Prosecutors say NV water officials aware of fraud

A northern Nevada irrigation district official under indictment on federal fraud charges conceded he knew water deliveries to farmers were being falsified, a federal prosecutor and government agent said in court documents. David Overvold, a project manager for the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, acknowledged to investigators that the practice “has been going on for a while,” and he did nothing to stop it, court records show. But Overvold maintained he never directly ordered any employees to “write-off” water, according to Robert Eric May, a special agent for the U.S. Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General. Overvold, the district’s lawyer, Lyman McConnell and two irrigation district employees – John Baker and Shelby Cecil – were named in a 10-count indictment handed up in December 2008 by a federal grand jury in Reno. Cecil since has died. Federal prosecutors accuse them of carrying out a scheme from 2000-05 to alter water delivery data to earn special “efficiency credits” that would entitle the district to more water and reduce a court-ordered water debt owed to the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe...AP