reid: ernie schank is a farmer, a big farmer, and he was one of my big obstacles 'cause he opposed everything i tried to do. he and people--there were other ones--that hung me in effigy. schank: i don't think that's a true story. uh... i, uh... i have to--i have to couch what i say now. heh heh heh! christensen: the farmers left the negotiations for two reasons. one was that they believed, and they still believe, that the water is theirs. the second is that they thought that they could win by fighting. what they didn't realize was that the politics of power had shifted all around them, and it wasn't going back. schank: all of a sudden, rural nevada, which once had a metrolitan areas, now we at a severe disadvantage. chisho: and you see that all across rural america these days, where rural communities are feeling under threat. the challenge is that in many cases, these rural communities were we need to think about how to right wrongs, but we also need to consider how we help these communities make adjustments. schank: this story is only one of many that are going o it's all of the western stat

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 pyramid ke and osome of the on this water system. dependent ater splhing] man: this lake came under a great peril beginning of the last cen