Water levels a concern for TCID

A less than filling runoff has created a water shortage in the Lahontan Valley.

At Friday’s Truckee-Carson Irrigation District Board of Director’s meeting, water flows were a hot topic.

Deputy Project Manager Walt Winder encouraged Carson Division users not to waste any water as the storage levels at Lahontan Reservoir are low. As of Tuesday, the reservoir carried 108,723 acre-feet of water.

Winder said the 75 percent water allocation for the Carson Division is still on track, but the district will be very close to that number.

“We don’t have any to lose this year,” Winder said.

He said water flows have been struggling the past 30 days but have been exceeding certain stage readings along the Truckee Canal. The issue with the readings is caused by moss build-up, which the district cannot use chemicals to combat due to fish planting by the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

For now, TCID will keep up its regular methods of moss gathering, although options such as chaining and planting moss-eating carp were discussed.

Winder said chaining is an issue because of the width of the canal, and the carp are expensive to buy.

As a result of the low flows, electrical output from Lahontan Dam is down. Winder reported the dam was generating a combined 2,777 kilowatts of electricity from the dam and 524 kW from 26-foot Drop.

“We are nowhere near the max,” he added. “We are only releasing 560 (cubic-feet per second of water).”

In other TCID news —

Project Manager Rusty Jardine updated the board on two ongoing legal matters.

Jardine said he will attend a session in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals about recoupment. He said TCID may be awarded under 400,000 acre-feet of water stemming from the action of the court.

The other issue is the decision from District Court regarding a ruling on the E-Line Canal.

The Friends of the E-Line Canal, represented by Fallon attorney Martin Crowley, sued TCID, Nancy Magnusson, Howard and Betty Wheeler and Churchill County on Feb. 3, 2012.

TCID directors previously unanimously voted to uphold a gate permit to Magnusson to block a road along the canal. On Friday, Jardine said the land is on an easement, which allowed TCID to uphold the permit.

He said the district would appeal the ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court.

Richard Grimes, supervisory realty specialist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Office, reported the USFWS sold two parcels of land at its recent land sale.

A 30-acre plot on Plumb Lane was sold for $72,551, and an 80-acre property in Stillwater was bought for more than $57,000.