Beatty weighs granting water rights to Anglo Gold Ashanti

Beatty Water and Sanitation District (BWSD) board meetings usually draw a tiny audience, but after scrambling to put out extra chairs in their small office space for their last meeting, the board moved their Oct. 16 meeting to the Beatty Community Center.

This proved wise as the consideration of the sale or lease of water rights for mining activity drew an even larger audience than last time.

Many in the audience were employees of Anglo Gold Ashanti (AGA), which is seeking to acquire water rights from the BWSD, but a good number of local residents also attended.

The mining company is seeking water rights held by BWSD in two different basins — Sarcobatus Flat and Oasis Valley.

The BWSD purchased land with 500 acre-feet per annum of water rights in Sarcobatus Flat in 1995 as a possible additional source of water when the Barrick Bullfrog Mine was in operation, and the resulting increase in Beatty’s population was putting a strain on the town’s existing water resources.

When that mine closed, Barrick gifted its own 1,500-ft.-deep well to Beatty, effectively doubling the town’s water supply. That well is in the northern end of the Amargosa Basin.

Meanwhile, Beatty has never used the Sarcobatus Flat water, and the BWSD has been notified by the State Water Engineer’s Office that it will lose the rights if it cannot show beneficial use by May of next year.

BWSD Chair Frank Jarvis explained the situation in the meeting, and pointed out that the cost of building a 30-mile pipeline to bring water from Sarcobatus Flat to Beatty was prohibitive. BWSD Manager Joel Murphy said that building just approximately three-fifths of a mile of such a pipeline is estimated to cost $1.6 million dollars.

AGA is seeking all of BWSD’s Sarcobatus Flat water rights. The company would prefer an outright purchase, but is open to a lease. Some of the members of the public who spoke at the meeting favored the lease so that the town would retain the rights after the life of the mine.

AGA is also seeking to lease 400 acre-feet per annum of water rights in the Oasis Valley basin where the BWSD holds 900 acre-feet of rights.

Beatty currently uses about 90 acre-feet, about one-tenth of the Oasis Valley rights, getting most of its water from the former Barrick well.

Although the town has a more than adequate water supply, some people have expressed concern that not enough is known about the hydrology of the area to make an adequately informed decision on the disposition of the water rights.

Representatives of AGA, including Nevada VP Steve Yopps, who gave a presentation at the meeting, stressed that the mining company has core values that include mining responsibly and sustainably, protecting the ecosystem, and benefiting the community.

Yopps said that the mine would constantly monitor the groundwater and would mitigate any problem encountered.

The major use of water in the company’s proposed Bullfrog North mine would be dewatering — pumping groundwater out of the pit. The water rights are critical to the project. Yopps said, “Without the water we don’t have a mine.”

The project will be presented to AGA’s investors in November, and some assurance that the water necessary for operation will be available is key to making investment attractive to the project, which is competing with others worldwide.

Some audience members saw benefit to the community of money from the sale or lease of the water rights. Resident Teresa Sullivan said it could help upgrade the town’s “limping” infrastructure.

Others were nervous about any loss of water rights.

Developer Ed Ringle spoke in support of going forward with the sale or lease, claiming that some people seem to not want the town to grow, but arguing that it needs to grow so it can have things like a doctor and a supermarket.

The board voted to advance the process of the sale or lease of the Sarcobatus Flat water rights and the lease of the Oasis Valley rights. The process will require a public hearing, and the sale or lease of the Sarcobatus Flat property and water rights will have to take the form of an auction.

Richard Stephens is a freelance reporter living in Beatty.