the "succession of interest" from those same
original "trespasses" did entitle the federal
agency to the same water.
"It is clear that much of the water
resource on the National Forest was first put to
beneficial use for livestock watering purposed by
trespassers," he wrote to then state engineer Peter
Morros. "It is this succession of interest which was
inititiated by trespassers on the public domain ... that
support[s] claims of vested water rights by the United
States of America-Forest Service."
Making the same basic argument over ensuing
years have been other spokesmen for the Forest Service
bureaucracy, including -- especially since the southern
Monitor Valley adjudication process picked up momentum in
1996 -- a flock of commuting federal attorneys
representing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S.
Department of Interior, and the U.S. Department of
Justice. Additional rationales have been offered by lead
Forest Service attorney Kenneth D. Paur, of Ogden, Utah.
Nevertheless, by the end of the hearings, the
federal case reportedly was in total disarray.
Not only did the passage from the 1907 Gifford
Pinchot use book transfix the hearing room, according to
Nevada ranchers, but passages from a 1905 use book also
showed that recent
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Forest Service grazing
rights practices break other promises Pinchot had made to
westerners.
Finally, proposed 'expert' witnesses offered
by the federal agencies -- when challenged by rancher
attorneys -- were rejected by the state engineer as
lacking sufficient expertise to testify.
"This is a real win-win," said Carl
Haas, a legal specialist in vested water rights who, with
his wife, found one of the Gifford Pinchot use books in a
federal Washington, D.C. archive. "I've never seen a
cleaner win than that.
"It affects all the western states,"
he said, "because the Feds are going to have to
honor Nevada law now."
Haas helped coordinate legal strategy for the
R.O. Livestock Ranch, which owns the 19 vested water
rights to which the Forest Service dropped objections.
Next steps in the adjudication process call
for attorneys for both sides to submit their final
briefs, after which the state engineer will present his
findings to the Fifth Judicial District Court of the
State of Nevada in Tonopah.
After that court rules, rancher attorneys say,
the Forest Service will probably appeal to the Nevada
State Supreme Court.
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