On Wednesday, the Nevada Irrigation District (NID) Board of Directors appointed Earl Stephens, the sole remaining candidate to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of the previous Division 4 director.
Initially, three candidates had expressed interest to fill the remainder of Trevor Caulder’s term (until Dec. 2026) but two of them withdrew after the agenda was published. That left Lincoln-based Earl Stephens as the only candidate.
A former civil engineer, Stephens is a farmer and owner of a brewery in Lincoln, according to his letter of interest. On his farm he raises mandarins and pumpkins for sale to the public at a farm stand. He sits on the Placer County Agricultural Commission where he represents the Winery and Farm Brewery Industry. That term expires in 2028.
Stephens admitted to being unfamiliar with NID’s Plan for Water document but is looking forward to learn more about the district and its infrastructure. Asked how he would juggle the commitments to his farm, the brewhouse, the farmstand, the ag commission and NID , Stephens stated that “anybody who has ambitions or desires has a busy schedule. We have to learn to prioritize those and we have to learn to say No. I believe I do have that time commitment.” He added he had talked to former board member Caulder who gave him an idea of what’s involved.
“Perceived climate change”
Stephens commented that he’d “like to figure out what we can do with what we have. I know that because of the perceived climate change is coming through, just showing its head. Lawrence Livermore Lab came out with a study that basically said in the next 50 years they expect no snow in the Sierras to stick. I think it’s a grand challenge. This is a report that came out from a reputable government agency. It’s a theory, okay? … It’s a theory and a theory is nothing more than a thought that has not been proven wrong yet.”
That statement raised eyebrows and he was asked to expand on it.
He responded, “One of my favorite National Geographic article was in the 1970’s that showed a bar chart, they did an investigation where they drilled down into ice and rocks and sampled the air pockets in them. They know by the carbon dating and the concentrations of different chemical elements in those that those gases what the average temperature was at that time. They found out that it’s only been the last 10,000 years that we’ve got some stability. We’ve had wild swings for a long time, so it has changed, it will change, it keeps changing.”
Climate change reality
Below is one such chart, source NASA. Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.*
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact.”
Plan for Water
NID’s Plan for Water contains chapters on future water supply, demand and hydrology provide an overview of what effects climate change may have on local hydrology and water supply and demands.
Directors Heck and Johansen encouraged Stephens to familiarize himself with the Plan for Water data. Johansen added, “I think the Plan for Water gave us a lot of benefits and one of them is modeling. That models climate change … and is better modeling than even the State of California has… It’s also wise to make decisions on data, on what you’re faced with science [rather] than some ideal or whatever that you can’t connect the dots to get it done. The Plan for Water and that modeling is superb.”
Appointed
Being the sole candidate, Stephens was appointed unanimously to fill the Division 4 seat until December 31, 2026.