Monday, Nov. 8, 1999 | 11:03 a.m.
State Engineer Michael Turnipseed, who holds the power to decide whether Nevada's ground water can be used for building a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, is no stranger to controversy.
The unassuming Turnipseed, who lives in Carson City, has been at the center of every major water war in Nevada in the past 15 years and has often sided with Southern Nevada in those battles.
In November 1994 he granted Las Vegas the right to pump 150,000 acre feet of water from the Virgin River northeast of Las Vegas to the city through a $600 million pipeline. The project has not been built because of cost and possible conflicts with Utah over the right to Virgin River water.
He has banned landowners from drilling new wells in an attempt to protect Southern Nevada's shrinking ground water.
But in one of the biggest cases in his career -- a request from the Las Vegas Valley Water District in 1989 to claim all unallocated water rights in three rural Nevada counties -- he staked out the neutral ground and held it.
Las Vegas officials sought the right to draw ground water from Nye, White Pine and Lincoln counties, then pipe it to Southern Nevada to meet the demands of explosive population growth.
The uproar that followed tested Turnipseed's experience and mettle. Unaccustomed to the limelight and more comfortable in scientific than political circles, Turnipseed found himself a lightning rod for more than 4,000 protests filed against the water district's request.
Turnipseed remained deliberately undecided, never tipping his hand as to which way he might rule.
The debate eventually moved to the state Legislature, which brokered a deal that granted the rural counties first rights to their ground water but also allowed Las Vegas some rights. The local water district has since quietly dropped its push for distant rural water.
Turnipseed begins another controversial case Monday when he begins listening to arguments from both the U.S. Department of Energy and the state of Nevada on ground water rights to build a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
State law gives the engineer exclusive authority to determine the rights to Nevada's ground water.
The Department of Energy is asking the state for 430 acre feet of ground water to supply crews building and operating a repository at Yucca Mountain to contain 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste. It is the only site being considered for the nation's high-level nuclear waste.
His decision, no matter what it is, is likely to end up in court, both the DOE and opponents of the repository agree.
The key issue facing Turnipseed is whether permits to use the ground water can be granted for the repository when state law prohibits building one.
Nevada officials, led by the state Nuclear Projects Office, have been battling the DOE since a permanent storage facility was first proposed in Southern Nevada in the early 1980s.
The DOE first came to Turnipseed in 1995 to gain temporary water rights to conduct research at Yucca Mountain -- a project that required paving roads to and building concrete pads near the 25-foot-wide tunnel through the center of the mountain. Because of legal obstacles raised by Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, that decision took two years.
Turnipseed, a U.S. Air Force veteran, has been involved with water and water rights throughout his career.
After earning a civil engineering bachelor's degree from Utah State University in 1972, Turnipseed became an engineering aide in the Utah State Engineer's Office, drafting, doing field work, measuring water and writing claims on the Bear River drainage.
After a brief stint in the Idaho Department of Water Resources, Turnipseed became the northern area engineer of Utah in 1973 and stayed there until 1984.
He joined the Nevada Division of Water Resources as its chief in 1984.
In addition to ground water, Turnipseed's office oversees all surface water and 51 stream systems in the state. The agency also has the responsibility of inspecting 400 dams in the state and of approving all new dam projects.
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