Dan, as I understand it, it has to do with when an area is settled concerning riparian rights. Boiled down, if you divert water from a river back east, you have to leave enough water for a navigable river to stay navigable. Out west, first come, first served, and once water rights are established upstream, they can use the rights to drain the whole thing before it gets to river's end.
The Walker River comes out of the Sierra Nevada, maybe 40/50 miles north of the east gate of Yosemite. It provides trout fishing up in the sierras. It hits the valleys of Nevada, settled by people who went where the water was in the 1890s, 1910, etc. They were there, they established their right to X number of acre feet every year. Not a percentage of the flow, but the same number of acre feet every year, wet or dry. Late comers, or those downstream in a drought year are out of luck.
Plus the the word is that the farmers dislike the indians on the Schurz Reservation on the north end of the lake, who built a reservoir what, 10 miles upstream of the Lake? The indians have their own crops, plus fishing, so they release downstream only when they've got plenty for irrigation. Did I mention the watertable on the reservation averages 300 to 400 beneath ground level? Then what is left goes into the lake.
Two, three years ago, people from the Mineral county seat in Hawthorne ( at the south end of Walker Lake took video cameras and went upstream to see what happened to the water that wasn't getting to us. In case after case, they caught the upstream farmers irrigating unplanted, unused fields just to waste the water and keep it from getting to the indians.
Even worse, and this is just a swag, it seems like the particulates spewed out in California are acting like cloud seeding. Moisture condenses around the particulate, "snowballing" larger and larger til it becomes a raindrop. Tahoe, the whole east side of the sierras are getting less and less precipitation, because it precipitates out on the west slope of the mountains and runs back into California.
Now to put it in geologic perspective. You heard of the Bonneville salt flats that they used to try to set landspeed records on? Historically, most of Utah was under one big lake called Lake Bonneville. What is left of it is the Great Salt Lake. There may be a few other lakes that are remnants of Lake Bonneville. In Nevada, same thing, only it was called Lake Lahontan. Covered most of the state. Now Pyramid and Walker Lake are the only remnants. Plus Tahoe is partially in Nevada and feeds the Truckee River which flows into Pyramid Lake. Around the 30's, the govt came up with the idea of the Newlands reclamation project and built a reservoir taking Truckee river water and converting the Fallon sink into farmland. They still let some water go into Pyramid. Then 300 thousand people moved into Reno Sparks and diverted more and more water. Then came the endangered species act.
There was a unique sucker fish called the cui-ui in Pyramid. The indins jumped on it, and had the feds on their side. There had to be enough water coming into Pyramid so the cui-ui could head upstream to spawn. So Reno Sparks with the votes, or the Fallon farmers had to make up the difference. The farmers lost to the Casinos.
Now that'll learn you to ask me a question.
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Horse sense is what a jackass ain't got.
