## Facts

- The Las Vegas Valley Water District, later known as the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), filed multiple applications with Nevada’s State Engineer to appropriate and divert large quantities of groundwater from several eastern Nevada basins for municipal use in the Las Vegas area.
- Hundreds of parties filed protests, including White Pine County, asserting that the proposed new pumping and export would interfere with existing appropriative rights and harm basin resources.
- After administrative hearings, Nevada State Engineer Tim Wilson approved SNWA’s requested appropriations totaling more than 80,000 acre-feet per year.
- White Pine County and other protestants sought judicial review in Nevada’s Seventh Judicial District Court, challenging the approvals as unlawful and not supported by the administrative record.
- The district court reversed Wilson’s approval and remanded, finding (1) the affected groundwater resources were already fully appropriated to longstanding water rights and (2) the resources would never reach equilibrium (outflows matching inflows) under SNWA’s plan; the court characterized Wilson’s approach as arbitrary and capricious.
- On remand and after further hearings, Wilson denied SNWA’s applications.
- Even after those post-remand denials, Wilson and SNWA sought rehearing of the district court’s earlier decision reversing the original approvals.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court should grant rehearing of its prior order reversing the State Engineer’s approvals of SNWA’s groundwater export applications.
2. Whether the State Engineer acted arbitrarily and capriciously by approving new appropriations where the evidence showed full appropriation and no sound basis to conclude the basins would reach equilibrium under the proposed pumping plan.
3. Whether Nevada water law allows a new groundwater appropriation when the record shows no unappropriated water is available without interference with existing rights.

## Decision

- The district court denied rehearing and left in place its prior order reversing the State Engineer’s approvals and remanding the matter to the State Engineer.
- The court’s prior determinations—that the basins were fully appropriated and that the approval lacked a supportable equilibrium basis—remained controlling in the district court’s disposition.

## Legal Principles

- On judicial review of State Engineer decisions, a court may set aside an approval that is arbitrary and capricious or unsupported by the administrative record.
- A groundwater appropriation requires a record-based determination that unappropriated water is available and that the proposed use will not conflict with existing rights or otherwise violate statutory permitting standards.
- Findings that a basin is fully appropriated require a reasoned explanation, supported by evidence, for how additional withdrawals can occur without unacceptable interference with senior rights.
- Agency reliance on an equilibrium assumption can be rejected where the record indicates continued depletion rather than stabilization under the approved pumping regime.
- Rehearing is properly denied when the moving parties do not show a basis to change the court’s prior legal conclusions or otherwise justify revisiting the prior reversal and remand order.

## Conclusion

White Pine County v. Wilson is a Nevada district-court judicial-review case involving SNWA’s proposed groundwater exports from rural basins to Las Vegas. The district court reversed the State Engineer’s approvals as arbitrary and capricious—finding the basins fully appropriated and the equilibrium rationale unsupported—remanded for further proceedings, and later denied a rehearing request after the State Engineer denied the applications on remand.


White Pine County v. Wilson, Case No. CV-1204049 (2020)