So the big news in Nevada yesterday was the sentencing of O.J. Simpson, right?
Or perhaps the indictment of Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki?
Or the continuing marital woes of that ersatz hydrologist, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (shown to the left in his official gubernatorial garb), and First Lady Dawn Gibbons?
WRONG!
"The Juice" may be joined in prison by water administrators from the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District (TCID) in northern Nevada, who have been indicted in a water scam.
What ? A scam? In Nevada?
Friend and Nevada WaterWonk Alan McKay sent me this article from the Reno Gazette-Journal. Seems like the two top administrators of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District and two other employees, along with the District itself, have been indicted by a grand jury on charges of falsifying flow records and altering flow meters in an effort to gain the District more flow credits to sell on the open market, partly to pay for the District's litigation with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.
From Martha Bellisle's story:
The Truckee-Carson Irrigation District and four of its Fallon employees were indicted Wednesday on 10 charges of conspiring to defraud the federal government, making false claims and falsifying records in a scam to secure Sierra water and gain credits from the federal government. David Overvold, 58, project manager for the irrigation district based in Fallon; Lyman McConnell, 64, the district's lawyer; Shelby Cecil, 65; and John Baker, 63, manipulated or disabled water meters, changed numbers on water-use reports and submitted inflated figures from 2000 to 2005 to secure additional water credits from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the indictment said. Part of the money earned through their alleged water diversion scheme was used to pay a civil lawsuit won by the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe, which had sued the district in 1995 for illegally diverting water that should have gone to Pyramid Lake and caused it to drop by 70 feet, the indictment said.
The TCID operates the irrigation system for the Newlands Project and distributes water to landowners, ranchers and farmers in the Fallon, NV, area, about 50 miles east of Reno. The Newlands Project was the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's first project, undertaken in the early 1900s shortly after its creation.
More from the story:
"The object of this conspiracy was for TCID to fraudulently obtain from the Bureau of Reclamation incentive credits in the form of thousands of acre-feet of water," the indictment said.
To do this, the district used false numbers for the amount of water it delivered and maintained for irrigation from 2000 to 2005, the indictment said.
At times, they wrote in higher numbers for the amount of water delivered to certain landowners, when no or little water was delivered, the indictment said. They also manipulated water meters to record more water than was flowing, and turned in inflated figures for water delivered, the document said.
The fake numbers suggested that they met efficiency levels, which triggered the granting of incentive credits, the indictment said.
Looks like I will need a new category: "Criminal Actions".
Moral: calibrate your flow meters and gaging stations.
Alan went on to comment that times are not good for TCID, as homeowners in Fernley, NV, may file suit over a levee breach that caused flooding earlier this year.
"Flush twice. It's a long way to Reno." -- unofficial motto of Truckee, CA
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