Friday, March 10, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.
As the saying might be: It ain't over until the fat lady cites you for trespass.
In this case, the big lady is the Bureau of Land Management, which has cited a Moapa rancher and real estate developer for going onto BLM land to divert Meadow Valley Wash into two artificial lakes in late November. Despite his actions, rancher Bob Lewis seemed likely to avoid any penalty.
A bevy of state agencies said that Lewis might have violated rules designed to protect wildlife at the site about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. They did not have enough evidence to take legal action. Meadow Valley is a narrow ribbon of green in arid central Lincoln County sustained by the wash, a year-round creek.
But the BLM, Nevada's largest land manager, now has said that Lewis destroyed important habitat and trespassed on federal land to boot.
"The ditch construction destroyed habitat for the endangered Southwest willow flycatcher, the threatened desert tortoise and a candidate species, the yellow-billed cuckoo," BLM spokesman Chris Hanefeld of the agency's Ely field office said Thursday.
"On Monday, we issued Lewis a trespass notice for the water diversion. He has 15 days after receiving the notice to respond."
Within the 15 days, Lewis can appeal the BLM's decision. Calls to Lewis' home and several businesses were not returned Thursday.
Lewis said in December that he diverted the water from the Meadow Valley Wash to return the irrigation channels that existed before massive flooding in January 2005. State officials agreed that Lewis had the right to use water from the Meadow Valley Wash, but not necessarily to go onto federal land with bulldozers.
Officials speculated that the diversion may have affected the Meadow Valley sucker, a fish protected by state law, but they said they had no direct evidence that Lewis' work killed the fish.
Hanefeld said he could not put a price tag on the agency's expected "demand for payment."
The demand could typically include payment of the BLM's administrative costs in responding to the diversion, and potentially more significantly, to the cost of repairing destroyed habitat.
Also, the BLM can assess penalties for any loss of cultural or archaeological sites in the bulldozing of the wash and building of the lagoons, Hanefeld said.
He added that there is no evidence that such sites were affected by the work.
Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, said the BLM appeared to take the issue seriously.
"The BLM is very limited, very selective in enforcement actions," said Patterson, a former BLM employee. "Hearing that the BLM is doing something to bring justice to the situation underscores how serious a violation it was."
This may not be the end of the story, he said.
"There needs to be follow-through on the federal side to make sure what needs to be done, gets done.
"I hope they can, as close as possible, restore the native web of life. That takes time, but riparian areas can heal faster than desert uplands."
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