Pahrump Running Out of Water, is it True?

Pahrump running out of water is a statement that has been made for years. There has been no one able to prove it to be true. Have they proven it to be true this time? There has been research and data but none of it has been able to show that Pahrump is running out of water.

The new claims have been made by conservationists and nonprofit organizations in California. The research that they have done shows that Nevada is the driest state in the union and that Nevada is the driest it’s ever been. They are claiming that underground aquifers are rapidly depleting. Groundwater systems by their existence are out of sight and very difficult to detect and anticipate, even with that fact, they show models of aquifers that they have never seen.

The organizations state that the consequences of rampant overpumping of groundwater that happened in the 1950s through the 1960s are just now affecting the diminishing the flow of water they state that “The delayed consequences of actions taken a half-century ago demonstrates the complexity of managing subsurface water” stated by South Lahontan Hydrologic Region. The overpumping could have long-term effects. The effects would be noticeable by one year of it taking place. 

Greg Daun, an owner of Great Basin Drilling, states that the claims are made up of false information. He said during our interview that he thinks the claims are made up of false and inaccurate information. In 2016 a law was passed that unless your property was relinquished water rights you would have to buy 2 acre feet of water rights to drill a well. When the law was passed, they made around 60 thousand acre-feet of water rights that are in Pahrump. Research shows that if everyone used their water the whole valley would use around 12 thousand square feet of water every year. Research also shows that rain and snow-pack from the mountain replenish around 22 thousand square acres a year. He said that if we are only using around half of the water we get every year our water levels should go up.

One of the biggest factors behind the water levels going down is because of false aquifers from farms in the 1950s-1999. The farms would pump water from deep in the ground up to the surface for crops and that would make a false aquifer that is higher than it should be. Most of the farms in Pahrump were shut down by 1999 so the false aquifers stopped getting water they disappeared which made the water level drop 20 feet between that time. The water levels since the over-pumping have risen research shows that they are higher than they were originally. Daun says that there are wells that have never flowed since the 1950s when Pahrump was over-pumped that are starting to flow again, proving that the water levels are coming back up.

In conclusion, all the claims and all the research that the organizations did can not be proven because they don’t have enough data to make their points correct. Daun stated that all their research and data that they have shown over the years have proven to be false and all the models and maps that he has seen of them are not accurate because they do not have the technology to make those maps and models to be true. With all this information you should research the topic yourself and form your own opinion.