Water meeting may be best hope

Friday, Dec. 13, 2002 | 11:09 a.m.

With time running out to avert a threatened cutoff of some Colorado River water for Las Vegas and California, officials with water agencies will meet here next week in what some are characterizing as the last, best hope to head off federal action.

A 3-2 decision by the board of the Imperial Irrigation District in Southern California Monday threatens to scuttle an agreement that was a decade in the making. That agreement would, over the next seven decades, reduce California's dependence on water from the Colorado and Lake Mead.

Nevada, the other state to use large volumes of water from the so-called "interim surplus," could also be affected by federal cutoff of the supply. Southern Nevada Water Authority officials will join their counterparts from California and five other Colorado River states to discuss the issue Monday and Tuesday here in Las Vegas.

The meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association is an annual event, but the conference has taken on added significance with the looming collapse of the water agreement. Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett Raley, the department's point man on western water issues, had not been scheduled to attend the meeting but will now.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton and federal Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner John Keys are also scheduled to attend. Raley and water officials from both California and Nevada said the agreement, and the Imperial Irrigation District vote, will dominate discussion.

Without the agreement in place by the end of the year, the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the Interior Department say they will cut off use of the water supply provided over the base allocation for both Nevada and California.

Southern Nevada gets about a tenth of its annual water supply, or 30,000 acre-feet, from the surplus, which is unused allocations from states along the Upper Colorado River. Southern California, however, depends on far more -- about 800,000 acre-feet per year, or more than 20 percent of its total draw from Lake Mead.

Raley said Wednesday that the date of the physical cutoff has not been set. Norton, as the legal rivermaster who controls distribution of Lake Mead water, would set the date for a reduction in water flow by the end of the year, he said.

Raley said his participation in the conference, though linked to the problems with the water agreement, does not mean Interior is pushing the Imperial Irrigation District or any other agency to resolve the issue.

An interstate agreement is in place, he said. It is up to California to live within the terms of the agreement, which calls for a gradual reduction in water use. If California cannot abide by the terms of the plan, federal authorities will cut off the interim surplus, he said.

"We don't have anything to offer them (the seven states along the Colorado)," Raley said. "What we have here is a forum that is held every year. We are not shy about getting together with stakeholders at any time if we think it is helpful, but our participation is not because we are engaged in some last-minute attempt to get the Imperial Irrigation District to change their mind."

But the chief spokeswoman for the Imperial Valley district said the conference at Caesars Palace may be important to resolving the issue.

"You're going to have all the parties together," spokeswoman Sue Giller said. "I'm sure there will be talks in that direction."

The district, she said, faces a very difficult problem. Environmental laws are forcing the farmers of the district to keep the Salton Sea, a major ecological resource that is becoming unhealthy for fish and migratory birds, viable for the next 15 years at least.

California's part of the larger, interstate agreement called for farmers to essentially stop farming land. Giller said the open-ended terms of the agreement were not acceptable to the majority of the district board.

But the same board could change the decision. The district board has scheduled a special meeting a day after the conference, Giller said.

Metropolitan Water District officials said they believe that the conference could help bring a resolution. A resolution is particularly critical for that water district, which serves most of Southern California's 16 million people, because by California state law the farmers of the Imperial Valley get first crack at Colorado River water.

So any loss would hit the urban consumers of Southern California first.

"This is the most onerous thing that we've had to deal with in recent time," said Metropolitan Vice President Dennis Underwood. "I still believe we will accomplish this in the time frame we have left.

"All the agencies are committed," he said. "All the entities have to work together... If, when, we get it done, I think it will be very long-lasting.

"It's convenient when you go to a conference. There are things that we need to clean up. This is a time to be able to do that."

Bob Muir, Metropolitan spokesman, said his agency has prepared for a cutoff of the surplus. Conservation and "banking," or ground storage of water, gives the district about two year's worth of water before the deeper cuts will be passed to consumers.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, a similar agency that serves about 800,000 customers in Clark County, has employed a parallel strategy here. In a crunch, the agency can recover water banked underground in the county.

Pat Mulroy, water authority general manager, has been sharply critical of the Imperial Irrigation District's decision. But she believes the meeting next week could be very important to the process.

"Certainly the center of attention will be the decision by the Imperial Irrigation District Monday and what that means," she said. "There will be a lot of individual discussions and one-on-one meetings."

But Mulroy said the responsibility for meeting the agreement in place falls on California, and California water users have to resolve the issue.

"As far as negotiations, that really will be done by the California agencies because they need to figure out a solution to this issue," she said.