Marty O’Donnell ad on the Colorado River is all wet

When I saw Marty O’Donnell’s latest TV spot, I had to pause – the claim that California is “stealing” two million acre‑feet of our water just didn’t sit right. It felt like another typical political sound‑bite, louder than it was true.

In the ad the candidate says California is taking “2 million acre‑feet of our water.” The problem? That water never belonged to Nevada in the first place. The Colorado River Compact, hammered out back in the 1920s, gave Nevada a modest 300,000 acre‑feet a year – a figure that still shows up in the water‑rights books.

What makes the claim even stranger is the timeline. Nevada didn’t even start tapping the river in any meaningful way until 1955, and the big withdrawals only began in the early 1970s. So for decades we were allocated water we couldn’t use, let alone lose to a neighbor.

Don’t get me wrong – there are legitimate concerns about how the river’s water is managed, especially when we’re shipping alfalfa to markets in China and Saudi Arabia. Those questions deserve honest debate. What O’Donnell does is replace a serious conversation with an inflammatory, fact‑free slogan that only muddies the water, literally and figuratively.

When a candidate can’t get the basics right, it should make voters wonder about his overall honesty. In a race where credibility matters, this kind of misinformation is a disservice to the public and a red flag for anyone considering his candidacy.