Interview Transcript

Jack Robb

Q: So what is it you are doing when you are driving around and talking to people?

A: I am trying to purchase water rights. They are using the water on their property to develop their own property and I acquire the additional water rights to sell to the people that do not have water on their property. Areas like out off of Los Altos, the Northgate area, they don't have historical water rights so we have to get water rights from properties that do have the water rights and take them to those areas and sell them.

Q: How big of a challenge is that to be matching up all of these water rights?

A: It keeps myself and 3 or 4 people in my office real busy. I try to acquire water rights and then they match up the people that need the water rights with some of the water we purchase and they help purchase. It keeps the four of us fairly busy.

Q: Who is your competition?

A: We do not try to get in competition. We work with other people. We have brokered water for other people. If people have water they don't want to sell to us, we can bank it for them, we help them sell it. We've helped other non-profit organizations and different people sell their water rights throughout the years and if they do not want to sell to us, we can help match buyer and seller and we do not get into competition. There are other people out there who buy water rights. We purchase water rights from them on occasion and then they also sell it to developers who we're trying to take care of also. It's an open market, and we try not to compete. We just try to work together and take care of the customers, the development community.

Q: You don't think it is going to become so valuable that there will become a market where everyone is bidding against each other?

A: We have seen that in the past but that's why we became active and have really gone after the water right market to ensure that there are water rights available. There are quite a few water rights still available under parcels that have been built on, for example like the General Motors plant off of Vista. It was built quite a few years ago. We bought 200 acre-feet of water plus off that property a few years ago. It's property like that that we look at that already have development on them, and we try to get the water rights off them. Mobile home parks and such like that.

Q: Where are the biggest places you go to? Already developed places?

A: Already developed land that was developed prior to 1980 and that was when the water rights were still attached with the property quite a bit. So if it was developed before 1980, it is a good indication there might be some water rights left on the property.

Q: You don't go to the ranches?

A: No. We occasionally do talk to ranches if the ranches are being developed. We will speak to them at that time, but most of the time it's during the development phase that we get in contact with them.

Q: Why is that?

A: Ranchers would like to see those fields green as long as they can, and I don't want to be the one to dry up the parcel. They've been here a long time, and a lot of times, they want to hold on to it and ranch it as long as they can.

Q: So what do you think is going to happen with the balance between all the water being used and all of the development that we have? Water is going to become more and more scarce.

A: It becomes harder and harder with the big parcels, like the General Motors parcel, we've hit quite a few of those. There are still some big parcels and we go after them. For example, we just bought one off a trailer park up off of US 395. Sometimes you discover that the water is there, you have all the title research done, but it can take you up to two years to purchase that water, to talk them into what they have. A lot of times you are dealing with people that are not in town. You are dealing with corporations, so it can last a couple of years to get water out of somebody like that. But we've identified quite a few of those and we are probably working on 20 different large plots like that and every once in a while you get 2 or 3 to come through.

Q: What do you see for the future? Do you think we are going to run out of water? Do you think water is going to become that scarce?

A: We do have quite a few that we are working on and we just keep fighting through the process. We get the big ones to land every once in a while and we feed ourselves with the smaller purchases and we keep ahead of development. The development community works with us quite a bit. They let us know what their coming projects are so that we can plan our purchases with their needs. We keep identifying new parcels that we can get water off of and keep working. Like I said, some of them are a long process but we do work our through that process and get them taken care of.

Q: But there will be a limit, won't there?

A: There is a limit and but not in my foreseeable future. We still have quite a few out there we can go after and get. There are 40,000 acre-feet unspoken. Just identifying them, doing the title research on them, finding a willing seller, sometimes its finding the people at the corporations or whoever you have to deal with to find out if they are willing to sell and then explain to them what Nevada water law is and Nevada water rights and just keep working on the process and get them to come in.

Q: Have you ever had a problem where they just aren't coming in?

A: Oh yes, there are those where you couldn't get them to sell if it was the last water in town. They will hold on to it and we have those identified. I know where they are at and they are kind of catalogued and about once a year, I give them a call and see if they are willing to go. Every once in a while, one of those comes through also, so you have to keep trying and every once in a while one comes through.

Q: Even if there isn't a lot of competition, you don't think we are going to dry up all the fields around here even if you don't buy the water rights up but with other people buying them up -- just to hang on to them?

A: I don't see people selling water off a field as much as I do off of sub-divisions that were developed quite a bit ago or a property like this that used to have historical water rights. That's where we go identify most of the water and I don't seethe fields drying up. A lot of the fields are turning into mini-ranches like out here, Cassettes Ranchers estates, they held on to their water rights and they developed the parcels in a way that they can use their historical water rights to continue irrigating the pastures. So some fields will dry up but I still see a lot of irrigation occurring down southwest of Reno.

Q: What about some of your big deals on water rights?

A: I bought General Motors and another one at the same time and we turned and sold that within a day and the check that they gave me was for $998,000, hand-written.

Q: Water is going to become like gold -- everyone needs it don't they?

A: Everybody needs it but that's my job to make sure that people don't get too greedy. I go out there and keep finding it and keep the price stable.

Q: Who is your competition?

A: We don't have competition, we work with other people that purchase and sell water rights and we try to keep things as even and as fair as we can. We try not to compete with each other too much. In the water rights market there are a lot of secrets. If I go down to the Recorder's office looking for water rights, I don't tell them where I am looking, and when I walk into the Recorder's office a lot of times they hide the areas they are looking at also. Why? Because sometimes, it's so hard to come across [water rights] that you just hold on to [your information] and don't share with everybody where you are looking. They look where they look and I look where I look, and every once in a while we cross paths.

Q: Who else buys up water rights? Developers hold them or what?

A: No, the developers sometimes purchase them but there are a few water right brokers in town -- resource management developers, Ed Killian has bought them in the past, Skipper Organville. There are people that do get into the buying and selling of water rights.

Q: I would think it would be awfully lucrative -- is it?

A: It can be, but somebody can make a decision and it can change the whole game overnight. If development slowed down, you would suffer tremendously. If there was another protest by Fallon or Pyramid Lake like we've had in the past, it could really impact your business for an extended period of time where you'd need something else to back you up.

Q: Where do you look for water rights? You don't really go to the ranchers?

A: Most of my looking happens in the office on our historical maps and through our files. 90% of the work is office-related, looking at maps, looking at deeds, looking at documents.

Q: It's not so much that you are looking for it for the rancher but it's more for the developer?

A: Yep, more developers. Sometimes the rancher is the developer and sometimes we do deal with them but most of the time, with developers, we look at parcels that were developed a long time ago.

Q: How does TMWA help stabilize the water rights prices?

A: They do not have the files or resources we do to look at water rights, so if one guy says I have water rights and that gets out in the open, we've seen it where when we weren't in the game, the first guy would call and say 3200 and the next guy would call and say 3300 and it just became a phone bidding war. We had people in the market that were saying, you show me a written offer, I'll pay you $50 an acre-foot more than the highest written offer you have. So we have seen that in the past.

Q: And you think TMWA keeps the prices down?

A: That was in 1997 and Sierra Pacific became really active at that point and the price has stabilized. We were able to find a greater number of people willing to sell water and identify the parcels instead of having the parcels come and say I have water. So we try to identify the parcels to keep plenty on the market so it's a stable market.