This "Save the Walker River Basin" in order to save the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout is just another federal power grab. Give up your water so that we, the BLM, can watch the little fishes do their thing.
The federals say because in the beginning land in the border of the now United States was obtained by three ways; by force, was bought or was ceded to the United States. Therefore, all land is public land including all the water.
The Constitution doesn't agree with this. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 states to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding 10 miles square) as may, by cession of the particular state and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the state in which the same shall be for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock yards and other needful buildings. The above clause makes no mention of the U.S. government owning the public land. There is no public land within the borders of a sovereign state.
The federal government only recognizes the Constitution when it services it causes. You might ask, where are the people elected to represent the people of the state of Nevada? All elected and appointed officials of our federal government take an oath of office before undertaking their constitutional duties. The oath states, "Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that you take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that you will and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter; so help me God." Do you think that they all say, I do? I wonder.
By all means don't let the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, get in the way of the bureaucrats!
BURNS H. ROPER
Yerington
