The Lahontan Basin Area Office (LBAO) has jurisdiction over a large area of the Great Basin including most of the northern two thirds of Nevada with a small amount of overlap into California and Oregon.  Much of this expanse was covered by ancient Lake Lahontan that existed during the last ice age, and whose surface area peaked nearly 13,000 years ago at 8500 square miles.    Map

The main area of LBAO activities is in the Carson, Truckee, and Humboldt river basins, where there are four operating Reclamation projects:

History

The history of Reclamation in the Lahontan Basin dates back to the early 1900s. The Newlands Project (originally Truckee-Carson Project) was one of the original five projects authorized by the passage of the 1902 Reclamation Act.  The development of the four Reclamation projects administered by LBAO has been accompanied by controversy concerning endangered species, Native American tribes and conversion of agricultural water rights to municipal/industrial uses. The project areas are generally in a high desert environment with the most reliable water source being Sierra Nevada snowfall along the California/Nevada border.

Major Issues

The major issues confronting the Lahontan Basin Area Office are primarily related to water rights on the Truckee River and the operation of the Newlands Project. The water right issues are complicated by the endangered cui-ui and the threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout in Pyramid Lake, the trust responsibility of the Secretary of the Interior to both the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe and the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, and our obligation to provide water for Newlands Project irrigators and the Lahontan Valley wetlands.

Visit our Project Dataweb for additional information