transport water to the end user or to limit the amount
used versus the amount needed to achieve the decreed
purpose."
"Regulating out" the farmers was no
new idea. It was, in fact, the concept ultimately behind
the Bureau of Reclamation's demand for a new contract
with TCID that would leave the farmers even more helpless
in defending themselves against federal restrictions.
Whether Ann Ball completely agreed with that
or not was never quite clear, but Ball, as the new BOR
Newlands boss, was given the job of making the irrigation
district come to the feds' terms.
At least twice in a two-year process of talks,
she thought she was near that point. Both times the
agreement was rejected by Disheroon and others in
Washington, D.C. Ball herself was called back to the
capitol and hailed into the office of Reid himself, where
sources said the Senator gave the BOR manager a tongue
lashing for not bringing the farmers into line.
Searchlight's best-known success, the most
powerful politician in Nevada, one of the 50 riches
members of Congress, was showing increasing irritation at
the resistance of small farmers he didn't need and didn't
like.
Even the weather worked against him, as the
long drought broke into three successively more
productive wet winters, allowing farmers not only to
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recover their losses
but begin to show a profit, especially from
"free" water spread as flood prevention onto
previously dry fields.
Ann Ball, ultimately responsible for allowing
the spreading in 1997, was given a $5,000 federal bonus
on one day for her success at finally winning the new
contract with TCID, and the next day told she would have
two months to find another job.
Once again, Reid denies it, but informed
sources say the Senator, harangued with protest from the
tribal attorney, threatened to hold up Interior
Department appropriations unless Ball was removed.
In a double irony, the vindictive act against
Ball was made meaningless by the ruling of a federal
judge in Las Vegas, who permitted the water-spreading to
continue.
Harry Reid is by no means finished with
Newlands. He will be there at his proudest post, near the
ear of the President himself, next month when Clinton
visits Tahoe to discuss water "clarity."
The Senator is likely to remind the President
that, like Clinton himself, he is just a former poor kid
from the dusty mean streets of a little town nobody ever
heard of.
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