Water district targets Hispanics

By Timothy Pratt

Monday, June 18, 2001 | 10:30 a.m.

When Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, stepped to the lectern last week at a meeting of Las Vegas-area business leaders, she greeted the group in a foreign language.

"Buenas tardes," she began.

Mulroy had said a lot with those two words, Spanish for "good afternoon."

Say, about $168,000 worth. That's how much the water district is spending, for the first time, on advertising and outreach to Clark County's 300,000 Hispanics.

"It's pretty academic," Mulroy said after her speech to the Latin Chamber of Commerce's monthly meeting at the Stardust hotel-casino Friday.

"There's no way to achieve water and energy conservation in Southern Nevada without engaging every sector of society. And our Hispanic community right now is so large, it's the same size as the entire population of Southern Nevada when I first entered politics here in 1979," she said.

Reflective of that growth, the organization of area Hispanic businesses Mulroy addressed was founded in 1976 with 60 members. It now has 950 and hopes to double that number over the next two years, Executive Director Otto Merida said.

Its influence is growing as well. In 1999 its past president, Liliam L. Hickey, was voted chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce region that includes Nevada, Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

"This alone shows how important our organization, and our community, has become," said member Andres Ramirez, of Ramirez & Associates, a consulting firm.

"We're also the only Hispanic organization where all state and local candidates always come to present their platforms, and elected and appointed officials constantly address us as well," he said.

And so Mulroy came, to speak on "Water and Power," and on the need to conserve and manage both resources to avoid past problems, such as the 1990 moratorium on new water permits.

"We do one thing very well here in Southern Nevada -- underestimate our potential for growth," she said.

But avoiding this pitfall has taken a new turn with the water district, as officials try to get the word out to the county's Hispanics, now 22 percent of the total population.

Angelica Quiroz, originally from Mexico, has been a front-row witness to this transformation. She began with the district 12 years ago in the Water Conservation Department, and though her official title is now assistant public information coordinator, she's the agency's de facto Hispanic community liaison.

"First, my bosses would ask me to translate letters and pamphlets into Spanish," she said. "Then they would ask me to speak to church groups and civic groups in Spanish.

"This went on for years. Then, finally, about six months ago, a position was created to do outreach to the Hispanic community, and I got it."

Now she spends her time trying to overcome both language and cultural barriers, getting information out on water quality and conservation, as well as power conservation.

"We've had to re-do pamphlets not only to translate them into Spanish, but to reflect differences in culture," Quiroz said.

One case had them changing a photo that had shown a Caucasian family with two parents and one child to one that showed a Hispanic family with two parents, a grandmother, and two children.

"These things are subtle, but they're more representative of our reality," Quiroz said.

The water district also has seen that some Hispanic immigrants arrive to the United States with the notion that resources such as running water and electricity will be plentiful here, which is not always the case in their countries of origin.

"So we have to work hard to get the message out that this is not so in our region, and that conservation is important," Quiroz said.

The agency has also seen that the Hispanic community is sometimes prey to false information, as shown by the calls the agency receives from residents who are approached in their homes by water filter companies, claiming their tap water is unsafe for consumption.

"People call us alarmed by these salesmen who tell them, in Spanish, that their children are in danger unless they purchase these filters," she said.

The district also published a homebuilder packet in Spanish for the first time, describing conservation measures for the home.

The first run of 400 disappeared in a week. The district is printing 1,000 more, and the Nevada Association of Realtors has requested additional copies.

Another obstacle Quiroz and the water district face is a tendency for many Hispanic immigrants to feel intimidated by government agencies.

"They find it hard to believe that the information we offer is free," Quiroz said.

"But since we've started to put pamphlets in Spanish out in the lobby, they seem to be coming by more often, and appear to be more comfortable."

Mulroy went on to give her talk in English, explaining to her audience that her native language and German are the only ones she knows how to speak.

But her staff members confided afterward that she hopes to take Spanish lessons and get beyond "Buenas tardes" soon.