$82 million offered to end water fight

Friday, Aug. 29, 2003 | 11:27 a.m.

Southern Nevada has offered to buy $82 million in water from California in an effort to break a yearlong logjam that has blocked billions of gallons of water from reaching Las Vegas consumers.

Nevada water agency officials hope the deal can resolve the last remaining obstacles to the Quantification Settlement Agreement, a compact among four California agencies.

Until that agreement is settled, Las Vegas can't use the so-called "interim surplus" water from Lake Mead.

Pat Mulroy, Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager, said the offer could provide a breakthrough that would also provide a critical "safety net" against a drought that threatens Nevada's water lifeline to Lake Mead. As part of the deal, California would provide 330,000 acre-feet to Southern Nevada, about as much water as the region uses in an entire year.

Water Authority spokesman Vince Alberta said the solution to the Quantification Settlement Agreement and the resumption of access to some or all of the surplus could conservatively provide another 840,000 acre-feet for a total of nearly 1.2 million. Under that estimate, the cost for the California water would come to about $70 an acre-foot.

In comparison, the Water Authority is paying about $140 an acre-foot for water "banked," or stored underground, in Arizona, Alberta said. One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or enough water for a typical family for one year.

That's why Southern Nevada water officials consider the California deal "very, very cost-effective," Alberta said.

Under the general terms of the proposal, which still must be fleshed out, Southern Nevada could draw down that water over the next 13 years as needed.

Mulroy said the California water -- if they are willing to sell -- would provide a bridge to the next generation of large-scale projects that the Nevada officials believe should come on line to supply water needs into the next century.

"For us it is the greatest deal in the world," Mulroy said. "You have a huge increase in your drought reserves. If the drought gets worse, you've just got a heck of an increase in your drought reserve."

If the drought continues, it could not only wipe out the surplus but cut into the region's base allocation of 300,000 acre-feet a year. When that happens, Southern Nevada would have to dip into "banked" water here and in Arizona. It could also force even tighter restrictions on water use.

Already, governments throughout Southern Nevada are requiring residential and business customers to cut back on water.

The restrictions on use, aiming for 25 percent conservation, have drawn criticism from some who argue that the rules would not be necessary if the local governments would restrict growth. Proponents of unlimited growth counter that it is good for the regional economy and is driven by the free market.

The California deal would not eliminate the need for drought-related conservation measures, but would ease long-term doubts about the reliability of the Southern Nevada system, said Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams.

Williams is a member of the Water Authority board and president of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, the agency that distributes water to unincorporated Clark County and Las Vegas. The board would have to approve any deal to buy the California water.

"We have to have more water to rely on, reliability of our water supply," Williams said. "We have to hear the full story, but the little bit I've heard sounds very, very good."

But while Southern Nevada officials are upbeat on the proposal, not all of their counterparts in Southern California are as sanguine.

Adan Ortega, vice president of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said the deal parallels a proposal that his agency made last week. What Metropolitan wanted in exchange for an $82 million investment was guaranteed access to water, and that is the same thing Southern Nevada wants, he said.

If the other parties in the ongoing talks over the Quantification Settlement Agreement support the proposal, "it would indicate the parties are more willing to sell California's water to Nevada than they are to Southern California," Ortega said.

He predicted that there will be skepticism from Californians for any proposal that would shave some of California's 4.4 million acre-feet allotment from the Colorado River to give it to Nevada.

"A lot more people will have something to say about that," Ortega said. "It would have been a greater breakthrough if Southern Nevada had offered us $82 million for nothing in return."

Mulroy and representatives from the three other California agencies grappling with the Quantification Settlement Agreement sharply criticized Metropolitan for rejecting their proposals last week to rescue the pact. The agreement has been mired in fruitless negotiations for a year.

On Jan. 1, the federal government cut off the surplus -- actually unused water from the Upper Colorado River Basin states of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming -- because of California's failure to ratify the Quantification Settlement Agreement. The law of the river, which is administered by the U.S. Interior Department, treated the only two states using the surplus -- Nevada and California -- the same.

Since then, Nevada has tried to push, pull and parley the California agencies into settling the pact without success. At stake is at least 30,000 acre-feet a year that the Silver State could have taken as surplus and hopes to resume taking.

That's about 10 percent of Nevada's basic allocation of 300,000 acre-feet a year, a margin that water officials here say is critical to meet the needs of a community growing by 20,000 homes every year.

While Metropolitan may be cool to the proposal, other California water officials, some of whom have had better relationships recently with their brethren in Las Vegas, are receptive to the plan.

"We're willing to look at anything to keep the thing going because it's very important to keep peace on the river," said Sue Giller, a spokeswoman with the Imperial Irrigation District. Her agency, with another agricultural district representing the Coachella Valley in California and San Diego's water agency, together with Metropolitan, represent the quartet of agencies that need to agree on the Quantification Settlement Agreement.

Essentially, the agreement would set priorities and limitations along the agencies.

Those agencies may not have much time to finally agree on the pact. The California Legislature has until the middle of September to ratify any agreement before breaking up, Giller said. She added that the date, though, may not be set in stone.

"We've had lots of drop-dead dates, and we continue to keep going" with the talks, she said.

Without the agreement, Southern Nevada will continue to push for a separate arrangement with the Colorado River basin states that would allow Las Vegas to continue taking the surplus without California's similar participation.

Federal officials and officials from other states have said they recognize the basic unfairness of Nevada being penalized for California's inability to reach a compromise.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority and the other water agencies along the Colorado River are now scheduled to discuss the decoupling of California and Nevada at a meeting in Las Vegas on Sept. 9.

But the first choice of all those officials is for a settlement on the California side.

The federal government has done all it can to further those talks, but welcomes the Southern Nevada proposal, Interior Assistant Secretary Bennett Raley said from Washington, D.C.

"The Southern Nevada proposal was very helpful and we encourage the California agencies to look at it in a very serious light," Raley said.

He said observers should not view the proposal as helping out California.

"Southern Nevada is potentially obtaining a very valuable benefit," Raley said. He characterized the deal as advancing more than a decade of interstate cooperation on Colorado River issues, cooperation that is endangered by the impasse on the Quantification Settlement Agreement and the interim surplus.

Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid, a member of the Water Authority board, said the Southern Nevada proposal could be the key to ending the impasse.

"If Nevada can do something to bring all these parties together and resolve this, it could be a win-win for everybody," Reid said. "We need water. If we can acquire it at market rates and at the same time resolve a regional water war, it seems like that makes some sense."

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