The land at the University of Nevada, Reno's Main Station Field Lab has been used for decades, mostly undeveloped. About one year ago, the Board of Regents gave UNR approval to seek a conservation easement for the land. The easement is a voluntary, legal agreement between UNR and a land trust of government entity to preserve the land.
"You get to keep doing your business like farming and experimenting and training and teaching, having cows but at the same time, you're making a pledge that you won't develop," Councilwoman Naomi Duerr, City of Reno said.
UNR recently sold 104 acres to Reno Land Incorporated for industrial use. It also has 40 acres that it could sell. The rest of the land was designated as a Tier 3, which means there are a lot of restrictions that make it very difficult to develop. On Thursday, the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency voted 7-2 to change that designation to a Tier 2 in the Reno sphere. That loosens restrictions to develop, but the university says it will make it easier to preserve the land.
"The Tier 2 will help UNR with their land worth in achieving that land conservation easement," Nate Kusha, Policy Analyst for TMRPA said. "The higher the land value, the easier it is for them to get that conservation easement."
Some residents in nearby communities were concerned that the change would allow more development but city leaders say that is not expected. Duerr says she only voted in favor of the change because the planning agency can revisit the decision in one year.
"If progress isn't being made on the easement or it's not done, we may have to put into Tier 3 just to ensure this extra level of protection," Duerr said.
Many say preserving UNR Farms is critical to flood mitigation because it serves as water storage during a flood. Much of the area was underwater during the flood in January, 2017.
"We don't have a lot of flood plains left in our region, so preserving this for that is a great help," Kusha said.
"This historically has been one of the areas that backs up from the Vista Narrows and is the deepest," Duerr said. "So we've got to have storage on the farm."
Construction could begin on a project at the Vista Narrows in 2022. That is the area where the river flows out of the Truckee Meadows. The plan is to remove some dirt from the area, turning cliffs into a slower slope toward the mountain on the south side of the river, just east of Sparks.
"You have really steep banks and the idea behind this project is to lay the banks back to create more flow, so it doesn't bottleneck," Duerr said.
The Truckee River Flood Management Authority listened to a presentation of the project, which is about 65 percent complete. It says the project would lower the depth of water on the meadows of UNR Farms, possibly preventing worse flooding in nearby neighborhoods.
The Army Corps of Engineers has not approved the plan. The concern is that that the project would allow more water to move downstream at a faster rate, possibly negatively affecting areas like Lockwood and Wadsworth. The plan is to work with other stakeholders to make sure the plan works for everyone.
"Make sure that whatever we're doing up here is not hurting them down there," Duerr said. "That's a base condition. It's called no net harm. You can't fix your world and hurt someone else's world in doing so. Not acceptable."
Duerr says about $150 million of local, state and federal dollars have already gone into flood mitigation. Those include the purchase of land, levy construction, the new Virginia Street Bridge and the North Truckee Drain. The Vista Narrows project was estimated to cost $13 million in 2014. Today, that is up to about $25 million and expected to rise by about $5 million each year. One of the questions is how much it will actually cost if the project moves forward, and how it will get paid for.
