Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2003 | 9:51 a.m.
The Colorado River provides water and power to 25 million people in seven states, but more than four years of drought are endangering the resource.
Officials from throughout the river basin, from Wyoming to California, will meet this week in Las Vegas. The focus of their conversation will be the crisis of the drought and its legal and political ramifications.
The Colorado River Water Users Association annually brings together the state and local water agencies along the river, but in recent years what was once a sleepy meeting of policy wonks has become a gathering of national importance.
Among the speakers scheduled for the meeting is Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who is by federal law the ultimate authority, or master, of the river. Also scheduled to speak will be Henderson Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers, chairwoman of the Southern Nevada Water Authority board.
The board has lately become ground zero for controversial new restrictions on water use imposed in reaction to the drought.
Pat Mulroy, Water Authority general manager, is scheduled to speak on the question of whether the legal compact among the basin states can survive the drought.
Like this year's communication on drought issues, the discussions at the conference have in recent years had significant impact on water consumers.
The conference will last for three days. The first day, Wednesday, is reserved for committee reports and meetings. Thursday, Cyphers and Norton are among those scheduled to speak. Friday, Mulroy and Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner John Keys are scheduled to talk.
Among the presentations will be National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's predictions for the precipitation in the Rocky Mountains and the West.
Last year Norton told the participants that California and Nevada would lose billions of gallons of water unless four California water agencies could agree on a plan to cut back its use. They didn't agree, and the supply of surplus water was cut off.
Nine months later the California agencies formally agreed to a new deal in a signing ceremony atop Hoover Dam, and the water returned. But officials, especially in Las Vegas, were already working on a crisis of natural origins. Snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, the source of the Colorado River, has been as little as half of what it should be in recent years.
Water levels in Lake Mead, the source of about 90 percent of Las Vegas' water supply and the reservoir for all users downstream, have dropped by 70 feet and continue to fall.
"We're in the fifth year of the drought in the Colorado River basin," said Vince Alberta, a Southern Nevada Water Authority spokesman. "It's impacting communities throughout the Southwest."
The theme for this year's three-day meeting, which will start Wednesday at Caesars Palace, is "Drought or Opportunity." Alberta said "drought" is the challenge faced by communities along the river. "Opportunity" is the way those communities can respond to the challenge.
He said the drought is showing the host of governments and agencies along the river that cooperation will be a key to keeping the system working for all the users.
"The title is very symbolic," Alberta said. "As a community, and as a river basin, what this has demonstrated is that we do need to be one integrated system.
"It's all for one and one for all in many regards," he said. "We have to work together as one to overcome the drought."
Cyphers said that although the drought-related restrictions have bitten residential and business water users in Las Vegas, the drought could have a long-term positive impact on use patterns here.
"One thing that we have learned is to really use our water wisely," she said. "The change, the new paradigm, is that we are doing things responsibly. I am grateful for this perfect storm.
"We're coming out of this with knowledge. We're coming out of this strong."
Cyphers said her message to the other water officials will be to let them know how seriously conservation is taken in Southern Nevada. It is a message that Mulroy has said could be critically important if the drought continues.
Mulroy has said she and her colleagues will have to go to other states to buy water if the lake levels continue to drop and the basic allocation is cut by the federal government. If that happens, she says, Southern Nevada has to prove it is doing what it can to control waste and conserve the resource.
The message, however, became a little more complicated last week when the Las Vegas City Council voted to create an exemption to a ban on most water fountains for companies that save water in other areas. That move has created a wedge between the city and the county, which actually delivers water to about 1 million customers in both jurisdictions.
Alberta said the issue is likely to prompt questions among the participants from the other states. The local agencies, however, will stress that the region is still focussed on providing a unified conservation approach.
He said the local conservation program, which officials have credited with trimming consumption by about 15 percent over last year's level, "is among the most aggressive in the country."
"We will find a solution that works with everybody in the region," Alberta said. At the same time, "We need to have demonstrated that we have taken every possible measure (to conserve)."
Other communities, such as those in Colorado, have faced tougher restrictions already because of the drought, and will not have a lot of sympathy for any community that doesn't take the crisis seriously, he said.
"Southern Nevada is not the only community that has faced tougher conservation measures because of the drought. Everybody is watching the snow pack very carefully this year.
"It's going to take several years to work ourselves out of this drought," he said. "It's getting more and more serious every day."
archive
