ernie schank: i am a native nevadan. i was born in fallon. i live on the same ranch--in fact, i live in a house that my grandfather built in about 1930. i am the youngest who ever ran for the board of directors for the truckee-carson irrigation district. my main occupation, however, is a farmer. this is what i love. our farm is now in the fifth generation. our family came to the fallon area in 1929, and when i asked my grandfather why, he said he wanted to go to a place where reclamation was in its infancy. the mormon pioneers pioneered reclamation as we know it today. they came to what was considered a wasted area because nobody thought that you could grow crops, but when they got here, they determined that if they would dam the streams and build reservoirs, that soil could become very fertile. [water sloshing] baca: however, what they did not take into consideration was the the truckee river itself andn pyrad lake a on some of the other lakes that were dependent on ts water system. [wer splasng] man: this lake came under a great peril begin

schank: this story is only one of many that are goingn. it's all of the western states and even in the midwest now. and little towns that once thrived are just ghost towns because the people have gone to the city. christensen: there's a strain of american environmentalism that sees reclamation as having built cities and agriculture in an environment where th never should have been, that sees the destruction of the environment and the destruction of native people's cultures and traditions and livelihoods. the negotiated settlement showed that a new deal could be crafted to re-engineer these systems to restore the relationship between people and the environment. chisholm: the truckee river is profoundly different. there are hundreds of thousands of new cottonwood and willow trees. lahotan cutthroat trout are now recovering. there are fish now upward of 30 pounds being found at pyramid lake. there's talk about restoring them back to spawning runs in the truckee river. the wetlands have water rights. managers can call for that water when they