, and it was kind of an open space area off the highway. 35 acres of roads and right-of-ways, 48 acres for a new wastewater treatment facility and a water facility to service the project, totaling 920 acres. That's what was proposed. That's what was approved. And that still has a binding development agreement in place. When we looked at that, we did some water comparison. So I did a little bit of rounding down because We have acquired one additional 20-acre piece different than what they had, and we have dropped off 40-acre feet that they had proposed that we didn't feel was correct for the project. Basically, we're sitting on the exact same property. They purchased the water rights. They purchased the land. The water rights that they purchased, they did three things with those water rights. Some of those water rights were purveyed or given, deeded, to Pahrump Utilities Incorporated. Some of those water rights were purveyed and deeded to Great Basin Water Company. The far majority of those remained in the farming community and still to this day remain in the farming community. The developer of this project was the same developer who developed Mountain's Edge. If you go into Las Vegas on the right-hand side, you see that development down there. We all knew it as the focus group. It was actually PV Investments was the LLC for this particular project, but the same developer. developer filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and 10 and it was finally done and a lot of that water that they as the bankruptcy and the groups fell apart a lot of that water was lost to the state of Nevada the state of Nevada came in and retired a lot of that water because they did not do their reporting they did not do the proof ups on that water that they had promised to do the remainder of that water was let the two utilities that had the water still have that water to this day. It's a very minor portion of it, but they still have it. The remainder of it has been moved and is now back irrigating alfalfa fields and kind of in the center of town. And a different person owns them, not the developer of this project any longer. So I think that clears up where the water was. But now let's talk about the comparisons, what was and what is being proposed and what we have found. This is super interesting to me as we're talking about water and the best way that we can talk about water here in the valley. So I rounded down a little bit. The original development agreement was for 7,800 homes, single family units. It came back and they reduced it down to 5,873. And then we didn't include a couple of those pieces. So I rounded it down to 5,700 home sites. The requirement by the utility tariff to this day is still 300 gallons per day per single family unit that is created. Actual use will definitely be much lower than that, but that's how you have to figure it per engineering. That's 1,700,000. Let's see. I don't know if I got that right. Is it up there on there? I got a comma in the wrong spot there. Yeah, there's a little typo. 17,100,000 gallons per day and 624,150,000 gallons per year and divided that by 325,851, you get 1915.45 acre feet annually. That is what was proposed and approved for this same site. And some of that water, again, has been lost to the state. About 600 acre feet, actually, was lost back to the state and retired. So as far as a person in the valley, I actually see that as a good thing. I feel bad for them that they lost the water. But actually, for us, I think it was a really good thing that came off the books. Unfortunately, it was through bankruptcy. The open space that they had on here, I reduced because we did not acquire some of the open space they had. They figured it at 1,000 gallons per day, 41,000 gallons per day overall, 14,965,000 per year, 45.9. Overall, with what they had, and these are some estimates on the general commercial, they had 39 acre-feet. We acquired 11 of those same acres for general commercial. It's just shy of 2,000 acre feet annually. 1,944.58 acre feet annually is what that is allotted and ready to go, and it's up to three stories on the residential and the general commercial. They did a waiver and allowed for the waiver. In the waiver that they acquired, they were approved to be able to build up to 75 feet high. So that's what was proposed and is in a development agreement. That's along the highway, the general commercial, right on the highway, and then back to the east and to the west off the highway for that development. That group has fell apart. I do not believe there's any intention for anybody to put that group back together and actually build the project. The group we are dealing with has proposed to purchase all of this same land. They have either got it in escrow or closed on all of it, or some of the partners who hold it are part of the group now in acquiring the land. The difference here, if you flip over to the next page, we're gonna look at what the proposed data center water use actually comes to on this same property. So we broke this into two building types. There's a large building and there's a small building, just as it works out for drainage and traffic flow across this property. The total large building water use per year is 51.45 acre feet annually. And as I go through this, I wanna make sure that we are dealing with water in four categories. So there is typical daily potable use, and this we're talking about toilets, sinks, showers, break rooms, kitchen sinks, that type of thing. So the real definition of that means that if the water is coming out somewhere, it is going back into the sewer and going to the sewer treatment facility that services the project. That's potable water use. And these are engineering numbers that the summary has inside of it. I simply pulled it out of that for the ability to get through it here. But I have the details on that. So the total potable annual water use is 70.41 acre feet for the entire 920 acres. This is a really important number to look at because in engineering terms, if we have some understanding of this when you look at a water fixture unit, a toilet is a fixture unit by the approved public utility commission tariff with each utility. So you take a single toilet, One utility has one way of figuring fixture units, the other hasn't different, but we're just going to call it two fixture units for a toilet. You multiply that by 35 gallons per fixture unit, so a 70 gallons per day per toilet. These are all low flow toilets by requirement of the International Building Code. That's one gallon per flush. That means every toilet is flushing 70 times per day. There's 24 toilets per building and there are an average of 45 people total in the building. Never gonna happen. That's how the engineering works. And I think I make that comparison or that explanation to help you understand that or help me. It was great for me to understand this, that the engineers are doing this at a greatly inflated amount. The reason they do it this way is because they're looking at water demand. What if every toilet flushed at the same time? what if all of this happened, and they engineer to all of that, and the requirement for a new system is that after they do all the what ifs, they have to double it. That's how they figure water use. So we had to come in, look at every single thing that we could possibly put into these buildings, the final designs, the toilets, the sinks, all of it, have that fixture count unit, and then have the gallons per day plus the 100% back up on the side of that, and that's where we come up with the 70.41 acre feet annually for potable water use. Second category for water use. There is non-water use that is a one-time water use. And this falls into the category of things such as a fire suppression system. So if you look in here, you look up, you see the little fire sprinkler heads that are up here? This is a fire system up inside it. This is a wet system. The pipes actually have water inside the pipes. This building has been here, I think, the other day. I was trying to figure it out, but I think we're running right on 15 years now, 16 years, I think. It's somewhere right in that the water in this particular system has been flushed three times since the fire sprinkler system. It doesn't count into daily water use, but it is a real number when you're figuring out how to do all this. And so there's a category in the engineering for one time or I think they call it... I think they call and I have to think of the term. It's an annual. It's an annual use. That is not a daily use in the factor of how you do it. So fire sprinklers. So another 1 in this particular process is the cooling system. So the cooling system on these buildings that is being proposed is a closed loop. Air cooled. non-evaporative cooling system. The system will be filled one time with water and then without getting into every single chemical that goes into it, it's basically antifreeze that goes in because it's an exposed unit and it could freeze and cause that to crack. And then there's a scale inhibitor inside of that that also goes into that system. That same water stays in that system and does not evaporate at all, none. It is never exposed, it does not burn off, it doesn't go anywhere. There is an entirely separate system that talks about and works with humidity control. There are lots of closed loop system options. There's evaporative cooling to get rid of the heat, there's air cooling to get rid of the heat, there's a hybrid version of that where you can take some off to create humidity. In this basin, we asked that they used full closed loop, no daily water use, and they air cool without the use of water whatsoever. So that, again, falls into the same category as what a fire sprinkler system does, and it only gets charged when a service is required on that system. So we're talking about water quantity right now. We'll talk about water quality in a second. So the air conditioning of a building like this, and by the way, the entire 920 acre campus takes 141,032 gallons to fill all of the air conditioning one time. So approximately one-third of one acre foot of water, and that should stay in that system untouched for a minimum of five years. The engineering says that it's a 10-year, but they usually cut it into five. So that's how often that 141,000 gallons of water should be turned over. The third category of water use is external. It is landscaping. Nye County code currently requires a minimum of live landscape per acre of development. Almost every general commercial project that has come before the board over the last couple of years have come back and asked for a waiver to that same ordinance because we are constantly fighting with the fact that we have this constant need for water, Conservation that we need to meet and yet we have a code and ordinance that says you have to do live landscape You can't bring an alternative. There's no option for an alternative of non live landscape That's just how the ordinance is today. So we factored it in as it is today that is 122.36 acre feet annually that would be used in live landscape and We intend to ask for a waiver, but I believe before that will happen, there is currently a ordinance amendment that is being brought before the board to amend the live landscape requirement and offer some true desert conservation options, metal, art, stone, other things of really beautiful nature that won't distract From ugliness and yet at the same time offer the conservation that I believe is important to the water board and Definitely to all of us as the citizens who are constantly talking about water It seems a shame that that this requirement a little contradictory So it's my belief that this hundred and twenty two point three six acre feet of water for landscape will be cut by at least 100 acre feet annually after that ordinance or waiver is changed. So overall, this entire project by the engineering with all the factors, the fluff leaving the landscape inside of it comes to 192.77 acre feet annually. If we remove the 100 acre feet of what I believe will be the correction on the live landscape, I believe we are looking at a total of 92.77 acre feet annually at engineering standards. I keep throwing that out there and I'm just gonna give you a small comparison why I say that. A house in Mountain Falls, was originally put in to use 300 gallons per day per single family residential unit. Now that they have historical meter readings and that we know what they actually use, the average daily use on a single family residential home in Mountain Falls is actually less than 85 gallons a day. That's quite a discrepancy between the engineering and the reality of what the water really is being used in mount falls. So it's just a good indicator of good planning. So a lot of. Low water use landscaping they did a good job on that and so we, the people. All the full 300 acres a day of water rights were given up. but they're only using 85 of it. That's a great savings. I believe that's what you're gonna see as well on this project. There's no way, in my opinion, that every toilet on this campus is being flushed 70 times a day. There's just no way. So we will see an additional savings after all that is said and done 70.41 acre feet is the more realistic number. If we threw in a little bit of extra for some live landscape on beauty buffers. Buffering the scenery from the highway. I think that it would be a wise use of 20 acre feet or so of water that would help, and it also helps greatly in absorbing sound, and then visually just for the community, I think a beautiful landscape would be nice. So that's kind of the summary of the presentation I wanted to bring today, but I would love any more detailed questions or comments. I do know that water quality is going to be a long discussion. I don't know how far you guys want to get into the water quality. I will say this for the water quality. A lot of these systems throughout the country are connected to sewer treatment facilities that have chemical filtering information and equipment at their facilities. We do not have that here in our valley. Both utilities have expressed that they do not have the necessary equipment for that. They've also expressed that they would prefer that the project does not install them at the facility because of and due to the location of it, that if anything ever did happen with that facility, the location of it on the fan and the aquifer would be a, it would be an improper placement for something of that nature in this, and I'll add, there is a sewer treatment facility proposed on the development agreement that's already approved for this area. So it could happen. We are saying it's a bad idea. I believe that the water board would agree it's not a good idea. The utilities both agree it's not a good idea. And I know the public believes it is not a good idea to have that on the fan where our water comes from. One way or the other, whether it's being drawn there or whether it's just hitting it before it drafts back down into the valley. Bad idea. The proposal for this project is that any water that is contaminated, fire sprinklers, or cooling systems would be removed into approved NDEP containers and then disposed of at the U.S. ecology site just before you get to Beatty. They have facilities that are approved for handling all of these things. The water is actually taken out there. They have a big pond that's lined. They have leak detectors underneath that pond. They actually evaporate it, and then they take the residual of it, and then they dispose of it in an incinerator. That's how it's disposed of, and that's the proposal for the project. I know there's a lot of questions, there's a lot of details in what I've presented today, but I really appreciate your letting us come and present what we have for the community. I believe that we are talking about well over 1,500 acre feet of savings from what we could have, and I know there's some nuances as to how that actually works, but by use to use, I think you can see that difference in actual use here. With that, I'll take any questions from the board or however you'd like. I'm happy to sit and answer questions from the public or however you'd like.

Thank you, sir. I'd like to start with any questions from the board.

I have a whole bunch of questions. Can I start? It's okay.

It's your item.

Yeah. So the savings that you're talking about, and I want the public to understand the questions, well, my questions are related to water. They are not related to whether I think it's unsightly, the electrical, the location, any of that, nor can it be because I'm sitting here as a Water Board member. So I cannot, and I hope that we don't, I hope that all the questions that the citizens have is related to water. So when I'm asking water-related questions and savings and this and that, it's more so that this board, regardless of what happens in a vote or in something else, again, we don't approve this project. It's the county commissioners that approve or disapprove or the citizens that vote to ban these in 162. Our job is in the event something does possibly happen that we ask the right questions we get the right answers so that we can tell the Board of County Commissioners, hey, look for this, do this, don't do that. And that's where my questions on these things come from, is trying to understand the system and what they're doing. So my first question is, obviously you're presenting a huge savings. What happens to that savings of water? Where do those 1,500 acre feet go? Because if they stay with the utility, that's not a savings. That just means some other subdivision will get approved later on and there'll still be a water usage. So if you're saving 1,500 acre feet, are they retiring the 1,500 acre feet that alfalfa is being grown on right now? Or what's happening with that?

So, great question. Thank you, Mr. Locke. So, like I say, it was a little over 600 acre feet of the original 1,900 that was dedicated for this project, was retired to the state already. And they do not own it so they can't really retire that particular 600 feet again in in regards to the remainder of what they have a little less than 200 acre feet resides within the utilities and you are correct when when water is dedicated to a utility, it's for the use of any place within that entire utility service area. So yes, it could be moved here, there, or wherever. Their intent is to utilize that water that they have for their project in this location. So it doesn't leave A lot of water that could be moved around the additional water rights that they do have is is now in the farming community in different in different areas. So. Water rights are by permit numbers and those permit numbers, you have a point that you're taking the water out of the ground and then you have a point of use as to where it's actually being used at. And I believe, I'm getting to the question, so the question I believe is, is there a possibility or is there a thought that maybe some of that water, even if it's not used on this project, could it be pulled out of use, retired to the state, so that it's actual savings, not apparent savings? Am I hearing that correct?

Well, yeah. I mean, if you're going to show people a chart and say, this is what could happen, but if you do this, this is what your savings is, it needs to be a savings. I mean, if somebody tells me that I'm going to go save 30% when I buy something, And I need to save 30%. I need to have that somewhere. And the only way you save water in this valley is to get those rights gone so that the county commissioners down the road don't approve another subdivision that we don't need.

Yeah, very fair question. So I have talked to developers. I have floated this idea to them. It's my opinion that they need to retire water in good faith up front for the project to actually be approved. they have agreed that they are more than willing to do that they would just like to understand the best way to do it and i think that would need to become i think it would need to come to you guys first to say these particular water right numbers here's where they are and here's what we would prefer to do with them and this is how we want them to be retired to this state and they are amiable to doing that yes

Well, just remember, in good faith, there are numbers on a piece of paper now that we all have. So the good faith number is there. They don't need to try and play with that number.

And I'll be clear again about these numbers. So these numbers are what the original developer had. They do not own that water.

That was the original developer. I understand. But again, if we're going to be shown something as an advertisement to the positives of a project, then you have to adhere to that. And that's the whole purpose of why we're talking about this. know the people are concerned and you know i'm terribly concerned beyond concerned when a project like this comes in that we are not capable the board of county commissioners isn't capable of dealing with this kind of money in this kind of situation so we've heard people speak out and i think rightfully so There needs to be a stick that's really, really big if somebody does something different. You use more water than you say. For any water you use above that, you've got to retire 20 more acre feet. And you say, well, that sounds ridiculous. No, it doesn't, because you say you're not going to do it. And, you know, there needs to be, you know, we talk about bringing stuff to U.S. Ecology. That's wonderful when that works. But if it doesn't work... If one pipe fitter doesn't put a pipe on right, what happens? Is it glycol that they have in there? Is that what they're using? It's a form of it, yeah. Okay. So what happens if that leaks in one of the buildings? Like what are, is there, you know? We do mining in Nye County, and nobody seems to mine. We put arsenic in water, and we lay it out, and it goes into a liner. Are these buildings lined underneath so that in the case of a failure, that this water doesn't get into our table? You just mentioned we're on the fans. The fan goes into the table. You can't have an oops when you're on the fan. You shouldn't have an oops anywhere, but you certainly can't have an oops when you're on the fan. So is there a liner built on the downside of all these or underneath all these, just like you would do with a mine, just like NDEP would make you do any time you're using any kind of chemicals in that situation? Like these are questions that are important to have answers to because When everything works, that's wonderful. When things don't work, that's when the oops doesn't, you know, people, people lose their livelihoods. They lose their water. They lose their house. Do you lose your Valley? And so people are concerned about that. I mean, I know you listed chemicals. You don't have the list. Well, I would like to see the list. I mean, I think it's important to see the list and it is in here. Yes, I understand. But I think it's important that we have a list. So when we're looking at something and we're giving suggestions to the commissioners and we're doing this kind of thing, um, Obviously, the no landscaping thing is a no-brainer, but the stick thing with something like this and the bonds that need to be put up, they matter, but again, you can have a $200 million bond and it doesn't matter if something goes wrong. So there has to be so many backups on something like this that it might become cost prohibitive to them. They may just say, this doesn't make sense. We're in the wrong area because they want this backup. They want that backup. And again, these would be suggestions from me personally, from as a water board member to tell the county, whichever way you go or whatever happens, you know, w you should definitely do these things. And you should definitely have the best contract lawyer known to man that you pay for that they charge you guys to make sure that this is bulletproof as much as you can be bulletproof. It needs to be black and white. There is no gray. There's no fuzzy. There's no nothing. And those are my initial thoughts in looking at this, is that a savings needs to be a savings, not a discussed, maybe we'll come back and give you 300 acre feet, but we showed you all of this stuff. And the water quality, you're not showing a big usage. Is that the real usage? Is that not the real usage? Where's the stick if it's not the real usage? Like, you know? you have to buy up every other water right in the valley and retire them so we don't have any other, I mean, I don't know what it is. But I like to hold people to their words. If they say that this is what it is, I don't want it to be this until we go and then we move it down the road and things don't end up that way and we find out that it's not efficient enough to do it this way. And so those are my thoughts initially.

Can I respond to a couple of those, just throw that out there?

That's what you're here for.

Perfect, okay, thank you. I appreciate the back and forth and the comments. So in regards to the water quantity and the actual savings, I personally am in 100% agreement with you that the savings has to be real savings, not just a presumptive or, well, since we're not building it, it's savings because of what you're talking about. And so I've talked with the developer, and yes, what they are waiting on from us and from everybody else is that we just need to know if this is something that could even come out before we do that actual engineered study and retirement recommendation. So the retirement recommendation, in my opinion, what I've passed on to them is, needs to be water right number specific. So there are a lot of different types of water that are out there, and I believe that it needs to be some type of a water right that is specifically going to reduce actual use somewhere, not something that's sitting on some ledger somewhere that's never going to actually get used. or is in an area that doesn't matter. So I would love to be more specific today, and I know that's not the requirement. I know you're not asking me for that information, but I want to be specific in the fact that that is the process that has been proposed from us to them, and they have agreed to follow that process as that time comes up. So I'd love to be able to get that in front of you. With specific water, right? Permit numbers and then I think you will have a great opportunity. I think you guys really do understand the different types of permits where they're at, where they're coming from and what it's reducing literal savings for us here in the valley. So. Definitely appreciate that and that that will be coming forward water quality. Those concerns you have are by far my largest concerns about the project, always have been, and will continue to be. I live here, I own property, I have businesses here, my kids, grandkids live here, the same as everybody else, and I absolutely hear your concern about this. There cannot be a oops, that didn't work, because a $150 billion bond doesn't do us any good once the water's bad. It just doesn't cover it. I don't mean this in any unfortunate, mean or not good way, but I don't know of anybody on any board in Nye County or in any department in Nye County or any contractor in Nye County that is qualified to be able to make any of those decisions. We have great engineering that has told us what we should do, but that's not good enough for this process. So this engineering will be going to NDEP Who will do their review. It also will be going to Nye County and then Nye County will be sending it to a third party engineer to verify. And they will make those recommendations on exactly where you're at. Once those recommendations have come back and we have a chance to look at them. I think it's absolutely fair that we all have a chance to look at and say, that's great. I see it. How about doubling it? I don't know for sure what you're saying. I've been to the mines and I've seen the leak detection that has been put in and the liners that have been put in. extremely expensive and difficult to put that in, but why not? We're talking about our lives, we're talking about our health. So I couldn't agree more, and it's my opinion that process is in place and will be one that gets followed for this and for that very reason. So that is in a binding agreement between the developer, the county, and then it also will be between the utilities and the state. In regards to what happens if they use more water than they say they're going to use, every single will serve letter that is issued has right in it that you are saying, and your engineering backs up, that this is how much water you will be using, which will be metered, If you exceed that number and it doesn't give you very long, I think it's three months maximum to correct the deficit in water rights that you have to get turned over to that utility for that particular use, but when you are in a signed development agreement, you can't simply just keep adding water to the utility. You have to come back to the county and say we've exceeded our amount, we need to amend our development agreement, and then provide that water to the utility, and if that's not remedied within 30 days, or 90 days I believe is what it is, three months, then they shut your meter off. And that's actually true not just for this development. That's true for every single commercial development in town. I've done a lot of these agreements with the utility company, every one of them. And I can stand here and tell you, the utility does monitor them, and they do come back to you. And they tell you, you get it right or you're being shut off.

Yeah, but see, in that scenario, let's just run that scenario as you're saying it, which is why I said it should be retired 20 to use one. Because ultimately, these guys have billions of dollars. somebody could just come in and buy all the water rights that are left in the Pahrump Basin and put them there, and that wouldn't mean nothing to them. But they can't buy all the water rights if they can only buy one of 20 that are left. So if there's 15,000, or let's just use 10,000, if there's 10,000 acre feet left, they can only buy 1 20th of that.

This is the first time I've ever heard that as a proposal, and I actually kind of like it.

It's an obscure proposal, but it's a proposal that protects the people because, again, we have to look at a project like this as money is no object to the developer. So we have to protect the people in every way that we possibly can by thinking through these things. And again, I can think through a lot of them myself. I'm going to miss more than I can think of. And that's why we have all these people up here. And that's why we then go after we think of these things, we go to consultants that do this for a living and hopefully they pick those up. But it needs to be something where you always say, If money is no object, what is the stick? Like they have to be willing to say, You know, look, if they retired 20 acre feet for every one they bought, well then guess what? Nobody else can build subdivisions out here. Nobody else can do that if they have to buy it and then we're all good with our water. Then that would work fine. But it needs to be that grotesque because we can ask for that. Because you're trying to do something in our county where we're really concerned about this. So like we're not playing an equal game here. The game only works if it works for Nye County. If it doesn't work for Nye County, then we shouldn't, or in this instance, for Basin 162, if it doesn't work for 162, but I would treat it the same throughout the entire county, it needs to be a benefit. Again, I hope everybody understands I'm not talking about any other issue other than water. But it needs, when we look at water, it needs to be a benefit. And that's something I want everybody here and everybody who's possibly listening, when there's giant developments that want to use 1,900 acre feet of water, we should show up the same way that they've showed up for this thing. to the Nye County commissioners and even more so if that's what they use for their water versus what you're proposing because those are big water uses. And I mean, people need to show up because a lot of those development agreements are from 2001 and 2006. And I don't think that Nye County has to adhere to things that are way past their time. So, you know, it's the 20 to one, was just spitballing right now. But it needs to be something that's calculated and looked at, because we know what's out there. There's 15,000 acre feet of water that can still be used. We have a 20 recharge. We could turn that to 1,000 acre feet if you needed to use it, and now we just retired 14,000 acre feet, or more than that, actually, if you do the math.

And I believe that the right place for that to be put into a development, I'm just gonna use this one because that's what we're kinda here to talk about, but any development of any sort, like you're saying, is that most development agreements have one line in them that just simply says you'll work with the local utility.

Yeah, your development agreement will be nothing like that. Your development agreement will have every checks and balance.

So I think that's the difference is on projects that maybe have some special needs and special uses like this where there are just so large, and especially the dollar amount that's going in and the funds that are available, that becomes the scary part. So that would be the correct place to do it so that it's not just the utility we're relying on. It's not just in DEP at the state we're relying on, but that ties those together in a document that is binding, and we got some teeth into it. So I know you're spitballing, but I kind of like the idea. I've never heard it before. That's a new one.

Excuse me. Would you take a seat so that when the public comes, they can use that mic? You can use the other microphone. Thank you.

Do we have questions from other board members?

Just an observation or maybe a question. What would you think would be the need of the water that would have to be hauled off, the quantity-wise to U.S. Ecology? I mean, is it like 10 acre feet a year or, I mean?

The estimate from the engineers is that each one of the chillers, that is per building, would need to be serviced once every 10 years. And they said that that's reality, but they should figure it at once every five years. So the actual haul-off of these to U.S. Ecology would equate to somewhere around a maximum of about 100,000 gallons every five years.

So it's about 20,000 gallons per year per building? That's correct. And how many buildings?

There's 20 buildings.

So it would be 400,000 gallons.

No, sorry, that number was...

overall the entire project so it's uh it's about 10 000 gallons per building and how many buildings 20. so it'd be 200 000 about 200 000 gallons yeah okay yeah because i i know that's the way to get rid of water in the desert you know with the with the high evaporation rates the easiest way to get rid of contaminated water is you don't put in a sewer treatment plant you just let it evaporate and then scoop up the whatever solids are left behind but i'm Taking it over there to have it done, that's amazing. So I would have just expected a developer to say it's on site. But I just think that's going the extra mile. I'm not a proponent of the project, but I'm just saying that's definitely going the extra mile from what I've seen. And I've worked with NDP on a lot of different projects. But thank you for your presentation. And I look forward to hearing some of the other folks out there.

I'll go down there next, and then you. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple follow-up questions. Are you building spec buildings, or do you know what's coming into those buildings? You're giving us design water use without knowing. Do you have a Google coming in? Do you have that level of detail in your water estimates?

They do, so these do have end users. I am not pervy to that actual information as to what the name of each one of them is, and they won't release that until we get through entitlement process. So in the development agreement that actually comes forward or an SUP or whatever that process is, if that does get there, then that would be part of what is presented, and then that would be added to the studies that are done

And the reason I ask that is you're giving us water numbers based on, could be the low end of development versus the high end on the residential. So really making sure we understand what numbers you're talking about is important. The other thing is on the closed loop system, you're saying they don't have to have an annual flush as well, that they're only five years? Because generally you've got to flush them annually as well.

So great question. And the answer to that is there's a lot of closed loop systems. There are a lot of different types of closed loop. That is simply the loop itself. There's the pull off of how you're taking the heat off of that loop and how you're exhausting that heat. If you are using that as an evaporative piece, then the system has to be flushed about three times a year because the contact between the outside air changes a lot of that water quality the makeup of what's in that water once air hits it, and then you're into that constant flushing, refilling, that part of it. Most of these systems around the country, people like to do a hybrid system where rather than adding an additional humidifying system, a standalone humidifier, they use the closed-loop system in order to pull small amounts of water off to add humidity. The downside here, and this is where it takes so long to get this stuff put together, you you have to go get water quality samples from the area to be able to go test the minerals in the water specific to this area and where that water's coming from to be able to understand. After we got those samples back, the determination was it would be much more harmful to the system and to the project in general to try to do a hybrid humidifying system because the chemicals, once it comes out of that system to create humidity, And we've all lived here a long time. We know what happens with calcium. As soon as it hits the air, it's awful. And it's really hard to get out of a system. So all of our faucets, that calcium builds up right on the outside of your faucet. As soon as it hits air, that calcium shows up. And there's a lot of other minerals, not just calcium. We just see the calcium. So, yeah, in a fully closed loop, non-exposed system whatsoever, there's no evaporation, no buildup of any sort. It does not have to be flushed.

So I do want to follow up on the water quality side. I think you did a good job of addressing that. The whoops issue is... I mean, you can design the heck out of those things and still have a whoops issue. And setting where that site's sitting... Mr. Falk, could you please pull your mic? Oh, sorry. Can everybody hear me okay? Sorry about that. Yeah. You want me to start over? No. Good, thank you. Yeah, thank you. So I guess that's what I get for asking the question, I guess. So anyway, I'm really concerned about Any kind of spill in the long-term damage that's going to do to our aquifer. I'm not sure I'm comfortable even at this point, but I appreciate your explanation. I don't expect you to go through the same answer again, but I'm not sure I'm... 100% satisfied with that.

Yeah, and I can't say, I would have to say I'm still not 100% satisfied with everything because there are things that I think we still need to get these types of reports for specifics. You just don't normally do that until you get a little further into the project. You can't expect, I mean, this study right here is over a million dollars. So you do this for every single one and don't even know if you're allowed to build it here or whatever. There's a point where they gotta get into it. In address to what do we do with systems that have this glycol, so I think it's just easiest to say antifreeze inside the system. What happens if it spills? what happens if it is contaminated and gets out there. We mostly rely on NDEP to give us that information, and there's a lot of good information about that and what they do, but this is a big project, so there's a bigger amount of it. Casinos, so this site has a conditional use permit for a casino. On 38 acres, there's a conditional use permit in place for it. All casinos of any size use closed loop chillers. And so I don't disagree that we need to learn about what are the containment processes for closed loop chillers. This will not be the only project in Nye County that uses closed loop cooling. There are a lot of larger projects that are going to come, and they're going to use it, so we should know, especially if they're located somewhere in any place where they could get to the aquifer. We need to understand that really well. I have the utmost confidence that that will come, that information will come, and I would be absolutely thrilled to share that with you as I get it.

Thank you, Mr. Jackson. No questions? um you're saying 20 buildings are you set for expansion no that's full expansion that's full project it will be phased but that would be full full build out what about relocation a different site um

We've entertained that several times just because of the pushback and the different issues and thoughts about what could or couldn't happen. So there's a lot that goes into choosing this site. One, they own the property. The access to power and the location to a substation that can actually provide the power for something like this. And then obviously these types of buildings, it's a requirement to be on a utility. So they could build their own utility somewhere, but I think that's a little bit more risky, in my opinion, than the established utilities that we have. So that's kind of why they ended up in this particular spot.

I do have a question. Is any of this built underground?

No, nothing underground at all.

Nothing underground?

Okay, thank you.

In my document here, I have 36 pages. And I think it covered everything beautifully. That's a waste of money. That's going to sit on a shelf. You developers need to think about it. You made the comment, trees, that's water.

So I'll give you a quick one on that. But I've been working for about nine years now with NDEP. There's two sides of NDEP. There's wastewater management on one side. There's water quality on the other side. Water Quality Bureau of Safe Drinking Water now accepts digital. This will no longer be required. I agree. It took me going to the eternal general's office, not as a night County person. I just went on my own. It took me a long 18 months to get that changed. And then it took 18 months to implement that. The other side Bureau of water pollution control still does not accept. They do not do digital. So you have to print all of this off to submit it to Bureau of Safe Drink, or Bureau of Water Pollution Control, and then they have to in turn send it to somebody to digitalize it, to send it across the hallway, because they're not allowed to share it, And I have the attorney general working on an amendment to be able to get Bureau of Safe Drinking Water or Bureau of Water Pollution Control to finally take digital. I really hope that's in place within a year, but it's been a tough go.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Thank you. Mr. Miller, do you have any questions?

MR. No, I do not.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Thank you. Would you come forward, give your name for the record, please, spell the last. And I appreciate the way everybody's been very calm and working with us with this. This is a new way of doing things and thank you for that. If it works, it might be repeated.

Anthony Greco, G-R-E-C-O. I'm not an engineer, okay, but... No tractor-trailer driver gets up in the morning and says, I think I'm going to slide into a school bus full of kids and kill them. There's accidents that happen. We don't want this here. What you need to do is, if for some reason the commissioners lose their marbles and vote for this, you should have... A bond, cash bond, for every piece of property, every building, every business, a cash bond in case your development screws up and we have to move. If you can't do that, go to Round Mountain. They want you.

Yes, Dwight Lilly, L-I-L-L-Y. We don't have a water study, I believe, until next year, sometime June. We don't even really know what the inventory of water is. When we talk about developments that were brought up today, I think some of them were approved by the commissioners errantly because we don't even know how much water we have. If the water we do have gets contaminated, Anthony just brought that up, we're done as a community. We have no other source of water. We're like a spaceship in outer space with leaking oxygen. We're done. I can't believe the state engineer would even consider this proposal in a closed aquifer like this, but he hasn't put his word in yet on this, but I'm sure he will. Gregory Hafen II, who happens to be the manager of Pahrump Utility, has come out publicly against this project. because it threatens his customers and his utility. And yet that's not been brought up by Mr. Meads at all, that there's an actual utility in the town here that objects to this proposal. The Public Utility Commission hasn't even spoke out on this proposal here. because that would be dealing with the quality of water that prompt utility could provide the customers, thousands of customers in this town, if something goes wrong. So I appreciate Mr. Means. I've heard his presentation several times. He's a pleasant guy. He's a nice guy. He's a salesman. He's getting paid to promote this. But your responsibility is to protect my water If my water gets contaminated by a truck that rolls over out here, and that contamination goes down in the ground, and it happens to get more, Betsy's in my well, I'm finished. Who's gonna buy my property? Who's gonna pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars for my lot? So the risk is too high, the reward is too low. Now there's other reasons I have against this project, but focusing on water, which is why we're here, we don't know what the water situation is. Nobody knows what the situation is, so any development agreement can be subject to being pulled, rug pulled out if state engineering determines there's no water for it. So that's still important. Contaminating the water, the risk is way too high for such little reward. Thank you.

Before we continue, I'd like to take a comfort break. Remember where you are in line and five, ten minutes.

10 minutes, everybody.

So stay tuned. I'm not going to spoil any more of this.

Thank you.

All right. ... ... ... ... ...

Yeah. Now, this data from them.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Saturday.

Is that cold? Yeah. Is it colder?

Could you open that for me, please?

From an old lady.

I'll be 18 on Saturday. I'll be 18 on Saturday.

Congratulations. May I ask how old you are, Ed? I'll be 65. Young pup.

thank you for telling me that

I'm fine. Three minutes till we adjourn. Three minutes till we adjourn.

We're all on God's path and we have no say in that.

Good idea.

Thank you.

This is working well, Dan. You ready? I want to hit this.

I love this process.

Okay, everybody, if we can settle down. We're about to reconvene.

Please.

Okay, Mr. Locke will be making his way around.

Well, I have a question while we're waiting. And my question is, Why are the water rights turned over to the state? Why can't they be turned over to this board for protection?

Madam Chair, I think that's a great question. I've had this discussion with several folks that use water and own water rights. And I've had this discussion several times with board members over the years. So we've entertained several times requiring For example, if we want to parcel property in my county in the prompt regional planning area and based on one sixty two. There is a ordinance that was passed for us to have to give up three acre feet for each parcel and then retire two of those to the state in order to get your parcel map completed. So I've always asked, why don't we have somewhere for that water to go and be held? So there are a lot of lots that were created here in the valley that were incorrectly stripped of their water, moved to other properties and to other uses, and now they are left barren. I think we heard some people today talk about that, that they don't have water associated to their property. So why can't we retire water? I don't know if your board is the right board, but somewhere, can we create a fund somehow that that water goes into that fund? I don't know. We're going to get a water study done next year, it sounds like, or we're going to get some portion Maybe there's more water. I bet it's not, but maybe. And at some point, we might find that we've got enough water to actually do some additional development. Can we then go grab that water, bring it back, and assign it to some of these lots? Do they have a pool that they could draw from? Personally, this is just me personally. I know it has nothing to do with this project, except it would be cool if we retired water from a project like this. to something that could be reissued or those who are in hardship conditions. I think it's a great idea, but I don't know. I'm not technical enough to answer that question. Thank you. At a water resource level.

We're looking into it.

Okay, we are going to resume public comment. Please speak and spell your name.

Paul De La Cruz, D-E-L-A-C-R-U-Z. I'd like to make a statement in presence of a Old unassigned development agreement from 2006 does not alter the actual Basin 162 limits or the water districts' unanimous findings that data centers using incompatible with the basin. I request that you guys just hang into what you're doing. You already told the VOCC not to do this. The question is really, I mean, I'm retired from LADW. I've done big projects before. I'm not an engineer, but I'm always the sucker that has to go out and look at things. And what I found is on the 17th floor is management. 13th and 14th is water engineers. And then we have power engineers. As far as insurance go, we're self-insured. We had plenty of money, no problem. The thing is, I don't even understand why it's here. He has a pile of books over here. He has his engineers. You have no engineers from what I see. These things usually go to engineering first before the board decides. You guys have no idea what you're looking at. You really don't. The BOCC, they have no idea what they're looking at. This should be all... At DWP, there's 17 floors. It never gets to the 17th floor because you are the 17th floor or maybe the 16th because of the BOCC, but you would both be on the same floor. You guys have no idea what you're looking at. You really don't. Russ doesn't really know. He's not an engineer. He's been told things. We don't even know how much water is in the basin. And we're going to save a whole bunch of water that we don't even know if we have it. But OK. I just want to know how soon this gets done and who decides what. Once it's decided, I'll sell my house and leave if it gets approved. Thank you.

Hello, my name's Ruth Matthew. There's a few questions.

Please spell your last name.

M-A-T-T-H-E-W. There were some questions and concerns that was brought up when I was listening to Mr. Meads. So are these existing water rights that were actually pumped, or were these hypothetical paper rights that you're asking for?

These are existing water rights that they own.

That they have been pumped?

They have been pumped, yes. They are all in good standing.

All right, but how often are these pumped? I'm just trying to figure out, based on your studies, your studies have been based on 2006, right? On the development from what you presented to the board, right?

The previous development agreement that was from 2006, these will be different water rights than what they had because they lost them or moved them. The water rights that we would be having would be in good standing. To be in good standing, you have to have pumpage. You have to have records to be able to keep it that way. Utilities rotate their water. It's pretty complicated, but yes, they are in good standing, which means they are active.

So in your statement, studies or whatever you have, were those factored in?

Yes, those are the water rights that are factored in.

And on the development, so each, they're asking for 300 acre feet. Is this per tower or is this at the end of the development when they are finished?

So the developer has chosen to put out that this development could use up to 300 acre feet. That was done previous to receiving the engineered document of what the actual use is. The engineered document for the entire campus, all 900 acres, full build out, potable use is 70.44 acre feet annually. that's after that, then we're gonna get close to 100 acre feet annually, the entire campus, not just one building or one tower.

And so why are they asking for 300 acre feet if it's only 700 that you're gonna use?

So to be clear, they're not asking for any water. They own the water already. They are not asking for water. They are saying that this campus will use up to 300 acre feet, trying to be very generous with the number. The actual number is going to be 100 acre feet or less.

So in each stage of this, each one's got to be filled and drained, right? As you're thinking, you say five years, but in reality, it's going to be closer to like every year and a half to two, right? So each, my, here's the thing. In each one of these, there's four of them. So it's going to almost, once it's in full development and running, that's going to be almost every year that one of these is going to be drained and refilled. Has that been taken into account in your research?

In the water calculations? Yes. It is. So over the entire campus, the engineering number for filling all the air conditioning units on site is 141,000 gallons. The estimation of the need to empty, service, and refill is once every 10 years. Realistically, all the calculations were done on once every five years. As that calculates out, you're looking at somewhere around 20,000 gallons, maybe something like that.

Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you. Your time's up.

Okay, Chair. I think I might not have explained to the people correctly how I thought it would go. I don't want a back and forth during the person's three minutes. I'd rather them have their three minutes so that we can stick to three minutes. And then if there were questions in there, that are directed to Mr. Meads, then he can address them after them. That way everyone gets their three minutes and there's not this back and forth where he takes part of their time. So if we could keep it that way, that would be appreciated.

Thank you, everyone.

Good morning, Board, and thanks for this opportunity to have for this back and forth. My name is John Aberle, A-B-E-R-L-E. And Mr. Meads said we'd only be using 72 acre feet per year, which equates to about 23,461,302 gallons. Just an FYI. No charge for that one. I'm going back to... He went to... There's a couple different ways of cooling data centers. We went with evaporative. We found out that doesn't work. We went with water... chillers. There's another option, it's called immersion cooling. It's where they actually reduce the size of the buildings. The servers are submerged in a dielectric fluid that contains no water, so there is no water usage. And the dielectric fluid is rotated at whatever manufacturer recommends. But there's no need. It works on a heat exchanger. So as the fluid removes the heat from the servers, the heat is removed through the heat exchangers. The fluid is placed back in the water or in the fluid. It's a costly investment. A lot of developers don't want to do it because of just that. The servers are not retrofitted. You have to buy specific. fluid-resistant servers, but they are available. And so there are other options that the board should consider and look into. Thank you.

Where is this being done?

Right now, Meta, and let me go down here. I can't remember all this stuff. Microsoft is conducting trials with two-phase immersion cooling for AI training clusters, reporting significant energy savings. Meta is exploring immersion for dense GPU workloads powering its generative AI models. And Chinese cloud providers are deploying immersion at scale in high density campuses, which this is a hyperscale high density campus, reducing both the cooling costs and the space requirements. So the technology is available. It's whether or not the developer chooses to invest in it. There are other options of welcome to PRUMP, and I sure hope they put that on the side of one of those data centers, because that'll give people a real good feeling about where they're coming.

All right, thank you all. Thank you for your comments, sir.

Take care.

Angelina Jackson, JAC, KSON. My first thing is, why is it so important for this data center to go in that area. Out of all the land in that county, why that particular spot? Why so close to residential area? Is what I'd like to know. Again, I'd like to know why all these data centers are popping up this year out of nowhere. All of a sudden, all this need for all these data centers. Something doesn't make sense. On top of that, If Mr. Meade is not prepared to answer these questions from the board, then why was this even brought up to a vote to begin with whatsoever? And I'd like to thank this board for actually asking questions before going any further with anything, even producing their advisement to the BOCC, which apparently they don't even take into consideration anyway from what they've showed. And have they already started? any drilling or anything like that, moving anything up there yet? Because from what I'm understanding, it's already proceeded ahead, even though the momentum is in place. The quantity of water isn't just the issue here. I don't care if it evaporates. I don't care if you burn it. If it's in Nye County, it's going to go into the ground one way or the other. I don't care how you look at it. You know, and somebody made a statement, this board, or Mr. Meats said that this board is not equipped to answer, you know, doesn't have the knowledge. Mr. Meats must not be aware that there is a board member that is certified by the EPA and has extensive experience. So I think that we as residents deserve the respect to be, for everything to be transparent. Not this non-disclosure and this and that. That's BS. Everything should be just, if you have nothing to hide, Then why the NDA? There should be something that just shows everything right down the line. And as for engineers? Thank you. Thank you.

Ma'am, may I comment? This doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for anybody else.

That's me agreeing.

It doesn't work. Sorry.

Well, that's what we were told to do instead of clapping.

We did not tell you to do that.

That's common decorum.

No, it's not.

That is in an open facility, in an open place where you don't want us to be.

I don't believe it's that kind of behavior in Nye County.

It's common practice in the whole United States so that you're not clapping and stopping people from talking.

I'm not going to argue whether it's not here.

My name is Jolynn Howard, H-O-W-A-R-D. Thank you, Mike, for asking questions that I had as well. I respectfully ask that you maintain your stance on a moratorium and deny any request to convert residential water rights to serve large-scale data center. We've heard the argument that a data center may use less water than residential development, which was approved in 2006 and 2007, long before the influx of population and demand with a company that is no longer together. Even if we concede to these numbers, the decision is much more than gallons. It is about protecting the purpose of these water rights and preserving the future of Nye County. Because the rights were transitioned to quasi-municipal to support the master planned housing, they legally cannot be diverted for any stand-alone commercial or industrial project unless an application is approved, unlike what Mead said to us. 29 acres were set aside for general commercial, not 900 for a large system in the legally binding contract of 2007, which I don't even know if it's a legally binding contract anymore. In order for there to be contract, there has to be two parties, and one party is no longer here. What is the remedy if you use the water more than you claim? I know we're still exploring that. Of course, 70 toilets aren't going to flush at the same time as you will have a minimal workers at the actual facility. End up approved containers do not stop accidents. Are you willing to give back to the people the full 1,500 acre feet not being used or retire them? Is it being loaned to the farmers or owned by the farmers that you've given? Because I know you can transfer water rights back and forth. Bond on land and not on company. If anyone was to go belly up so we can protect the people's water, 100 million would be good. That way it protects us. I don't want to wait to find things out until after approval stages. I cannot make educated decisions without independent and non-biased studies. Residential water rights support families, neighborhoods, schools, and local businesses. Once they're converted to industrial use, the opportunity may be lost forever. We already have an allocated system, and every decision involving water could be made with extreme caution. I also have a question for this board. Did this board previously approve a drainage basin or lake proposed for the racetrack project by Russ Mead? If so, were the representations at that time fulfilled? I spoke with Tom Bowling in a text, and he only approved a drainage basin, but now it's a lake. As citizens, we depend on both applicant and public officials to provide complete and accurate information. When considering a project of this magnitude, I believe an applicant's record of following through on previous commitments is relevant. Filing this proposal has become a community-wide issue. The Board of County Commissioners has indicated that the people of Nye County should have a voice in determining the future, and I hope that you listen to them.

Ms. Howard, thank you for your comments and your accommodation on the boards. And just not to, I don't want to conflict with the chair, but the air clap thing, it is appropriate. And I know it is better than clapping. So please proceed. And I apologize for the conflict. But Mr. Meads, if you had any comments that you'd like to make on those last comments.

Yeah, so like the previous speaker, Ms. Jackson, so she was wondering if construction had started or if there was any drilling or anything on the site. There is no movement whatsoever on the project on the site, period. And also, there is currently no actual application, which is why there are no studies that have been presented publicly to the board, to staff, to planning, because we haven't got to that stage yet where we're able to actually present a project to the committee to be able to review and to be able to look at. And Ms. Howard, if you would like to talk about some other projects, I think I'd be happy to do that with you off this subject. I'd like to stick with what we came here for.

Thank you, Mr. Meads.

Yeah, and just for clarification, I think a lot of people see Grid Lions pulling Transformers up 160, and those are all going up Highway 95 north and going to their lay-down yards for their big project, and that's what people are... Believing might be something for this project and it was just something sent to me from somebody's Facebook and I'm just Saying I see the lay down yards when I go between here and Tonopah and they're filling them up with all Kinds of very large equipment and that's for that transmission line chair chair Yes, ma'am

Mr. Meads, have you had any commissioners or members of this board sign NDAs, non-disclosure agreements? That keeps coming up.

There are no NDAs at all from any board, any member of any public entity.

Did we find out as a board about this on the Monday before it was presented on Wednesday night to the Regional Planning Commission as you spoke to each board member that day independently?

So we had an application that we submitted for a zone change, previous to any moratorium or anything. Some questions came up, and we did, on the night beforehand, a couple of the commissioners from the Regional Planning Commission reached out because they had questions about the item. There were two that called and reached out, and we did answer the questions that they had, but that was it.

Thank you chair. There's, you know, like a conspiracy thing and I just, I heard NDA from Ms Jackson. So I thank you for allowing me to ask for clarity.

Thank you. Please approach the dice. Speak and spell your last name.

Good afternoon.

Oh, I got to hit that. Here we go. Good afternoon. My name is Joe. My wife and I have been living here about four years. We're a property owner and we own several properties. This is only gonna take one minute. I wanted to bring something to your attention.

Sir, could you spell your last name for the record, please? Of course.

M-I-R-A-B-I-L-E. Thank you, sir. Please proceed. You're welcome. I just wanted to bring up a point to the board, something you want to consider and think about. When you're building a data slash security slash surveillance center, okay, you cannot use any China components. That's a breach of the National Defense Authorization Act. I haven't heard this brought up yet. That's a very, very big issue. That's how some of these data centers slash security slash... Sir, excuse me.

This is about water.

No, this has to do with it. Any components that has to do with the water filtration system, whether it's underground, above ground, or a loophole system, if they're using any China components to build anything that has to do with the water system, okay, it's a breach of the National Defense Authorization Act. And that's how most of these data centers are coming to a screeching halt. That's all I had to say. God bless you and thank you.

Thank you for sharing that information with us. Please approach the dais. Speak and spell your last name.

Hey guys, my name is Nick Svetkovich, C-V-J-E-T-K-O-V-I-C-H. I live with my wife in town and my daughter. We produce the Winter Wonder Slam charity show every Christmas and we feed about 2,000 kids and give them all toys. So I believe, just like I think everybody here believes, in giving back to this town, not partaking from this town. And as whatever you see visually, I believe I'm the voice of common sense where this is such a great gamble with the water. You've heard so many people talk about they have to redrill their wells because their water table is lowering. I, too, have had that same problem. And when Mr. Mead is talking about know these fancy testing and this and that there's your water survey hearing so many people of your town you know worrying about their wells already having to be replaced or already been replaced just the common sense of this gamble I appreciate the state needs to make money and so why can't they put this monstrosity somewhere in the middle of nowhere when I fly in and out of Las Vegas for work just about weekly And I look out the window and I see plenty of places that I'm pretty sure no human feet have ever stepped. Why can't we put something like that out there where if it does have an oops factor like you said, sir, then there's no harm or foul to 50,000 good citizens. if that makes any sense at all. And as far as you saying, well, they own this and they own that, well, but then the water wasn't, well, about 2006. I'm pretty sure there was about 10,000 people here in 2006, and now there's 50,000 people. So just, again, the common sense of how much prorated water that is and i mean that that agreement was in the land of flip phones so how do you expect them to have any gauge that should just null and void anything to the modern day a rob roy quote says a man's honor is a gift to himself we are all honored to be a part of this town and we're pretty sure you guys are too so that's what we need from you and as far as Everything else we don't like about the data centers, just as far as the water, the biggest gamble that is just not worth the livelihoods of everybody. And respectfully or not respectfully, the more Mr. Mead talks, the more I am convinced data centers here is a bad idea. That's how I feel. And my last quote is for the commissioners that would think this is a good idea. Mark Twain. politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment, sir.

John O'Brien, O apostrophe capital B-R-I-E-N. I'm going to answer some questions that have been asked from the audience. I think that's, as a historian and longtime resident, I think it's necessary. Pahrump, Pahrimpty, Water Out of Rock. We still have artesian springs here in this valley, five of them. We look at history, preferred equities, Fred Conte, water rates, beneficial use, all kinds of issues have been brought up. We have to look at the Army Corps of Engineers before the 60s, map this whole entire valley in microfiche, go to the Nevada test site, they're on record there. Our valley floor is living. It's moving also. The water that's down at the dry lake bed is brine, brine that was off of the fan, deposited over hundreds of years. The movement of this valley, the water in the valley, is from the fan on the east-northeast down toward California. The basin itself is like a sponge, a bathtub. Part of Mother Mountain comes along Carpenter Canyon, comes down in, goes down Mance Road. Oak Ridge Road comes and whips back, comes through this particular area and heads back up toward Wallace and Wallace Canyon, toward Carpenter Canyon, toward the mountain there. Creek beds were covered initially by preferred equities during their development. Nobody wants to buy land that has a great big cavern, a gulch running through it. After large rainfalls, this runoff still flows under the ground. Case in point, alfalfa, dandelion, where a truck fell in, and we had to pull the driver out through the back window. We hadn't had rain in four years, yet the water was four feet deep, flowing very fast. So we have runoff and we have infiltration points. To prove my point, Honeysuckle Front Valley Boulevard. Water's two feet deep running down there, yet it never crosses Mount Charleston. How many of you people actually ask why? You get up to Jackrabbit School and there isn't a drop of water. It all infiltrated in that particular quarter mile stretch. If anybody says that any spill will not contaminate, they're totally wrong. The location goes against the master plan. The infrastructure, we'll never be able to replace any of that. Nobody's talked about the water required for build out. To carve into the mountain, the place where the water infiltrates, cleans itself, and then deposits itself into our valley floor. Nobody's talked about the disturbance of that. And then again, let's look at the solar panels that are down there, down the road. They're watering, they're watering, they're watering, they're watering, and they can't solidify the ground.

Thank you for your comments, John. Thank you, sir.

Good morning. My name is Jeannie King, K-I-N-G, and I do have some concerns after hearing your questions. A liner... He does not know if they have a liner or not under this, yet our minds do. To me, a liner would protect our water. This is on the alluvial fan that I don't like at all. A 75-foot building with I don't know how many chillers per building is bound to be a disaster somewhere, because it happens. So I don't like the location. Another thing, fire sprinklers. Are yours going to be filled with water or chemicals? There is in Spokane, out by one of the military bases, where they put a fire out with foam, and now the water's contaminated. Nobody can live there. That is a big concern. We don't even have a fire truck with a 75-foot ladder to put it out, so you're going to have to rely on whatever's going on. The water rights, there is Margaritaville and all these other homes they're building between Mance and – Haven Ranch Road, they're allocated a lot of water also. So my recommendation is a big no on the alluvial fan. Put it somewhere else. Also, I want to commend you guys. You command this room to be calm and orderly by how you act. You're not giving us five-minute timeouts and others interrupting us when we're speaking or threatening to take us outside when you're wearing a sidearm. Anyway, I appreciate you guys, and I appreciate what you do. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, Ms. King. Mr. Meads, if you'd like to address some of those questions.

Yeah, that's okay. Thank you, Ms. King, for your questions. I'd like to talk about the fire sprinkler system. So the fire sprinkler systems and data centers are generally what they refer to as a dry system. So they are filled with air for the most part so that if there is a leak or there is a problem, that it's actually air that comes out at the beginning. However, if there is a fire demand, it does break the little module in the fire head, and then water would flow. So... And I know this has come up before, that you can't fight electrical fires with water. But in any fire, when you have something like this that's a massive electrical unit, it automatically, if the fire system is tripped, it trips the electrical system that comes to it, and then it runs off a battery so that the water continues to flow open. So it would not be water fighting electrical fire, it would be water fighting whatever fire, whatever's burning inside the building. So not a foam like is used, like Scott Lewis has a foam that he uses for car fires and things of that nature. That is not what is being proposed to be used here. It would be water.

Please approach your dais. We can spell your last name.

Cheryl Varkalis, V-A-R-K-A-L-I-S. First, I'd like to say I... I'm not a Pahrump native, but I live like a desert native. We have a bucket in my shower that we capture and use for flushing toilets. I have one right next to my kitchen sink. I do the same thing. I challenge everyone in this room to do the same thing because our water is precious and I very much hope that you all will protect what we have left. For Mr. Meads, I have a couple of questions. Why do your employees need showers? How often and will contaminants be washed down the drain? You said there would be 48 acre feet of wastewater per year. That seems exorbitant for a handful of employees. And what happens if the wastewater is trucked to Beatty and there is a traffic accident, the truck overturns and that wastewater toxic chemicals are spilled? How is that going to be recovered? And how are folks who live near those corridors going to be protected? Thank you.

I'm not even going to try to address your last name. I'm so sorry. I tried to write it down as fast as I could. I'm sorry I missed it. I'd like to address the showers portion of this. So the showers are there. So there are several shifts that happen, and they want to be able to provide for their employees opportunities for exercise programs and such. And these are basically locker rooms for them to be able to shower before they go home or start or end their shift. The engineering calcs for waste water. So again, I think this goes back to what I was explaining earlier that when you calculate the design of a water or sewer system, either one, everything has to start from what the requirement is. So the requirement is a fixture unit count. It's so extremely high in order to make sure that at worst, worst, worst case scenario, the system works. So reality is, is that number will be much, much smaller as we've seen for almost every project we've ever done. The transportation of the waste product to the US ecology site in Beatty happens on a very regular basis through town. I don't control the transportation regulations, but any type of hazmat transportation has a regulation to it. This would have to follow that. And it happens on a very regular basis through our town. I know that there are some proposals for controlling some transportation of hazardous waste, but I don't know the answer to that, honestly, to be able to answer correctly.

Thank you, Mr. Meats. Please approach Dias. Speak and spell your last name.

Kenyon Salzer, S-A-L-Z-E-R. Question. Okay, with this data center getting put in, you're talking about building the community, building per rump. How are they going to do that when you're using all the water for the data center? How are you going to put in another supermarket? You're going to tell them, sorry, you can't come in here because we don't have the water for you? Get rid of that data center because they're going to use too much water. So we can build other things in here that's going to help the community. The data center is not going to help the community. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment, sir. Please approach the dais. We can spell your name.

Could I just respond? Absolutely, Russ. Feel free. I think that's a good question. I think that's one that I think most of us have a question about because we'd like to see some other infrastructure come to our community. So water use comparison to some of these things. One of my favorites, and this is my personal favorite, if an In-N-Out came to town, I could probably support it by myself. I love In-N-Out, and I cannot wait till we get one here someday. I really hope that happens. An In-N-Out burger... This is going to shock everybody, and it's not just In-N-Out, but fast food places in general use an enormous amount of water for their footprint compared to almost any other use. Any food establishment by acre uses approximately five acre feet per acre of development for food establishments. If you took 900 acres and brought A mix of this stuff we would be well over 75,000 acre feet of water. I don't discount the fact that we want to make sure our community to develop so that we can have enough water to get these things here. And I think that's what is so great about this is this is taking 900 acres off the book and using hardly any water. I think that's the good comparisons, but. I would love to lead the charge to get in and out. If anybody wants to join me, I'm with you.

Thank you, Russ. Ma'am, please proceed.

My name is Lisa Hemby, H-E-M-B-Y. I am concerned about the data centers contaminating or negatively impacting water supplies through chemical discharge, leaks, and high volume consumption that stress local watersheds. the water table, the water quality. I am concerned about those. I'm concerned about the forever chemicals, the certain advanced liquid cooling setups or fire suppression materials that they may introduce the PFA chemicals into our local environment via leaks or improper disposal. I'm in a 500 year flood zone and I'm concerned about Any designation changes on that? I'm concerned about the number of farms around our country that have been displaced because of these data centers. The bee population has also suffered because of the constant noise from these data centers, from the electrical demand on them. And of course, all the other concerns with them. we don't need these industrial monstrosities that not only impact our water resources, they also negatively impact our quality of life and that of our animals as well. Thank you. I did want to ask Mr. Meads about the weed control and about if it's going to be concrete or if it's going to be gravel, and how much weed control they might use. I'm concerned about glyphosate and also the negative impacts of that getting into our water. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Hamby. I appreciate those questions. So the contamination, once again, I don't have the specifics as to what NDEP requirements will be. I don't know if it's realistic to line underneath a building. I don't know if you build these with a giant sump inside of the building that if it overflows, it contains everything inside and then it's sucked out. There are a lot of options that handle this type of thing. We haven't got to that phase of the design of this particular project, but I can guarantee you, we will have to meet every single one of those to ensure Secondary, third, and fourth areas of containment will absolutely be required for sure. PFAS, that's the forever chemical that we are talking about. PFAS is a fairly newly tracked issue with water systems all across the country and sewer systems all across the country and how to deal with it. What are the levels that are okay? What are the levels that are not okay? PFAS is naturally occurring in the ground. It comes from the soil, and so it is a constant concern. When you add chemicals to a system, it does enhance that, so you are correct. In a situation like this, we want to make sure that it's handled correctly, and I think we've shown that it will be handled that way. Drainage and weed control, so all drainage on this particular site will be handled on site. I think there's some great opportunities for our community to take great advantage of being up on the hill, being able to help contain some of the water. I would love, we could probably spend a whole nother session talking about infiltration and drainage. When it comes to the weed control, the proposal for this particular site is to have gravel ground cover and then the weed control for that. We've proposed no harsh chemicals for weed control. I can't give you the specifics as what that is, but I will definitely gather that for you.

Thank you, Russ. Please approach Dias to speak and spell your last name.

Leroy Booth, B-O-O-T-H.

I have a couple statements that were made earlier. One, I think we should wait until the model is completed next year to determine what we're going to do. As far as water rights, I would think if they're going to expand something or they're going to put a project in or they've already allocated a project, they should be required to hand over half of those water rights. If they're going to put in like 50 houses and normally you give them like 70, well, you give them 35 and you retire them, never to be used again. As far as giving them to the board for their allocation, No, no, no, no. They're gone. That's the only way to ensure they aren't used somewhere else to encroach on people already living here. I'm already, and as far as the whales that have gone dry, that really concerns me. I'm even thinking about, I'm telling people don't move here. There's no water here. Okay, so I'm really concerned about the water level, and that's why I'm looking forward to the model. Where are we? Where is it going? What is it actually doing? Until we know that, we can't make an educated decision. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Booth.

Please approach Dyess. Speak and spell your last name.

Carla Ely, E-L-Y. Question for Mr. Meads. In your water calculations, I didn't hear anything about the indirect water usage necessary for power generation. I'm not an electrical engineer. I do know water's required, so that's something I'd like an answer to. In December 2024, Congressman Horsford secured Water Resources Development Act funding, provides $10 million for environmental infrastructure, like a water well field and a pipeline, and another $4 million for wastewater development. This grant has a goal of improving long-term drought resilience, clean water access, and system reliability. The data center seems directly counter to that. Two components of this grant money are drilling a well field, and the proposed site for that is down at the fairgrounds, which is at Dandelion and 160. and which is only two miles away from the proposed data center site. Another component of this grant funding is deep carbonate exploration, which is It says Nye County Water District is funding a pre-construction program for deep exploration wells. This project tests the feasibility of creating major new well field and pipeline to tap into deep regional groundwater and combat the area's ongoing water crisis. What's the status of this? Has this exploration gone on yet? Because Let's just say it's adjacent. It's not two miles away. It's right adjacent to their proposed site. So this is an area, if they find that this is a good water source, we want to build some wells here for our water supply. You have to know that first before you give approval to this project, and you don't know that yet. I don't believe you know that yet because I don't think it's been done. With the well field... which down at Dandelion and 160, there's well-filled protection perimeters. So it's like within 300 feet, this is to keep contaminants out of the aquifer. So they have all this stuff for protections. Two miles away, the status center sitting, I would think would fall into that protection perimeter. And Mr. Meads mentioned something right off the bat when he was talking about, well, we didn't go for a zoning change at first because of this. We thought we'd couple it with that. I can't exactly remember what that was. But data centers require a master plan flex center or industrial zoning amendment. That's why he's here. A zoning amendment is required for this project to move forward.

Ms. Ely, thank you for your comments. Before you jump in there, Russ, I want to address the comment made about the $10 million. First of all, that funding is not a grant. That's a federal allocation, very different than a grant money. We have applied for an allocation, that federal money that you're speaking of, for the well field. As proposed, it's very, very preliminary, and we are exploring it. That wellfield would be much further south than as you perceive it. It would be beyond the county line, still within the basin, but much further south. that allocation must be appropriated a section at a time. So yes, we are working on the first section of that allocation to be appropriated for us to go do exploration to try to understand what water is available on the south end of town. That program was identified by this body in a previous, makeup as one of the priority goals for the water district to do which is to go out there and see what's available that water on the south end is the water that adjusted the yield from twelve to twenty so yes we need to go see if that waters there a lot of your statements are correct adjacent. You're just one step away from being right on the money. So yes, we are looking at that water. It is further away from the proposed site. That project, should the body, should we be allocated excuse me, appropriated that water or that money, then we will proceed with that project $2 million at a time because that's how the Army Corps of Engineers prefers us to submit those projects because that allocated money from the feds would be done by the Army Corps of Engineers. However, there is action going on at the state and federal level. There are people that want to help us. We have to go through the process, but I want everyone in this room to know that our problems are a priority in the food chain moving up. I have pressed hard, as hard as decent adjacent. I am pressing, and this body, every one of these people is working hard to make sure that your children's and your grandchildren's future is here. We don't want you to have to leave. We don't want you to have to tell people not to move here. And we are literally doing everything in our power. Again, within a fraction of being indecent, we are pressing these people to do the right thing. So thank you for your comments. And Russ, if you have any answers for the public.

Thank you, Mr. Weeks. And Ms. Ely, thank you for your questions. So water use for power generation. So these are kind of residual outlying things. There is no proposed power generation for this project on site or within Nye County that I am aware of of any sort. I know for sure it will not be on the site. I can't speak to how power is generated in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, or anywhere else. Maybe that's a different discussion. There is a well vulnerability study that has to be done any time a expansion of a utility is proposed. That well vulnerability study is a three mile radius from a project. Every well that falls within that three mile radius has to be studied and you have to provide that to the state and that Is and will be completed for this project As far as the zoning for this project. There is no current zoning category in Nye County for data centers that's why we proposed that we put a development agreement for Nye County to have a backstop in order to say they have the right to be able to address it specifically for this project, since there is not a zoning category for it. But the committee is working, or the staff is currently working on creating an ordinance for this to be able to be controlled. As far as how that works between This board and the Board of County Commissioners, this board did make a suggestion that we take a pause, a moratorium, a pause on any data centers until we had more information. The Board of County Commissioners listened and the very next meeting put that into action. I think that's exactly how it's supposed to work and it did work that way and it currently is holding in that pattern for now.

Thank you, Mr. Meads. Please approach your dice, speak and spell your name, your last name.

Last name is Richie, R-I-T-C-H-I-E. I just want to hit on a couple things. He mentioned no more plants, no more trees, metal, decoratives. Plants and trees are a part of our natural filtration and cooling system of this earth. You take that away, the land dies. Number two, the water usage. Oh, we use too much water. We need to do an amendment. No amendment. You sign the contract. That's what you stick to. Plain and simple. Now, these testing sites, they talk about three miles out. No, it has to go further. It has to go 10, and I'll tell you why. North Pole Refinery, North Pole, Alaska, where I just come from, The government did not do their job in inspection and they did not line the holding ponds. Guess where that went into? The drinking water. They disbanded the refinery, they shut it down, they dismantled it, and the people at North Pole were left holding the bill. The city had to go get federal grants to upgrade the water systems. But with that, they also raised the toxicity level. So instead of it being down here, which was better for human and animal consumption, it was raised up here, just below the levels where it was not consumable. This is what big corporation does. And I find it unbelievable. that you would sit here and recommend to take out part of our natural filtration system for metal objects. All that's going to do is diminish our natural cooling, create more heat. That is totally absurd. Thank you.

Can I answer that?

A couple, if you'd like, go ahead.

I'd just like to answer a couple of those for you. So we are not proposing to remove all landscaping requirements. We're proposing to remove the water requirements for that landscaping. So we'd like to use desert-friendly landscaping that does not require a watering system for it. However, we are also proposing that we are allowed to use some but minimal water to add some additional landscaping that would require, and that would be for the buffer. And you are correct. It's very important for erosion, for beautification, for filtration. So that is part of the proposal for that.

Thank you, Mr. Meads. Please approach the dais. Speak and spell your last name.

Teresa Reddle, R-E-D-L. um there's so much to say um let's see here for one we're we're such a small rural town um we do not have the infrastructure we aren't set up uh for any of the possibilities the we can't even handle our roads can't handle the construction um Traffic. Let's talk about when they're transporting the chemicals to this waste dump site. Look how many wrecks there are on our roads. What do we do if there is an accident or when there is an accident? Our own fire chief, if you guys, I encourage you to speak with him. He is not for it. He says we absolutely cannot handle something as big as this coming into our town. We're not prepared. And we will end up suffering. And so I encourage you to speak to Scott, the fire chief. What I would like to see is a total ban. The developers want to continue the moratorium for their own reasons, but before we get too far, I say we need to ban not just all future data centers, all proposed data centers. I also request that the Water District Governing Board reaffirm its prior unanimous recommendation to prohibit industrial data center uses in Basin 162 The developer's presentation does not resolve the basin's physical limits or the district's established service constraints. The record already demonstrates that data center uses are incompatible with the hydrologic conditions, our available infrastructure, and service obligations of the water district. Reaffirming the board's recommendation is the appropriate action to maintain the integrity of the basin and the district's technical findings.

Just say no, thank you. Thank you for your comments.

It was Ms. Rattle, thank you for your question. So in regards to the fire chief, Um, this project has not been placed in front of chief Lewis yet to be able to, uh, review the requirements for being able to handle a facility of this size. So in general, yes, he, and he's correct. Currently there is not the ability to be able to fight this. So when it comes to water and fire infrastructure and use, it's part of the water use requirements and studies that are being done. and I am certain that Chief Lewis will come back with a condition that says if it was to be built, you would have to purchase and gift to the community the proper equipment, structures, facilities. There is no question that will be part of the process that has to happen.

Thank you, Russ. Please approach the dais. Speak and spell your name.

Hello, Mike Fender, F-E-N-D-E-R, just like on a car. I have to appreciate the Mike Locke's information. It was very informative, and that was great. I think we really needed that here to really answer a lot of questions, and he brought up a lot of information as well. As for Russ, I've heard him speak a few times, and he's full of information too, depending upon how you want to take it, but it's actually very informative. My big beef with this thing is not only the location, but because it's located adjacent to the highway, just below Mr. Hafen's well and storage tank. That's a well alongside and below it. Not only that, on the western side of Highway 160 is another well. I think it's owned by Hafen. It's right adjacent to Mance Road as it kind of bends up going up to Highway 160. So I know there's a well there. So if there isn't any kind of contamination, we have to put these factors, they have to be greatly understood because there are two sources of water for the community here, and Hafen sells water to an awful lot of people. As for the zoning thing, you want to, I would recommend that the, that like we have, the county has a plan for what solar farms is and it's pretty strict and pretty, it's right on the line. I think if we're gonna do any kind of data centers, it has to be in line with what we're doing with solar farms because we've had to deal with contamination, pollutants, using herbicides and so forth and the water run up. There's been a lot of environmental impact statements for every one of these solar farms and something like this should also be utilized with data farms. But first and foremost, I don't think it's a good place. Period. It's not a good place at all. Wrong place. There is lots of room over there in Amargosa Valley. We got 17 solar farms there on the books. They could probably use a data center over there, and I believe NextEra is planning on one, so you might consider that one as well. But like I've told the commissioners here about six months ago, choose wisely.

Thank you for your comment, sir. Please approach the dais. Speak and spell your last name.

Paul Greenewald, G-R-E-E-N-A-W-A-L-T. So like a lot of people, I've been trying to follow this project, understand exactly what it is, because I think that there's really not a lot of value in commenting on it until we actually understand what it is the question is. I've asked repeatedly for a water study that can help the rest of us understand what the consumptive use of water is. When I walked in, I apologize that I was late, and if this is a redundant question, I heard Mr. Mead say, again, 100 acre feet. 100 acre feet of what? Is that going to be just for the office? Is it going to be total consumptive use? It's my understanding that the Nevada state engineer, when they're going to be looking at converting from quasi municipal use to industrial use, is going to have a formula that's going to be anywhere from about 30% to 50% of the evaporative or consumptive use versus what would be expected to be recharged. And until we have the number that is either or, we have absolutely nothing to compare it to. If it were 300 acre feet of actual consumptive use, that would be the equivalent of something like 820 acre feet of municipal use. And I'm not saying that I think it's going to be anything near that. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that until we have a complete understanding of definitions, the rest of us can't even participate in this conversation in a meaningful way. So if there was a way to respond to that, that'd be great.

Thanks. So Paul, earlier I do have that information. I have it in gigantic form. I have it in a reduced summary form. And then I have it in my simple one-page form that kind of breaks that down. But you are correct that there are differences in the water use for the project. And I can provide that to you if you would like it.

If I could follow up on that, Mr. Meads. To your question, sir, Divisional Water Resources regulates all water quantity throughout the state of Nevada. They issue pumpage reports for every basin. In this backup, on item number 13, there is the most recent pumpage report for Basin 162. which was published in 2023. And today we will be discussing requesting Division to update that and bring that data more up to speed. The only body in the state of Nevada that can determine the state of a basin is Division of Water Resources. We can assist them by doing science, by doing the model update. We can give them the tools to help them produce and we can compel them to come before us and give us that reporting and we're doing that, but so that you know Only Division of Water Resources can make the final determination on the health of a basin, the yield, the recharge, and what's actually being withdrawn. And we're working on that now. Please approach the dais so we can spell your last name.

Leah Aldridge, A-L-D-R-I-D-G-E. I recently had a nice conversation with a gentleman. He was a Navy veteran of 30 years, worked on their nuclear programs, and he's worked with a lot of these closed loop systems. And he says, all mechanical systems like this can and will fail. When they do fail, the results can be absolutely catastrophic. And the fact that they want to place one in that area is just beyond him. That being said, one thing that's keeping me awake at night is, say our water does become contaminated or the aquifer drops to the point where there's hundreds of thousands of us without water. okay, is do these nameless, faceless billionaires that want to build this thing, do they have a contingency plan to provide water in an emergency situation like that? Because I know we have a lot of retired seniors in this town who live on fixed incomes, and they don't have an extra $13,000, $15,000 to go deeper. So is there a contingency plan by these builders, or does Nye County even have a contingency plan if that happens? Thank you.

Thank you for your questions. Please approach the dais, speak and spell your last name.

My name's Ron Richardson, R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S-O-N, retired engineer. I wanted to first thank Mr. Meads here for taking the time to do this presentation and fielding questions. This is my first opportunity, and I've been to a fair number of meetings with the board to hear directly from you, so I do appreciate that. I also appreciate very much this board for asking the hard questions It's very important that you do that and I applaud them and I appreciate your feedback as well. A couple of quick questions here. So you had mentioned some studies, Mr. Meads, that were early in the process and that we haven't done them yet. We will as we move further through the process. Normally the developer doesn't want to spend that money to do the studies until we get to a certain place in the process. I contend that the monies we're talking about with this development They can certainly afford to do these studies earlier in the process than they normally would do to bring more light to these boards as well as the public. So I would encourage that these things get put up front like a prerequisite.

And speaking of prerequisites, I don't understand why we don't have the state board water study that's supposed to come out in 27.

Is that right? as a prerequisite to this kind of a project. Why can't we slow things down a little bit and put that ahead of this kind of a development? Wastewater treatment. So we talked about trucking and offsite. That's great, but before it gets in the trucks and gets transported, where is that going to be stored? Is it going to go straight from the chiller into a truck, or has it got to be contained somewhere on site before it gets trucked to this other location? And I'm not going to repeat the questions, but it was mentioned about the safety of trucking and that stuff. No offense, but that's kind of like passing the buck. This facility is dirty water. Oops, not my problem. It got spilled at the intersection of 160 and 372. That's the trucking. That's got to be an end-to-end process that we ensure that they can't get contaminated from the time it's produced to the time it's scooped up and taken somewhere. And last, you mentioned that the suppression system is water. I have been in the data center business a long time. I've never seen a water suppression system in an electrical facility. It's usually a halon system. From my personal experience, it may be better technology now, but I don't think it's a water, maybe in the office buildings, but not in a data center. Halon is a chemical. I don't know the makeup of it personally. I just know that that's the kind of system they normally use in a data center. So where do those chemicals get captured if we have a fire? Are they not going to use halon? We need to get more detail on the suppression system and how it affects the water. And that's my questions. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Richardson. A couple of quick ones. Why do we do studies at certain times during the process? The biggest reason for that is normally we would bring any commercial project of any sort, especially one that requires a development agreement with Nye County. We would bring a conceptual plan to the county to see if they have any interest in that concept coming to a particular location, and if that answer is yes, they will provide us with a massive list of things we gotta bring back to them, including all of these studies that have to happen. That way the developer knows that if I can actually go get all these things done and bring all this information back, they have told me I can if I meet all the conditions. That's why currently we don't have that done yet. We just don't even know if this is something that county wants. So that's that one. So the water from the system itself would go directly into approved containers. I say approved containers. It's a little misleading to say it goes directly into trucks because sometimes those trucks are just trailers that are parked there, and then a truck comes and removes those. Some of them are actually separate containers. Then they're picked up, put on trucks, and removed. So I can't answer it exactly, but they are directly – into approved NDEP containers. The fire suppression system, we have talked many times about this. It would not be a halon for the reason of contamination in case of a major event. Therefore, it is a much advanced technology that water will be used.

Thank you, Mr. Meats. Please approach the dais so we can spell your name.

Marianne Hollis, H-O-L-L-I-S. Every time I hear the word development agreement, I cringe because that 2006 development agreement between Ativan and the county just was refiled with about 30 amendments. So amendments can be forthcoming the day after that's signed, and that makes me very nervous. The gentleman before me mentioned the water usage for fire suppression. There is no protection from the toxic fumes that would be produced. And should the structure fracture, those fumes will be in the air and immediately the people in Mountain Falls will probably be dead. And as the fire water, which I believe at one point it was going to be some type of foam chemical, as the fire department's water hits that, it's going to go into the ground. Every time that I've listened to your presentation, Mr. Meads, which I think this is the sixth or seventh time, you say just enough, just enough, so that someone who may not have been familiar with some research or such will take it in fully and say, well, that must be true. You talked about, an example of that is you mentioned the moratorium. That moratorium is going to expire September 2nd. I am requesting formally for the Board of Commissioners liaison, Commissioner Strickland, to put on the agenda for the August 18th meeting to extend that moratorium. There are just far too many questions remaining, too many loopholes, unsubstantiated claims, et cetera, that that immediately, in my opinion, must be done. And then everything else may follow, I hope. And what I hope will follow will be that this doesn't happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Halls, for your comments.

Excuse me, may I? With the extension of that, could it go till after the election, please?

Yes, ma'am. We've talked about that. Koenig and I have. And so as soon as the ballot initiative has been addressed, it would seem the moratorium would not be needed.

Okay, we have closed public comment for item number 11. Before we move on, I would like to take one, a little liberty here. First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Locke. He proposed this. He created the format under which we did this, and I was a little dubious. I would like to thank Mr. Meads for taking the time and the concern that you've had for the public. Bravo, sir. I'd like to thank every one of you for being good citizens and caring about your community. What we did here today is a good example of... So bravo to you, bravo to you, and bravo to you. Thank you, everyone.

We're going to take a quick break. Let me say something. Madam Chair, if I may. He's almost teary-eyed. Because when I told him how I wanted to do this yesterday, he told me it's not gonna work. There's gonna be yelling, there's gonna be screaming, there's gonna be no discussion. And look what you guys did. You should be so proud of yourself. So now that we're not in this thing, I think you can all clap. Because this is how it's supposed to happen. And you know what I took out of this? That you're all really concerned about water quality. So before this break, and I hope you don't all leave before the end of the meeting, but I am going to task you guys with an ordinance that's been on the books for over 20 years in Nye County. And we're talking about all the junk cars that sit on lots. You are not allowed to have these cars if you can't have more than three unlicensed cars on your property. We're worried about glycol. Glycol is nothing like the stuff in the fluids in your cars. And all these cars, their hoses are leaking. They're sitting there. We have junkyards, and it's leaking into our stuff. Take... Take this concern that you have for our water quality, and when you go to the next Board of County Commissioners, and I'm gonna ask Dan, and I'm gonna ask this Board later when I can, to write a letter to the commissioners that they start imposing fines that they're allowed to do that's already on the books for all of these cars that are leaking this stuff into our groundwater. It's the easiest thing that you guys can show up in masses and speak on behalf of that, and we can start cleaning up something that's a problem that's existed and sitting there, and a problem that we can solve that's on the books. And you guys express that concern, each and every one of you. Well, here's a way you can go start doing something. Go make them put teeth behind an ordinance that's there. We're worried about the teeth. The ordinance is there. You can force the teeth. You can make it a $100 a month fine. It has to be something that makes people do something with these. And that would be a great way to start cleaning up our water quality. And again, thank you.

I look at Drive 372, turn left on the Red Rock Road, drive a mile on the right-hand side. There's a house that has 20-plus vehicles, antiques, whatever. I have no idea why the junk's there. It's disgusting. Anyway, I would ask that you all pay attention to the rest of the agenda. We're going to be talking about Basin 162. on item 12, and this is an issue that I've asked to be placed on the agenda. There's a lot of discussion in this town about the connection of our water basin to Colorado River and Hoover Dam.

Okay, everybody, we're going to take a quick break. Let everybody catch their breath. We're going to be back in 10, and we'll address item number 12.

Thank you.

We need the land.

I really wish, I really wish you guys would do it.

Oh, I'm all about it. So you can see what the containment actually looks like.

I'd love to visit my public house and vote. I would love for them to see.

That is, it's the easiest way without going through all of this stuff. It's so hard to get this translated to, no, you've got to read it. But to be able to just go put your eyes on it.

Can you do a... presentation that walks you through and takes all that and condenses it into something people can watch.

So the commissioner in Story County has offered to give you guys that. And he will set it up at the people of Long Beach. He's going to provide you with the actual videography that they've done as a piece that you can show and then explain here how

The man that makes them is a veteran. That drives me crazy.

So what do you think of our experiment?

I think it did well. Goody, goody, goody, goody. This is the other one. Yes.

Everybody in this room figured all that out. Right, but for example,

Mrs. Jackson.

Four minutes to reconvene, four minutes to reconvene.

What did you say, Deborah? Dan?

If I may, at 5 o'clock we have to shut down because the system shuts down and we have to leave. We're going to continue through with all the agenda items until we're finished. All 5 o'clock comes first.

Okay, we're going to reconvene and... Address item number 12 for possible action, discussion, deliberation, and possible action to review and approve a letter from Vice Chair, formerly Vice Chair, Helene Williams to the Nye County Board of Commissioners requesting their assistance in reminding Pahrump residents that groundwater in Basin 162 is not connected to the Colorado River and is not subject to the Colorado River Compact. The letter is in the backup. Ms. Williams asked for this letter to be composed and this correspondence. I will let her Speak to it. Ms. Williams. Thank you.

Throughout the months, throughout the whole community, I have heard people say continuously, even at the BOCC meetings, that our water is connected to the Colorado River and Hoover Dam. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? 160 is going to be gone. This says, no, not going to happen. We're not connected at all. So when somebody says to you, we're connected, you tell them, no, we're not connected.

Madam Chair, if I could elaborate a little further. Basin 162 is a closed loop basin. All of our water comes from ground and snow pack. We do not have any piping of any importation of any water from outside of the basin. So there are people that are concerned about the river for good reason. There are people that are concerned about Basin 162 for good reason. The two issues are completely separate and they're not related one to the other. So when you see the river drop and you see the bath ring at the lake, that doesn't have anything to do with your water rights or with your water or with your wells. However, We are a neighbor, right? We are the neighbor to Las Vegas and we want to be concerned about all of our, but we don't want the public to be misinformed or overly concerned or hysterical about things that don't directly Relate to them. So what this letter would do if it was approved by the board, this letter would be forwarded via the liaison to the county commission asking them to help remind the public that our water rights and that our water groundwater and basin 162 is unrelated to the Colorado River compact. So this is an action item. So it would go to the board for discussion. We've given the description. Ms. Williams has given her comments. If the board would like to discuss it, we would then go to public comment. So board.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Any comments from the board members? Do I hear a motion?

I make a motion. to approve the letter and forward it. No second. Thank you.

Who made the second? I'm sorry. Thank you.

Public, please.

We would call. Is there anyone from the public that would like to comment on this item? Seeing no comment from the public, Madam Chair, we would pull the board. Thank you. Mr. Heath?

Miller? Aye.

Aye.

Mr. Goodhead?

Aye.

Mr. Font? Aye. Mr. Jackson? Aye. Mr. Locke? Aye. Mrs. Williams? Yes.

The motion passes 6-0, unanimous. Moving on to item number 13. for possible action, discussion, deliberation, and possible action to review and approve a letter from the Nye County Water District Governing Board to the Nevada Division of Water Resources and State Engineer's Office requesting that representatives appear before the governing board to provide an update on the current status of Basin 162 in Pahrump and address questions regarding the basin's management and administration. This item came about as a conversation between Ms. Williams and myself. I wanna explain something to the public because my office is getting hammered and some of you are responsible. So, There's a lot of talk about a water study that's going to be due in June of 22. What I want everyone to understand that this is not a study. This is a model, a graphical statistical representation of the best available data that we have from Division of Water Resources who sets the yield. who sets the recharge, who monitors the pumpage. We take all of that data, the locations of the wells, and our known water levels, because we've been maintaining water level data in Pahrump for over 17 years. We've got a good idea on what's going on seasonally with the water levels. All of that, Mr. Klinke and DRI are crunching that data in the model. That model only represents the data that we have. You guys, everyone, including some board members, the public has created this expectation that in June of 27, we're going to get some grand revelation. It's not that way. The model helps us understand the data that we have and we'll be able to put theoretical pumping into the model and see what happens, right? It gives us a predictive tool. However, This letter that we're talking about here, which is calling the state engineer down before us and say, hey, the last time you gave us defensible data was 2023. And that's not good enough. We need more current data. It's 2026. It's been three years. And I am on regular asked by these people and by you and the commission, do we have enough water, right? I cannot say this in any way that I am exhausted by trying to tell people something that I don't have an answer for. Only division can set that figure. So we're asking this letter would be, if it was approved, would be sent to, am I ahead of myself? No. Okay. This letter would be sent to division requesting them come before us and update that pumpage report so I can give you a better answer on how close we are to yield, right? Yield is the number that division says we can safely withdraw from a basin. The last inventory, so you guys know in the public, if anybody's listening, the last inventory that we got from Division was in 2023. And it showed 14,600 acre feet as being pumped. And that includes the estimate for all the domestic wells, all the commercial, all the agriculture, every pumpage in the whole basin. 14,600. So the math is not hard to do, right? We'll open this to public. So what we're asking is for division to come before this board and you and give you the report that you're asking for. I cannot produce it. This body cannot produce the report that you guys all want to see in June of 27. Right. Well, it's only that report from division that will give you that information. So we are through this action. We are demanding. We are pleading to division to come before the public. Tell us where we are. Give us the regulatory information that we need. In order to inform you guys on and the commission and the planning department on what our water resources truly are. So I hope that makes some explanation as to the study. I hope everyone will now start calling it the model update. And the model update will give us the tools that we need to give to division. So the board, the measures before you, the letter is in the backup. If the board has any comments, please.

I motion we approve sending this to the state engineer's office.

I'll second.

There's a motion and a second. And I'll call the board.

Madam Chair, this is an action item. We need to call for public.

you have a couple comments from the board members too would anybody like to comment the board yeah i'll just make a to give you a brief explanation these water models are quite complicated because these these basins the strata are not uniform underneath you it's very varied there's faults there's fractures there's different types of material that underlay the ground surface there's areas of high There's areas of tight clays that don't allow the water to migrate very quickly. There's areas in the valley where you'll see well declines. We've heard about that. But there's also other areas of the valley where due to some lesser amounts of agricultural pumping where the well levels have gone up. There's areas in the valley where There are now basically artesian springs. Wells have become artesian. It's actually flowing out to the ground. It hasn't happened for 30 years. So the water is not spread uniformly through the basin. So that's something to be really cognizant of. So there are some areas where the water is depleting because the water can't move through that strata quick enough. And there's more houses, more densely packed houses with more domestic wells all punching in. but there's other areas closer to the fan where there's much more of a loose alluvium and those waters are actually stacking up and where the big ag producers usually pump those wells from alluvium, those have ceased and they're pumping and wells off the alluvium are now producing, like I said, in some cases, artesian water. That's why the groundwater model study is so important and that's why we're also looking at spreading out the pumping centers of where we're gonna get the water from. That's one of the ones we're working for as a water board to explore pumping further south to expand our pumping field to reduce the overlapping cones of depression from the existing water usage. But the rough approximation now is that the best science, the Department of Water Engineers says we have a annual recharge perennial yield of about 20,000. The last pumpage report was of 2023, a number of years ago, that showed 14,600. But there's no doubt that with increasing development including a lot of new home subdivisions, that there will be an increase in the eventual demand on the water resources and the aquifer here in the valley. But I just wanted to put that out to you that it's a very complicated deal to say just how much can we pump. It's not only how much can we pump, but from what locations and what specifically will that do the groundwater levels in different parts of the basin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Goodhart, for that explanation. It was much better than my own.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Miller, any comments?

None from me.

Mr. Jackson? No, I'm fine. Mr. Fong? No, I'm good.

We have a first and a second on the floor.

There's a first and a second on the poll board. Mr. Miller? Public comment. Aye. I can do that afterwards.

No, we need to take public before we vote.

Okay, public comment.

Teresa Redl, R-E-D-L. When you were explaining the model and when the engineer is designing it, when you went like this, were you saying is that, will he be factoring in the proposed water usage that hasn't actually happened yet? Will he go, then, if this happens, because there's multiple different developments in the works. And is anyone considering if, you know, I mean, so no?

I'll answer your question when we're done with public comment.

Okay, thank you.

Mike Fender, F-E-N-D-E-R. So what's going to happen in the meantime, number one, And number two, we have a couple areas that are utilizing water. It's called Clark County and Inyo County in California. And we know Charleston View being in California, we do not know how much they're pulling out. And is there anything over there that Clark County may be pulling out? It's a possibility. But does anybody have an idea of what this is going to do? Do we know what they have done or what they plan to do? Because in Inyo County, they got four solar farms planned. Anyway, and that's 9,000 acres that they plan on building solar farms with right there adjacent to Charleston View. So you might want to think about that. That's important to D-Link because we're all on the same basin.

Leroy Booth, B-O-O-T-H. Will this model provide the information that he was talking about as far as where it's going low, where it's going high, what it's been doing? Can you extrapolate out to do forecasting? Will that be available for us to come in and look at it? Awesome. Thank you.

Angelina Jackson, J-A-C-K-S-O-N again.

I think there's been so much focus on the quantity of water. Everybody's worried about us running out of water. You're not gonna run out of water, it's just you may have to hit a different vein and go deeper. And as for the model that everybody's requesting, it's just like the Earth shifts. I don't think anybody can give you any kind of definite answer on anything like that because as the Earth shifts, different veins are gonna close up and different veins are gonna open up. I think the focus should remain on the quality of water rather than the quantity.

Thank you for your comments. Please speak and spell your last name.

Ron Richardson, R-I-C-H-E-R-D-S-O-N. Just a couple questions. Did I understand correctly that the last pumpage was 14, whatever the denominator. The other question I had was mentioned for Mr. Goodhart that goes up and down and the south end's got more. Is the proposed data center... Will their wells be in the area that is currently viewed as the best water, not low, the highest, et cetera, et cetera?

Thank you for your comments. Madam Chair, if I could address a couple of those questions real quick. Go ahead. Public comment is closed. So the model will do predictive. The model will show where existing historical pumping has been done. The model will show water level declines. And I think that's what a lot of people are concerned about. It will show seasonal change as well because the water level does change seasonally throughout the season. So we see water levels jump, rebound, and come back and forth. Mr. Goodhart is 100% right. On the east side on the fan, above the highway, we have seen water levels rebound by as much as 18 feet. And we have seen water come out of old historic, no longer agricultural wells that are just flowing. So that is real, that's just rebound because we're not pumping as hard as we were for cotton and alfalfa. So as the water comes down the hill, there's a time delay. So yes, anyway. Mr. Fender, the pumpage inventory that the Division of Water Resources does includes all pumpage in the basin, whether it's in Nye or Clark County. As far as water that's flowing out into Inyo County, no, that would not be included in the pumpage inventory. However, in this letter, we are asking, we are requesting an estimate of both recharge, yield, and discharge. Discharge is the amount of water that's flowing out of one basin system into another, and that's the water that you're talking about. So it's not being ignored, but we cannot include pumpage from California in a Nevada inventory because we don't have authorities. Can those data be included in an estimate? Absolutely. And I think you have a good question and you propose a good problem that when we do get a representative from the state of Nevada down here, that would be one of the main questions that we would probably want to ask them is how can you incorporate that data from INYO so we have a better idea of what our discharge is. And Ms. Jackson, I apologize. I forgot your main question. Okay. And that's the end of public comment. And we have a motion, a second on the floor. Public comment is closed, and we would poll the board.

Mr. Miller?

Aye.

Mr. Goodhart? Aye. Mr. Foote? Aye. Mr. Jackson? Aye. Mr. Locke? Aye. Mrs. Williams? Aye.

The matter passes 6-0, unanimous.

Thank you.

Moving on to item number 14 for discussion only, discussion and deliberation. on a Nevada Divisional Water Resources newly approved extension of time regulations, effective July 1st, 2026, including updated requirements for filing of proof of completion of work and proof of application of water to beneficial use, revised extension forms, and guidance available to assist applicants with the new process. I'll briefly introduce this, and I'll hand it over to our former chair, Mr. Goodhart. Nevada Division of Water Resources recently changed the filing for proof of completion. These don't necessarily affect your domestic well owner, but if you are a water rights holder, this can severely impact the way that your water rights are maintained. So Mr. Goodheart is an expert on these matters, and I would turn it over to Mr. Goodheart to carry it for us.

Well, yeah, this is all applying to, you know, the Nevada's doctrine of use it or lose it. So, believe it or not, if you have agricultural water rights in Pahrump and you have it, you have to use it and you have to show beneficial use one out of every five years at the minimum. So for example, say for me, for example, I bought some land with a well with some 20 acre feet of agricultural rights. So I didn't really feel like putting it to beneficial use right away. So I just kept on filing an extension of time. Then all of a sudden, one day, One year they said, oh, that was denied. We forfeited your water rights. So I had to hire an attorney and said, well, give us some time because you kept on giving us an extension of time. I didn't see the necessity to pump it. So we got an extension of time and I put it in the main line, put in the well, put in the risers, put in the wheel line, hooked it up, you know, some vandalism done to electrical panel, got that fixed. planted it, seeded it, paid a guy to move the wheel lines around back and forth, and in six months pumped my 20 acre feet of water, which is what, seven million gallons? And I got my little crop of oats, which I cut, and I satisfied that beneficial use. So it's gonna be very difficult now just to keep on ag rights. And so what happens is they're kind of doing it because they hope a lot of people will give up and then they can just go ahead and forfeit those rights, take them off the table. And by sweeping a lot of these water rights off the table, they can help bring the balance, the basins back into balance. So they're very particular, and because of that, they had a lot of people that were trying to get, the state was trying to steal their water or take their water rights back, so they've gone through and they have some more careful documentation because a lot of times when they were protesting the water forfeiture through the governing judicial bodies, they said, well, you didn't really specify this, you didn't specify that, due process wasn't really followed, so they've come up with some more extensive documentation you have to complete every year. But the net effect is you still have use it or lose it. I've talked to the state repeatedly, if you're in a basin where you're at or above the usage near or above the perennial yield usage, And if your water rights on paper are more than what your perennial yield is, maybe they can suspend a use it or lose it doctrine, but they haven't done that yet. My deal was always like, why did I have to pump these seven million gallons of water to grow some oats I really could have done without? but that's still the way the laws on the books are, okay? So just to let you know, while we're all worried about conserving water, there's people that are being forced from the state to pump millions and millions and millions of gallons of water that they would be perfectly content to leave in the ground. So just a little deal, a little background for you folks.

Thank you, Vice Chair. I appreciate your wisdom and guidance on the item. If there's no other discussion from the board member? This is a discussion-only item, and it does not need to come before the public. But Madam Chair, if you'd like, or would you like me to proceed? Moving on to item number 15, for possible action. Discussion and deliberation with possible action to retract a report approved by the Nye County Water District Governing Board on May 26, 2026 on the issue of utility challenge lots that was developed through a public working group. I will give an explanation of this. This is my item. How do I put this? So we had a working group. So we formed a working group to address the issue of zombie lots, and we worked hard on it, and we put a lot of work from the public, from this board, not this liaison, but our alternate liaison. A lot of work went into the zombie lot report, and I personally put a lot of time, and I was really confident that it was ready to go. Exactly four days after the zombie lot report was approved by this body, divisional water resources pivoted 180 percent, 180 degrees, and made an absolute position change on me. And in my opinion, that position change so fundamentally changed the report that it's broken. And I could get into the weeds with you, unless someone on the body wants me to get into more depth onto why the report is so fundamentally broken. But what I would say is that the zombie lot issue continues to be an issue. It continues to be an untenable issue. And the zombie lot report, while I thought it was a good report, is incomplete. And my breakers are still blown. by the fact, yeah, and the fact that division has essentially, I'll just, you know, without getting too deep in the water here, division has decided that water haul is legal. And everything that I was told from way back 20 years I've been around water, that water haul for residential use was a non-permissive use. And the report was based on that foundational belief So when you change a foundational belief that's that major, right, then everything that you build up in the report is wrong. So it's my opinion, Board, that this report not be amended, that it not be, the working group not be reconvened. This thing needs to go in the round filing cabinet. And if this body chooses to convene a new working group, if you want the Water District, which I hope you don't, um if you wish for the manager to convene a new working group i would do that at your direction um and start with a different foundation and build from the ground up again i just think that when you change that type of and the backup speaks for itself i don't want to throw anybody under the bus and i don't want these are colleagues that i have at division i don't want to pin the tail on a donkey but You know, information, fundamental information changed from division and the report is no good. That's basically, and I would like, I agendize this as an action item because you approved it. It never made its way to the county, so it doesn't need to be retracted from the county, but I would prefer that an action item from this body kill it for good because it needs a stake in the heart.

I'd like to see, if I may, a letter from this board to the County Commission telling them that we're pulling, that we really were sabotaged and we still are being sabotaged and I couldn't be more upset. Those people were awful. Manipulative, lying, nasty. I experienced for 20 years, I experienced watching water hole. I watched people die because infection. They didn't transfer their water properly. One of those people was a brother-in-law. It's a long, slow death. It's a dirty process, Waterhall. There's no health department overseeing. It's handled badly by every county that has it. And I don't think it's in anybody's best interest at all. And thank you, your manager, for all the time and effort for doing this report. The man did an amazing report. You did. You did a fabulous report. It was amazing. And the rug was pulled out from under it. And I'm disgusted. And I do think that somewhere along the line, when somebody does get very sick because of it here in this county, then I think there should be a lawsuit against the state for allowing it. Waterhole's not good for health.

Are there any other comments from the board members?

Yes, so having served on that board and putting the time in, I feel bad for everybody who actually did and we based it on something that we were told not to be true later or being redacted. I do agree with you. I think we should remove that and You know, the next item we do One of the recommendations was to try and work with Great Base and see if there's a way that we can do some private partnership with them in doing something that might help some of these lots and start moving some water. And so I think at least we're not getting rid of the entire thing. One of the ideas that came out of that we're still pursuing. So it's not a complete total loss. It's just not the report that we put our time and effort into. I would like to motion to just kill the report or redact the report completely. And we can send a letter if the manager chooses to just let the Board of County Commission know that based on the fact that the report does not have the right information in it, we're choosing not to send it to them.

Staff is clear.

I'll second.

We have a first.

A second.

We have a second.

May I make a comment, Chair?

Thank you.

Yeah, very, very enlightening, since that's not where even the county was based on state regulations from a different state engineer, is where we're at and where we're sitting right now. We have a new state engineer who interprets this NRS differently than we had been told as a county and now to this board. I do want to tell you that I had a conversation with Hortsford's staff. He was here like last Saturday and Koenig and I went and met with him and a lot, a lot of people were there at the meeting just, he were just spitballing and talking about the different projects that Hortsford has helped us with and one of his staffers said that A congressman has heard about this, and he wants to work with the Corps of Engineers to try and fix the problem for the zombie lots. And I said, good luck, thank you, and please. And so I don't know what else can be done other than perhaps an encouraging letter from this board to Hortsford himself that you would appreciate the help with the zombie lots is the only thing I can see that could potentially come out of this as an additional agenda item in the future. Thank you, Chair.

I will place that on the agenda.

Do you have a motion and a second? All aboard. Mr. Miller?

Aye.

Mr. Goodhart?

Madam Chair, before we finish, this is an action item. We need to open it to public comment.

Doesn't mean there has to be any.

Is there anyone from the public who would like to comment on this item? Seeing none, Madam Chair, please proceed.

Mr. Goodhart, Mr. Font, Mr. Jackson. Aye. Mr. Locke. Aye. Mrs. Williams, aye.

Mr. Raymiston, aye.

Thank you. If I heard that right, we moved a little awkwardly through that. Was it a 6-0? Yes. Mr. Miller, did you get an opportunity to vote on that item? Yes, I did. OK, thank you. And before we proceed, who made the second there?

I did.

Thank you, Mr. Jackson. The item passes 6-0, unanimous. Moving on to item number 16 for possible action discussion, deliberation, and possible action to designate and authorize one member of the Nye County Water District Governing Board to engage with Great Basin Water Company to explore opportunities for the Governing Board to assist in the expansion of utility water lines within the company's per-rump service tariff and to report findings and recommendations, excuse me, back to the governing board for future consideration. This item was brought forward through the working group of the zombie lot report that we just killed. Mr. Locke was the ramrod there and I believe he could help speak to this item better than myself and this is an action item so we will need public comment and we will need an affirmative vote from the board. Please proceed, Mr. Locke.

The idea with this is there is a number of streets in Pahrump, in the center of town more so, where we have water coming down one side of the street and we have water coming down the other side of the street, but there's no connection between those two lines for, say, 20 lots. Not a super healthy way to run a utility with dead-end lines like that, assuming that maybe some of those people are snowbirds and they don't come back that water kind of sits a little stagnant in there it gets a little bit of flow but it doesn't so to try and connect those lines is the easiest way for us to move forward and try and make some of these utility challenge lots not challenged anymore. The question is, do we only go after ones that have water and put in septics? That's the cheapest version for us to do. Those are typically 100 feet across. You get two lots every one you do. So assuming we wanted to do 20 lots and we didn't have to pay the engineering fees and we didn't have to pay all this, maybe the number's $200,000 to do that. What will typically happen is if we put that $200 spread across all those lots, a lot that was utility challenge that was only worth X is now worth X plus that $10,000 that they're gonna have to pay back to the water board for us doing this. So that was one way to do it. You can do a special improvement district which they have to pay it in their taxes every year And that takes a period of time, so we wouldn't get a payback as quickly. So there's a number of ways to skin this cat, so to say. And I don't have the numbers to see, could the board approve $200,000 to show that we're doing something in the county and do that? Based on our budget, we probably could. If we get that $200,000 back, my guess is if you do it in the center of town on nice streets, you're going to get half of those lots probably built on pretty quickly. So we would get a lot of the money back. If we can get it back quick enough, maybe we can roll it into another and roll it into another. Initially, the ones that we're looking at are being – chosen well let's say they gave me six and three of them didn't work because they weren't passing enough houses it was a line they wanted to connect that they had done some research on so it's probably down to three and we still haven't got numbers on those yet but the idea is if there's a way that the water board can help push this stuff forward without using too much of our funds and having a way for us to get our funds back so that it actually works because The way the utilities work, progress has to be paid by those that want it done. The utility can't go do that. Now, if NDEP came in and said, well, that's a real health hazard, then they could force their hand. But they haven't done that in the 15 years that I've seen these lines sit like this. So I don't think NDEP's pushing that. so it's something that i don't have the answers for yet and once i have something that looks like i could show the board then i will show it and you'll all see the same thing that that i'm seeing and you know we're gonna then have to make a decision if we think it makes sense for this board then maybe look at something too or if they hooked up to it they would be

Oh, you'd owe the whole cost then once they hooked up, or even that improvement would be paid off over a number of years?

Yeah, the whole cost would come back. It's just how quickly it comes back and what method that could happen. I mean, if we're successful in doing it, there might be a way to do it bigger where there's a bond or something floated to start doing this. We have to look at that. But first we need a successful run to prove that it even works.

If I could, Madam Chair. So as we get ready for public comment, for me, first and foremost, having a looped water system is really important. So I know part of your rationale is to help these zombie lots, but it's equally as important for water quality having that.

I thought I was close enough.

I'd ask you if you wanted me to repeat it, but I already know the answer. The loop water systems are important. Dead-end lines, as you said, is really bad for water quality.

They will not let them put them in anymore. These are lines that have been there for a long time. Utility is not allowed to do that.

And I've experienced that in my career. So it's important to get out there and loop those. So from that standpoint alone, the water quality is really important that we get involved in that, I think. I think it has an additional benefit for others that can hook up and then we can recoup that money. So I think it's a really good idea.

Any comments? Mr. Miller, any comments?

None.

Thank you. Okay, now I do.

Where are the three locations that you think might be possible? Is it in the center of town? You don't have to give me streets. No, they're in the center of town.

There's one in Calvary Unit 11 right off of Basin Street that is very small lots, so it's where the affordable housing would go because they're tiny homes. The lots are very inexpensive. That is one that... No, no, no, above basin.

I want to get precise.

Just behind the county buildings, behind the horse arena. That's one where you get, now you have water and sewer, so it's calculating the numbers. It's seeing what's the biggest bang for the buck that we can get, and that's what we're looking at.

Thank you. Thank you. Just another follow-up question.

I've been coming.

Just another quick follow-up. I'm assuming we can work with the county finance to come up with the financing options, or is that just something we do ourselves? Okay, all right, thanks.

But eventually we could possibly do it larger. If we can get the county to back a SID, if we can put this onto property taxes, then... That's something that it'll make it much easier and we could actually go, yeah, we could float a bond into maybe five streets. And then with those.

Is the mechanism there to put it on the property taxes?

It is, it is, but it would have to be approved and it would have to be.

Special Improvement District, SID.

Yeah, I mean, normally that would come with a subdivision. They would put it in when they're doing the subdivision or doing something like that.

It's actually pretty common to do an improvement district for these types of projects.

Public comment?

You could call for it.

Anybody like to speak on this item?

Doug Blackstock, B-L-A-C-K, S-T-O-C-K. We talked about this when we had our meeting. No, we didn't have a meeting. That's gone, right? It's . But the only thing I want to make sure in this part, in the technical part and the weeds, and I said this on our last meeting, the fiasco that Great Basin had when they had their water main break, I don't have a lot of confidence in the engineering. That never should have happened the way it did. Now to fall back to this, I'd certainly hope not. I know you have the expertise. I don't want a lot of four inch lines connected. That means there's no hydrants or improper hydrants and they should be at least six inch to eight inch and looping correctly in all the facilities. So again, that's in the weeds. We're not there yet. I do approve of this. I think it's a good thing to have around the whole city because Looped water is the best water you can possibly have. And I know nobody flushes anymore. If they do, it's very, very seldom because it's not here. We stopped doing it when I was in the business because it was just wasting water. But I know basins are being bought, great basins are being bought. Hopefully, it's a little bit better. But all in all, I agree with it. I just hope the technical part and connecting pipelines are like they should be.

That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Doug. Yeah, so the good thing is now we have five companies to choose from to bid these things out. So there is a better bidding process for this so we can get a tighter number. Please speak and spill. They don't let you hook up to four-inch lines anymore. You actually have to extend to six-inch if a fire hydrant is further than 400 feet away. Proceed.

Teresa Reddle, R-E-D-L. When you said that property taxes increase, I don't know anything about how that works. Is it everybody in my county's property taxes go up or just in that district? Because my property taxes tripled from last year. So I'm a little concerned if I have to go get a job to get out of retirement and go back to work because I don't like when my property taxes keep going up.

It would only be on the street that has the utilities put on. So it would only be those lots.

Thank you very much.

I want to look at that tax bill that tripled. Yeah, I would like to look at that.

Take that up with the assessor. You can bring that back around.

I'm easy to find. I'd like to look at that bill. We would seek a motion from the board. Excuse me, right. We would seek a designee.

I would certainly recommend Michael.

I'll second that.

I met the new owner of Great Basin, and he's a very nice gentleman. I met him at the private well owners meeting, and he spoke with the people there. Very nice man. Michael? It's all yours.

No, we've got a motion.

We have a first and a second on the floor. We've sought public comment. We would pull the board.

Mr. Miller? Aye. Mr. Godehut? Aye. Mr. Font? Aye. Mr. Jackson? Aye. Mrs. Williams? Mr. Locke?

I'll abstain.

Mrs. Williams, yes.

Sorry. The matter passes 5-0 with one abstention. Moving on to item number 17, presentation, update from Beck Environmental and Nye County Water District staff on the status, progress, and key milestones of programs funded through grant revenues. This item was asked to be placed on every agenda by Mr. Locke and Beck Environmental has very graciously been providing very detailed reports. I believe the backup speaks for itself. However, we have Ms. Evendy Stewart-Severt here from Beck Environmental to answer any questions. However, I would like to give a quick brief update on where we are on the project status of these five grants that we have before you. This is on page four of your backup. The Nevada Department of Environmental Protection integrated source water protection plan which evidently was key Instrumental player in is complete. This report says it's ongoing because I think there's still some housekeeping to be done But for the most part we're done right for the most part we're done.

There is Implementation that is still being done.

Okay Moving down the line with the water smart water recycling desalination grant is done. So that's kind of dead and It is dead. The third one here is the Water Spark Applied Science FYI 2003 Basin 162 grant. This is the model update that's being conducted by Desert Research Institute, Nye County geoscientist John Klinke and my office. They are wrapping that up. We did get an extension and that model update will be delivered to the public no later than June of 27. We are almost there. We're going to start seeing some outputs. Susie's very excited about it. I'm excited to see some outputs moving on. The fourth one here is a Tamaris grant. The grant is dead, so it doesn't it needs to be in the summary, but. um it is is pretty much not not existent i'm looking forward to working with janie to try to spin something up and see if we can come up with something new the last one the fifth one here is the water smart planning and design grant for fiscal year 2023 2024 this is the rib grant work is ongoing we've been working with beck environmental department of interior this Rib Grant has been extremely laborious and complicated, and because there is a lot of environmental, cultural, tortoise, cactus work, it has been a real heavy lift. You all approved an FAQ with a company to design this up to three ribs. They submitted a proposal, and upon receipt of that proposal, it was shared with Beck Environmental's experts, as well as Public Works, where it sits now. However, before it got there, through guidance from Beck Environmental and Ms. Christensen, the first proposal was basically rejected. And we have requested radical changes because the numbers weren't matching up to what our expert, which is Beck Environmental, was expecting. The numbers were not jiving. I am not an expert. I have never designed a detention basin before. So I have no real experiential background to say that these numbers are way out of whack. That's why we have experts. And our experts evaluated it. We went back to the contractor. We said, you need to make some adjustments. They've made those adjustments. Beck Environmental has re-evaluated the adjusted proposal, and it is now with Public Works. Should all parties be happy with that, that proposal will then come back to you at your next meeting. So I don't have any clear report on, because that's still ongoing. If you have some questions about any of these grants or specificities that I can't answer, Evendy is here to answer them for you. But I think that gives a pretty good round table of where we are with our grant work. If the board, this is only a presentation, so no action is necessary, but if the board has any questions for either of us, we're here for you.

Yeah, I have a question. So in layman's terms, they came back with a really, really high number to do the design of one rib, which is essentially a hole in the ground designed, again, A lot of times they'll do that based on this being a grant, based on a lot of things, and I think you pushing back was, or Beck Environmental pushing back is the way to go about it. At the same time, if that same company comes back to us at half the price, I'm very leery of that company to begin with, because if they were trying to see what they could get in the first stab, and then the sudden oh well you took off this little scope so i can cut it by two hundred thousand dollars i'd rather i'd rather search out a i would tell beck to search out a different company and tell them that we're paying attention because i know i have a pretty good idea with this engineering cost nowadays with what we're able to do with ai and what they're able to do with models and it's In two years, we'll find these costs to be one-fifth of what people are doing now. There's going to be this period before it gets compressed, but it's going to get compressed and these numbers are going to come down.

So I need to respond to that and give as good a clarity as I can. You have selected a contractor. We went through an evaluation process. They submitted their responses to the RFQ. We evaluated them. You selected them. So there is a fiscal process. Again, my experience doesn't allow me to know what all of the steps are necessary. I do believe Bob is acting in good faith. I've had good communications with the contractor, GCW. I believe their principal engineer, to be honest. However, if this board is unpleased with what comes back in the modified proposal, there is a process by which a new contractor may be selected. And because I haven't gone through the process, there is procedure that must be gone through after a contractor has been selected. And we will have to basically say that through market evaluation that their proposal is exorbitant based upon other findings through other pricings. Now, I would lean on the Nye County finance team, the guidance of Beck Environmental, and the grants team, because this is a big nexus, right? We've got a contractor, we've got the Bureau of Interior, we have Beck Environmental, yourself, the county public works. There are a lot of players involved. There's a lot of people sitting at the table. And because this is federal money, every single box has to be checked exactly in the right order, or it comes back on me. Because it's my name at the bottom of that grant as the project manager. If this doesn't get executed, it'll be because I failed, not because of what you guys did. It's because I didn't execute and follow through. So I would ask for your patience on it, and we're going through the process. And I think the pushback that Michael mentioned is absolutely, I'm very thankful for Beck's and Eileen's wisdom, guidance, and experience. So that's where we are. I hope to have the new proposal before you in October.

If it doesn't go through, it's not always due to failure. It could be due to it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make financial sense. It doesn't work for this water board. So there are other reasons that things don't happen.

And you make a great point. We do have an agreement with GCW where our point of no return, if you guys know what I'm talking about, is when we make that first drawdown. And if you as a body decide that this grant is no good for you, then we need to make that decision prior to that first drawdown. It will not look good on us if I have to go and defund this through the Department of Interior because they've worked their asses off to make huge accommodations for us. It's still a hairball. Even with everyone working their butts off, it is still a hairball. And I can't honestly tell you today that it's no good for us. But when that day comes, I will be honest with this board and give you my fair opinion that this is no good. Ultimately, the responsibility of whether or not we proceed will be up to you. But I'm going to always give you my best estimate. And right now, we're still waiting. We're still looking at it. It's still evolving.

I would appreciate it if you could show us both the bids, the original one and this second one with the change of scope. Staff is clear. Thank you. I did have a quick follow-up.

Daniel, I don't think it's just you. We have to be careful because if you have to send a grant back, they're not going to look very favorably for future grants either. So it's bigger than just that. So we've got to be really careful with that. That's 100% accurate, Mr. Fott.

Does the board have any questions about our grants or any detail that you would like that Ms. Evendy can supply? Seeing none, I think you're good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Evendy. So this is a presentation item and is not required to be open to the public comment. But Madam Chair, if it is your pleasure, you may do so.

So any comments from the public?

Seeing none, moving on. For possible action, consideration of minutes to prior meetings, review, correct, and or accept. The presented minutes of previous meetings of the Nye County Water District Governing Board. This is an action item. It must go to the public, but the minutes as presented for our directly preceding meeting of May 26 are in your backup. If the board has any questions or we would seek a motion.

I motion to accept the minutes.

I'll second. Mr. Jackson, second.

We have a first and a second on the floor. Madam Chair, I'd ask that you open this to the public.

Any public comment?

Seeing no public comment, we'd pull the board. Oh, sorry. Come on, Leah. A little quick on the draw there.

Oh, God. It's so hot outside. Excuse me, ma'am. Leah Aldridge, A-L-D-R-I-D-G-E. Thank you. Yeah, I asked a couple questions earlier. I didn't get a response to, is there a contingency plan for either this company or Nye County if we run out of water, getting water to the residents? Is there any kind of contingency plan at this time? I don't know.

Leah, can I circle back to that in just one moment? Sure. Okay, because we're just on the minutes right now. We're just approving the previous minutes.

I thought you just called general public comment.

No, ma'am.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I walked in, so sorry. But we'll remember what you said, so you don't have to.

I wrote it down. Okay, so we have a first, a second, and we would pull the board.

Mr. Miller? Aye. Mr. Goodhart? Aye. Mr. Ford?

I will abstain because I wasn't here.

Mr. Jackson? Aye. Mr. Locke? Aye. Mrs. Williams? Aye. 6-0.

The item passes 5-0 with one abstention.

Sorry.

Okay, moving on to item number 19, supporting reports. I have nothing that I haven't already delivered to you or through the course of the meeting. Ms. Strickland, do you have anything for the board?

I do, and it's gonna surprise you.

Go ahead.

All right, so let me see if I can get this convoluted thing that happened to the board so they understand. As you know, whenever there is water movement that involves the county or an individual, It is, the county is notified and it's published in the newspaper and all the good things so we might know what's going on. Well, I got a story for you. I received an email from, through staff from RCI, that's Resource Concepts, Inc. And it was a letter to Nye County and Mineral County. And it was dated July 6th. And staff sent it to myself and Travis Smith, Wagner, and assistant manager. And that's the extent of how far it goes. None of you are made aware of any of these. This particular letter was dated the 6th by RCI. We received it. It was distributed on the 15th. And comments were due on the 18th. Well, the 15th is a Thursday. The comments were due on Saturday and were closed on Friday. So a little hard to get comments back. And I'm all of a sudden going, what the heck's going on? Our county hasn't been notified any other way except for this letter from RCI that water was not only moving, it was moving from Nye County to Mineral County, right? Crossing basins, okay. So you guys are as confused as I am, right? So the basins that are involved is Enyo County Basin 135 and Monte Cristo Valley Basin 136. I will provide all this backup for you, sir. Pilot Metals is the receiver of these water rights and it's 1,200 acre feet. It's not a little amount. And we have just ran out of time, according to state regulations, to even provide a protest. So I'm losing it right about now. And I've sent notifications to Travis, who took Darren Tuck's place as superintendent, and he is not up on water. That's my first problem. He's got nothing wrong. We all received it at the same time. I put up warning signs. We're in trouble. We can't respond. We don't have enough time. What do we do? I was fortunate enough to be your liaison for the Central Nevada Water Authority. I brought it up at the Central Nevada Water Authority. That's what I'm reporting on right now. I'll read to you what So we had a Central Nevada Regional Water Authority meeting today and discussed this. We do need to protest this and look at BLM did protest. BLM had a protest. Look at their protest. I don't like that we are late but the letter from RCI was dated July 6th. We distributed on the 15th and comments were due on the 18th, a Saturday no less. I don't think that was enough time and we don't work Fridays. There are two NRSs that we discovered from Jeff Fontaine, NRS 533.363 and NRS 533.368 that addresses counties. It says we can comment no sooner than three weeks. That will help. This is a strange one because of the inner basin transfer. Uh, I need you to get the water inch, our water engineer on this place is what I'm telling Travis. Also one of the CNR, uh, w a board members said the Tonopah times said it was a public hearing coming up. We never did discover that. And so I never did find that announcement. And so we had this discussion at Central Nevada Water Authority, and it was found out that the letter was never sent to Nye County from Division of Water Resources. They sent it to Esmeralda County. There was not an involved county at all. So now they have to send us a letter saying that, yeah, that we should have been in that train, and we weren't. So now we're going to get a letter from DWR, and we don't react until we get the letter. We get the opportunity to protest now. So we do have the opportunity to protest. And I do not want to hurt Assister County economically if this board thinks that maybe, but what I see is a breakdown in the system that's not only just DWR made a mistake, I just got lucky. You know, people say, oh, I don't know why Deborah Strickland, you know, she does water rights. Well, this is the why. The system is broken in that you guys aren't notified and I'm not going to be here in five more months. Something needs to change and I need your board to look at what needs to change here. Someone needs from this board or all the board members need to be notified whenever there's water movement within Knight County in case you think it needs to be protested. First off. Second off, I'm very thankful that Central Nevada Regional Water Authority meeting, we talked about this and that on the agenda was their resolution that they rewrite occasionally. We rewrote their resolution at that time so Central Nevada Water Authority can protest for us every time as long as they have protests once the chair, the vice chair of Central Nevada Water Authority and a county representative have agreed that a protest needs to be done. So they can react faster than you can react is what I'm afraid of. I'm not sure you meet often enough that you can react with a protest. I don't see that you have the authority at this time to react to Nye County's protests. You haven't been put in the loop. So something needs to change. And I hope you can appreciate that because it's not fair that you will not end up with somebody else that knows water like I know water on the Board of County Commissioners. So that's my story.

That's a dramatic story.

I thought so.

And I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. The first thing that comes to my mind, if I may, Madam Chair, is that your water guy needs to interface with my office. If Travis is being... If Travis is getting data that's not, if he's not up to speed on the water yet, that's what I'm here for. The statement that you made that our frequency of meetings will often put us unable to respond, that doesn't mean that I can't respond with the chair and the vice chair. Get their direction and then authorize the central Nevada regional water authority to act on our behalf. So I think that you got it pegged, but what we need to do is close that breach between public works. Who's receiving these notices, right? Because division is notifying the county. The county is pushing that to Travis. He doesn't know what to do with it. That's what I'm here for. If he can share that with me and we can get some rapid response, then I can consult with the chair or the vice chair. We have a lot of experience here. And then we can get to Jeff and get that response turned around in 24 or 48 hours. It's not going to affect the situation with them not notifying us properly. And the fact that they that should put everything back to square one. Excellent. Excellent. So.

We're waiting for a letter from DWR that we should have gotten. That letter was dated April 7th.

As a Nye County Water Board, we should be able to have Teresa Dix send a letter to the state engineer. in no uncertain terms does an I County Water Board need to be notified when any movement of water such as this, they can still notify the county.

All of us.

But once you put them on notice that you need to be notified, then it's going to come directly to your office and most likely certified. And so now you're going to know it. And the reason that you want to know that, and we can have Teresa put together a standard protest. You protest every movement.

Every movement, every time. You can always withdraw.

Yeah, the reason you protest is so you have standing in a lawsuit later. If you don't protest, you have no standing. So if you were to go look up Great Basin, protest every water movement, every single one of them, even the ones that they're telling the people, because they want to have standing later if the people don't do something. Tonopah Public Utilities, protest everything that goes on in their basin. Regardless of whether it's it's right or wrong.

So I would suggest we have Teresa put a letter we open an emergency item, please I think this has just become an emergency so you can give direction to staff if you will please chair if you do not mind Please do so Manager, I'm gonna open up an emergency item number eight for possible action and this item would be to deliver direction for the expenditure of funds to direct the legal staff of the Nye County Water District Governing Board to protest all movements of water outside from Nye County to outside of Nye County and to initiate protests without contact from my office or the board to engage in a protest action so that we can get enough time to look at it. Does that satisfy you?

A letter needs to go from her to DWR saying that we need to be a notification, a body that gets notified under our chapter being the Nye County Water Board. We need to be notified of this. It doesn't change the fact that they notify the commissioners. They notify 10 other people. We need to be notified. And then we'll just have a standard protest letter.

They don't notify the commissioners. They notify me.

Yeah, well, whoever they notify.

They're going to come up with somebody else with the commission.

Yeah, we can be added as a notification to that. Staff is clear. And coming from our attorney, it's going to hold more water to them because she's gonna know what to tell them. She's done this before, she'll understand.

So we have a standing budgetary item for Ms. Sticks at $35,000. We've never gotten close to that. I don't believe that any new agenda item for expenditure of funds, we'll just have to write it out and see, you know what I mean, once we activate her in this activity.

This is just gonna be a standard boilerplate. It's a letter. They're gonna get it, they're gonna just do a standard boilerplate protest.

Okay. You know how lawyers cost. You know what they cost. No, no. We're going to make sure that it's the standard protest. And the letter that she initially sent to DWR is not a lot of time.

Okay. The other quick question that I have is, are you going to do it in regards to all water right transfers or just? are just one from one basin to another or from one county to another. I'm hearing different people referring to different thresholds. You're saying any water right movement anywhere in Nye County.

That Nye County is the permit holder. That Nye County is the permit holder.

Well, you're saying, yeah, any water right within Nye County.

Well, you're not wrong. What if something like this happened to Gabs? What if you are a Nye County Water District Governing Board?

Right.

It gives you thought, doesn't it?

He's saying any water right to be moved. Like, is there a limitation on the volume of water being moved?

I mean, what happens if a neighbor wants to transfer a water right 200 feet for four acre feet? Are we going to protest that?

You want the water permits that are owned by townships and counties, right?

I don't think so necessarily because one of these.

That's the ones you want to protest.

Well, we could have protested if there was a privately held water right in Nye County that now is going to be moved over to the adjoining county. It shouldn't just be water rights that are owned by Nye County or the township.

Yeah, there's new regulations that you can move water from one basin to another. Correct. It scares me to death.

This 1,200 acres that you speak of, that's not municipal water or county water. That's private water.

No, it's county water. County water.

Madam Chairman, so I personally like where Michael started with this conversation is let's have our attorneys send them a letter so that they notify us.

As long as we get notified, we have time now to figure out what those other parameters are, but we need to get on that list.

Thank you.

We need to get on that list. Yeah, so we're trying to do two things at once here. Let's do the simple one. Let's have our attorneys send a letter to DWR demanding notice of what happened here doesn't happen again.

Agreed.

And then we can put together the parameters of which we want our protest. And you can ask the attorney, how is that typically done? They will understand exactly what you're asking them because they work for a lot of people that protest every water right. So why don't you come back to us with how that's typically done. In the meantime, you're going to get a lot of certified mail to your office.

Understood. This is an action item. It is under an emergency, so I believe staff is clear. Unless you have further direction for me, we could seek first and begin the process of closing out this action item.