Nevada-Arizona water agreement near

Greg Harman and Aaron Clemens

Thursday, June 29, 2000 | 11:20 a.m.

A pending water banking agreement between Nevada and Arizona could extend access to Colorado River water for the Silver State for 23 years.

Under the terms of the agreement being negotiated by the Arizona Water Banking Authority and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, Nevada would pay Arizona to store its unused water supplies -- up to 1.2 million acre-feet -- with Arizona water in underground formations until 2030.

An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or enough to serve a family of four for a year.

Arizona would draw Nevada's surplus into its system through existing infrastructure and use that stored water as needed.

When Nevada needed to use its water, it would draw some of Arizona's allocation out of the river from behind Hoover Dam.

Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water District, said the agreement would be the first of its kind in the history of the Colorado River Compact.

"This is the first time there's been this kind of cooperation," Mulroy said. "It's one of any number of puzzle pieces that have come into place."

Even without the agreement, Nevada would have access to river water that has been stored in other locations within the state as well as through a number of agreements with other states for surplus water.

California has also expressed an interest in storing water in Arizona, possibly four times as much as Nevada has proposed -- far beyond the state's storage capacity.

Mulroy is not concerned.

"At this point the banking authority has only agreed to discussions with Nevada," she said.

Even as the states continue to wrestle over access to precious Colorado River water supplies, a federal lawsuit brought by a coalition of environmental groups this week is seeking to force the states to release more water downstream to aid in the recovery of once thriving wetlands near the Mexican border.

The lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday against seven federal agencies, claims that massive upstream diversions by seven Western states have reduced the flow of water to the lower river area, shrinking the delta to a fraction of its former size and putting endangered species at risk.

The environmental groups targeted California agricultural uses in its lawsuit.

"The Imperial Irrigation District in California uses more water than Arizona and Nevada combined," said Bill Snape, vice president of law and litigation for Defenders of Wildlife.

"They waste a lot of their water while the delta dries out."

If successful, the lawsuit could affect the use of the river by Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada.

But Mulroy said the lawsuit would in no way affect Nevada's annual share of Colorado River water.

"The U.S. has a treaty with Mexico to supply them with 1.5 million acre-feet of water annually. What Mexico does with it the U.S. cannot control," she said, suggesting that intensive irrigation within Mexico was primarily to blame for the drying of the delta. "It's not our obligation."

Two years ago the Environmental Defense Fund and American Rivers declared the Colorado River delta on the U.S.-Mexico border one of North America's most endangered rivers. Snape said the delta needs only 1 to 2 percent of the water currently allocated to the Imperial Water District to rehabilitate itself, with an occasional release of 10 percent of Imperial's allocation.

The lawsuit seeks to force the federal agencies to measure the effect of federal water projects on the river delta.