Water rights aren’t the most exciting area of law, but they are an unavoidable part of life in the Southwest. The Supreme Court of Nevada today ruled that an application filed by the Las Vegas Water District to tap groundwater in rural counties was not covered in a 2003 law that exempts such applications from a requirement that the state engineer rule on them within one year. The lower court will now have to decide whether to require the water district to refile or to allow the original filing to stand but to order the state engineer to hear new protests on the application. If the district is required to hold new hearings on the water that it has already been granted, there’s no way of knowing how long it could take or if the engineer would approve the application the second time around.
