Assembly Candidate Warns Groundwater Pumping Plan Threatens Nye County Wells

Drew Ribar, who is challenging for the Nevada Assembly District 40 seat in 2026, raised an alarm Wednesday about a groundwater pumping proposal he says could drain domestic wells across the Pahrump Valley, trigger land collapses, and run directly against policies embedded in the county's own master plan.

Ribar, a Washoe Valley business owner who previously ran for the same seat in 2024, made the warning in a video statement directed at Nye County residents. His central concern: large-scale pumping from Pahrump Basin 162, already critically overappropriated, could devastate the roughly 11,000 domestic wells that tens of thousands of Pahrump homeowners depend on as their sole water source.

The stakes are not hypothetical. State records show the basin carries 74,776 acre-feet in committed groundwater rights against a perennial yield, the basin's sustainable annual recharge, estimated by the State Engineer at just 20,000 acre-feet. That gap between what has been promised and what the aquifer can replenish each year leaves little cushion before existing wells begin pulling from an emptying reservoir. For homeowners, a dropping water table means deeper drilling costs, reduced pressure, and eventually a dry well with no municipal alternative nearby.

Ribar also cited the risk of subsidence, a concern grounded in the valley's own history. When agricultural operations pumped roughly 40,000 acre-feet annually from the same basin in the 1960s to irrigate cotton fields, springs ran dry and the ground sank in measurable areas. Today, total annual pumpage sits between 13,000 and 16,000 acre-feet, a level the State Engineer has already deemed unsustainable enough to restrict new well drilling under Order 1293A. Any proposal that would significantly increase extraction above current levels risks revisiting that earlier damage.

Ribar argued the pumping proposal also conflicts with the Pahrump Regional Planning District Master Plan, which explicitly directs that groundwater in Basin 162 be managed sustainably and protected as a finite resource. He framed the issue as a governance accountability question: who benefits from expanded pumping permits, and whether county commissioners and planning bodies are enforcing the policies voters approved when they ratified the master plan.

The next opportunity for public input will come before the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission, which holds authority over land-use decisions tied to water-dependent development. Homeowners with domestic wells in the southern Nye County area can contact the Nye County Water District at 775-727-3487 or visit its offices at 2340 E. Calvada Blvd. in Pahrump to review basin data and track any pending permit applications that could affect local water levels.