Deadline draws near for water decision

Monday, Dec. 30, 2002 | 11:04 a.m.

The U.S. Interior Department has issued what could be the final warning for California and Nevada: Affirm a Colorado River agreement on the table, or lose billions of gallons of water.

Interior officials on Friday bluntly reaffirmed Secretary Gale Norton's earlier warning that come New Year's Day, California would lose access to 800,000 acre-feet of water, enough for 4 million people. The brunt of the impact would be felt by urban water users in Southern California.

About 1 1/2 million water customers in Southern Nevada could be caught in the undertow.

But a local water authority spokesman said his agency is ready to tap stored underground reserves to meet the needs of Las Vegas-area consumers.

Vince Alberta of the Southern Nevada Water Authority said the underground reserves would help replace the 30,000 acre-feet annually that would be lost here.

The loss would be equivalent to about 10 percent of Southern Nevada's yearly use, but the water authority has about 300,000 acre-feet of water stored in Clark County and Arizona.

"Fortunately, our groundwater resources provide some flexibility," Alberta said. "That will give us time, if we need it, to implement other long-term measures that can be used as a resource."

Interior's action would write a new chapter in the long and winding history of Colorado River law. Cuts to the two states' "water orders," or requests for releases from Lake Mead, have never happened before.

"This is the first year that we haven't been able to meet everybody's order with the water that is available," said Bob Johnson, regional director for the Bureau of Reclamation, the Interior agency responsible for water use linked to the lake and river.

With two days left before the action becomes final, the focus of professionals from water agencies throughout the West will be on the board of an agricultural irrigation district in California's Imperial Valley.

The board meets tonight, and it could choose to accept an agreement it does not want -- or it could reject the pact and trigger the reduction.

Interior would have "no choice but to proceed with enforcement" of the reduction, a product of a decade of negotiations and a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett Raley said.

"It is the same thing that the department has been saying for over a year," Raley said.

He said any compromise short of California agreeing to a long-term reduction in water use is very unlikely. The Golden State has been using about 20 percent more than its legal allocation for years, he noted.

"The willingness to provide California with extra water because the communities do not want to live within the water use they've agreed to is not really high," Raley said. "This whole effort has been the result of a reality that California has been living off the surplus for decades."

A divided Imperial Valley district board voted 3-2 to reject the pact Dec. 9, immediately prompting warnings from federal officials and consternation from other water agencies in California. The same board is expected to vote at its meeting tonight.

One key issue that Raley introduced Friday: The district, which serves one of the richest agricultural areas in the United States, was threatened with the loss of 205,000 acre-feet of water, almost 10 percent of its annual take from the river. Raley said more cuts to the Imperial Irrigation District could come.

Imperial district officials have promised to fight the cuts, arguing that their valley's farmers have the primary rights for water.

"The secretary does not have the authority to unilaterally do what she is attempting to do," Imperial district counsel John Carter said. "Her action is in violation of our water rights and existing agreements."

Local water officials have warned that even if an 11th-hour rescue preserves Nevada's extra use of the surplus Lake Mead water, consumers will face cutbacks. More than three years of drought have shrunk the amount of water in the Colorado River by 75 percent, and plummeting Lake Mead water levels are likely to trigger mandatory reductions in use beginning in 2004, federal and local officials agree.

The water authority and the six local agencies that deliver water to homes and businesses in Southern Nevada are working on a plan to reduce water use throughout the region. That plan is scheduled to go before the agencies' boards and the public next month.

"Conservation is going to be critical if we are going to survive the drought as a community and we are going to maintain our credibility with other Colorado River states," Alberta said Sunday. "That's regardless of what happens."