Lawsuit could affect the future of Southern Nevada’s water supply

Wednesday, June 28, 2000 | 10:05 a.m.

The future of Southern Nevada's water supply could be affected if an international environmental coalition successfully sues the federal government over the fate of Mexican endangered species.

Environmentalists want to force Nevada and its six fellow Colorado River states to send some of their river water downstream to Mexico's ailing Colorado River Delta.

The delta, once a vast system of wetlands, has shrunk from 1.9 million acres to about 150,000 as federal water projects have diverted river water to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and other booming Sunbelt cities.

Populations of native, endangered fish have dwindled as a result, devastating local communities that depended on fishing, said Ernesto Reynoso, project director for the Centro Regional de Estudios Ambientales y Socioeconomicos, a northern Mexican environmental group that is party to the lawsuit.

"We are people that used to eat and enjoy fish meat," he said. "Now we can't fish."

The lawsuit was to be filed Wednesday by eight Mexican and U.S. environmental groups, including the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

It seeks to force the Reclamation Bureau, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and the Interior and Commerce departments to measure the effects of federal water projects such as the Hoover Dam on the river delta and the Gulf of California, into which it empties.

By formally connecting river management to environmental damage across the border, a successful lawsuit could lay the groundwork for environmental groups to ask the United States to dedicate a portion of river water to the Mexican wetlands. That water potentially could be carved out of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California's allocations.

"It could have huge implications for the lower Colorado River states because they have just begun to come to terms with the limited (water) supplies available right now," said Barton Thompson, a professor of natural resources law at Stanford University.

A 1999 Environmental Defense Fund study recommended that it would take about 100,000 acre feet of water a year to maintain the remnants of the delta ecosystem.