California agrees to help clean lake

Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 | 10:45 a.m.

In a new spirit of cooperation, Southern Nevada and Southern California water officials have joined forces to clean up pollutants in the Las Vegas Wash.

"California is going to partner with us to improve the Las Vegas Wash," Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority said Thursday during the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in Las Vegas.

Since 1996 the water authority has discovered pesticides, insecticides, prescription drugs and the rocket fuel booster perchlorate in wash flows draining into Lake Mead, Southern Nevada's major water supply.

The lake's water continues running downstream to Arizona and Southern California, serving more than 22 million people, Mulroy noted. In 1998 the water authority became the lead agency for protecting the wash. Before then 28 federal, state and local agencies had varying responsibilities in the wash.

California lawmakers are willing to support Nevada's efforts to start removing the pollution from the wash, said Dennis Underwood, a Metropolitan Water District of Southern California specialist.

In fact, the Metropolitan Water District measured the first evidence of perchlorate in Lake Mead in 1998, based on a technique invented by California scientists.

How far that support will reach and if it will translate into funds for a cleanup is unclear at this time, Underwood said.

"We'll see in the next year how much support there is, then perhaps consider funding," he said.

Competition for the Colorado River among seven western states has given way in the past decade to cooperative efforts to share and clean up its waters, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said.

Babbitt, the 47th Interior secretary, gave his final speech to the Colorado River users Thursday.

"The extraordinary number of issues that we have worked on, and the many that we have brought to completion, marks this as the most intensive decade of change and transition in nearly half a century," Babbitt said.

The Colorado, compared to other rivers, is a very small resource supplying fertile, productive farmland, wild and scenic places and growing communities, he said.

Before leaving office, Babbitt said he would sign new rules for Nevada, California and Arizona to share the river's surplus. Nevada never had to draw on a surplus because it did not use its full 300,000 acre-feet alloted by law. Last year, the Las Vegas Valley drew its full share.

"And Las Vegas over there is going, 'Hey, wait a minute, we are bigger than a couple gas stations and rusty hubcaps,' " Babbitt said, explaining that California will take until 2016 to wean itself off the full surplus to live at its 4.4 million acre-feet share of the Colorado.

Negotiations for sharing the river were never easy, Babbitt said. "At times I thought we should call it the Banana Republic of California for their inability to get together," he said.

However, the agreements reached in the Lower Basin states are "core achievements" in the past 10 years, Babbitt said.