In Carson: Prison crowding must be addressed

Nevada Supreme Court Justice James Hardesty warned lawmakers Tuesday they must act to reduce crowding before the prison system goes over its maximum capacity.

"We will exceed capacity in our prisons by November," he told a joint subcommittee of Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means. "This cannot happen."

Hardesty called for a sentencing commission, "and charged the commission to act swiftly and come back with detailed recommendations in four months."

He said the Legislature should make those recommendations happen in a special session next fall.

His comments followed a 90-minute presentation by consultants with the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments. In the presentation, James F. Austin told lawmakers Nevada must find a different answer to crime than putting everyone in jail longer.

Austin said part of Nevada's problem is that fully half of those put on probation fail and are sent to jail. He said if the probation system can be fixed, inmate population projections will be reduced.

He and Dr. Fred Osher said a major part of the problem is the lack of substance abuse, anger management, mental health, educational and other programs for those put on probation to go to.

Austin said, for example, if a probationer needs to learn English better to get a job or to learn how to read, there are no programs out there to help him.

"There's nowhere to go," he said.

After a month or two, they said, the probationers start to get into trouble by falling back into old habits. Osher said 70 percent of those referred to community services can't get help for a month or more.

They said the lack of programs is acute both in the community and inside the Nevada prison system.

"If you want to make programs a condition for release, they have to have programs to go to," Osher said.

He said 29 percent of inmates have a mental health diagnosis, double the national average for prison systems. He also said 43 percent of Nevada inmates have some substance addiction.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said, as a former prosecutor, he believes special attention should be focused on first-time offenders who may be turned around.

Austin agreed and said lawmakers also need to find some intermediate sanctions for parolees and probationers so that every violation doesn't result in prison time.

Hardesty said there isn't a single silver bullet to fix Nevada's prison overcrowding.

He said the answer will be a combination of increasing good time credits, substance abuse, mental health and other programs, improving the probation system, deporting illegals now serving time and strengthening drug courts.

"There is a plethora of answers," he said.

Hardesty said, for example, the re-entry drug court program has only 20 clients in Clark County, 16 in Washoe and one in Elko because it's almost impossible for inmates to get into the programs. He said judges operating them say they are budgeted for $5 million, but need more like $30 million to get inmates moving through the process.

He said the prison and judicial systems may not need more money as much as they need to redirect money.

But Hardesty put in his pitch for one change he said could help significantly in certain cases: Give judges more discretion to make exceptions to some of the mandatory minimum sentences that have become popular with prosecutors and lawmakers.

He cited the case of a 19-year-old hauling drugs from California to Utah who gets caught on a traffic stop in the middle of Nevada, saying there should be some way not to imprison that youth for years and years.

"Give judges the authority to deviate in situations like that so we do not incarcerate the wrong people," he said.

Hardesty said the goal of lawmakers and the sentencing commission should be to

reduce Nevada's 13,100 prison population by 2,000.

The joint subcommittee took no action on the proposals.

In an attempt to end a backlog of about 1,900 protests that are holding up water applications, the state engineer encouraged all parties to work out as many issues as possible before they came into the hearing room.

State Engineer Tracy Taylor is considering giving 90 days for applicants and protesters to work out their issues. The protester would have 30 days to outline objections and an applicant another 30 days to respond, followed by another 30 days for the protester to verify his claims. Any issues on water applications that could not be resolved would be decided by the state engineer after a hearing.

"It's not going to benefit anyone to litigate every application that comes before us," he said.

Taylor said he would decide for certain the timeline sometime in the near future.

Two pre-hearing conferences at the state engineer's office Tuesday, one for Douglas County and one for Lyon County, brought different results.

Following the Lyon County meeting, Rusty Jardine of Churchill County called the developers, engineers and water purveyors in the room together to pick a date for the stakeholders meeting. They settled on May 15.

Mike Workman, Lyon County Utilities Director, agreed with the proposed process.

"We have had several meetings with Churchill County (officials) to resolve our differences, and we've had some progress," he said. "We're not just out there trying to cowboy this in, we're committed to the process."

Workman said Lyon County is committed to protecting water resources and has spent a lot of money creating infrastructure including an aggressive well-monitoring plan.

Those at the Douglas County meeting didn't take any action.

Most water change applications are protested by downstream water rights holders such as Churchill County or the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, which protests every water change.

Don Springmeyer, attorney for the Pyramid Lake tribe, indicated the tribe would like to see applications halted until what he called overappropriation of the Carson Valley and Dayton Valley basins could be addressed, but Taylor opposed that option.

"I don't think we can hold back on applications during this process," he said. "I think that in your protest I want you to analyze each protest application. You say the basin is overappropriated and it may or may not be."

Chief Hearing Officer Susan Joseph-Taylor, no relation to the State Engineer, said the Division of Water Resources position was the basins are at equilibrium. She said Springmeyer was looking to "regulate the basins, cut off applications and cut off water rights," she said. "Where we sit, we think the basins are in balance."

Springmeyer called cutting off applications one option, but also said he wanted a comprehensive policy for the basin, similar to the entities that have water rights in the Truckee Meadows.

He said former State Engineer Hugh Ricci, in a meeting in Dayton in 2005, indicated the basin was overappropriated.

He added his clients routinely protest every application to be consistent, because they have been accused of inconsistency in the past.

Douglas County Engineer Carl Ruschmeyer complained that diversions of water to certain wells was required by federal regulations, but when that is done, the Paiute tribe protests, even when water is moved 150 feet across a street.

Life in the wild can be tough when you're only 3 days old.

A 3-day-old colt became the target of wrath by a young stallion that had designs on the foal's mother. The 3-year-old stallion stomped and kicked the foal, causing serious neck and head injuries.

Jim O'Mahoney, a resident of Yellowjacket Road in the Virginia City Highlands, saw the foal in distress on April 10.

"I saw it with the mother, and she kept it away from the herd at first," he said. "Then the baby was down below the property just walking around in circles. I could see he was in trouble. We could see the stud from the baby's herd had taken it and tried to kill it."

O'Mahoney, whose wife, Sherry, is a former president of the Virginia Range Wildlife Protection Association, which aids the Comstock wild horses, said he had seen that scenario before.

"We've (VRWPA) rescued a few like that," he said. "Usually, they don't make it. They get hurt pretty badly."

O'Mahoney contacted Iris Campbell, a VRWPA volunteer, and together they rescued the foal and took it to a safe place where it could be retrieved by Mike Holmes, range manager for the state Department of Agriculture.

Holmes said cases of stallions attacking foals is not uncommon in the wild, especially in areas with an abundance of horses.

"Sometimes when those studs are trying to breed a mare and the colt gets in the way, the colt ends up paying the price," he said. "I don't see it out in the backcountry near as often as the congested horse areas. I believe the competition factor has a lot to do with it."

Holmes took the foal to Shirley Allen, of Least Resistance Training Concepts, who runs the Lucky Horse Rescue Corral in Dayton.

"Shirley will nurse it back to health, and then after she does that, she'll find a home for it," Holmes said.

Allen said the black colt with white blaze and three white socks, which she named "Ozzie," was improving, recuperating in her bedroom, as several injured or abandoned foals have before him.

"He's finally getting up and doing stuff now," she said. "We're hoping he doesn't have any permanent sight or hearing loss."

Allen said the colt suffered mostly neck and head injuries, and she has been in touch with Dr. Gerald Peck of All Creatures Mobile Veterinary Hospital about the foal's care.

"He's just got tons of cuts all over him," she said. "The worst are on his neck, and there's some infection going."

Allen said she called him "Ozzie" because he was so out of it when he was brought in.

"Brain-wise, he was out in the land of Oz when we first brought him home, and he made sounds like the lion in "The Wizard of Oz," she said.

The colt is outside during the day, but stays in the bedroom through the cold nights.

Allen said the colt's been eating better, and thinks Ozzie will pull through, news which came as a relief to O'Mahoney.

"It hurts so much when they don't make it," he said. "We've lost quite a few that were injured."

A Carson City business may remain closed today after waste sludge became mixed with acid Tuesday creating a toxic fume.

Carson City Fire Capt. Bob Schreihans said employees of All Metals Processing Co. Inc. of Nevada on Lepire Drive were evacuated just before 11 a.m. One woman was taken to Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center for treatment after inhaling some of the orange fumes. A cul-de-sac to the east of the building was also evacuated.

Schreihans said it is unclear how the chromium trioxide became mixed with the sludge, but the error was immediately evident by the smell and color it produced.

Schreihans said about 300 gallons of the foul mixture were still "bubbling" at 6:30 p.m. and members of the Quad-County Hazmat Team were either going to let it burn off its gases or absorb the mixture.

The Quad-County Hazmat Team is made up of members from the Lyon, Storey, Douglas and Carson fire departments.

The U.S. Environmental Cleanup Co. was also on hand to aid in the cleanup.

The cleanup reduced northbound traffic on Fairview Drive to one lane from Butti Way to Desatoya Drive for several hours.

All Metals Processing Co. Inc. is a metal-finishing and plate-engraving company.