Interstate tour sets out to study regional drought

Thursday, Feb. 13, 2003 | 11:15 a.m.

PARKER DAM, Calif. -- Thirty board members and staff of Southern Nevada's water agencies set out Wednesday on a three-day trip to find answers to questions posed by the region's worst drought in recorded history.

What they found is that for some neighbors, the drought barely registers.

Unlike Denver, which has seen lawns and golf courses die because of the drought, or Las Vegas, which faces proposed mandatory use restrictions, California and Arizona water consumers face no cutbacks.

"We do not need to implement a mandatory drought conservation plan at this time," said Debra Man, vice president of water transfers for the Southern California Metropolitan Water District, which serves more than 17 million customers from Los Angeles to San Diego.

"We do," responded Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves about 1.5 million customers.

Mulroy and other water-agency leaders on Wednesday traveled through miles of irrigated alfalfa fields in Arizona and California. They toured water-pumping facilities in both states, which with Nevada make up the trio of Lower Basin states on the Colorado River. And they saw Lake Havasu, which has barely registered a dip in its water level despite the drought.

Earlier in the day, the officials toured Lake Mead, where water levels have dropped 60 feet and are expected to drop even farther.

Meanwhile, Lake Powell, upstream from both Lakes Havasu and Mead, was at its lowest level in three decades, down 87 feet from its high, the Associated Press reported.

Mulroy said a combination of factors -- principally time and money -- mean other states are in much better shape to weather the loss of water due to drought and the collapse of a complex deal to provide so-called surplus water -- unused allocations from Wyoming, Colorado and Utah -- that have been used for years by Nevada and California.

The collapse of the deal means that Nevada, and specifically Las Vegas, will not have about 37,000 acre-feet of water at the end of this year, about enough water for 150,000 people. That water would have been saved underground for future lean years. Instead, the water authority could have to dip into water already saved as soon as this year.

California's water agencies are negotiating to bring back the deal that led to the collapse, essentially a rejection by the agricultural Imperial Irrigation District. Metropolitan Water District Vice President Dennis Underwood said Wednesday in a meeting with the Nevada water officials that the California agencies are working to resolve the impasse, but he could not comment further because of a gag order imposed by California Gov. Gray Davis.

California lost about 10 percent of its annual take from the Colorado River because of the deal's collapse.

But California has had decades to build huge reservoirs, store water underground and take other steps to absorb the shock of losing the surplus allotment from the Colorado River, Mulroy said. Arizona water officials said they have similar infrastructure in place to keep water coming to the urban centers of Phoenix and Tucson.

Las Vegas is playing catchup in a losing game.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority is only a decade old. While long-term strategies are in place to provide more water in the future, those strategies are too late to save a region teetering on the brink of disaster due to the drought, Mulroy said.

"Mother Nature is not my best friend right now," she said.

The officials tasted irony throughout the trip by bus along the length of the river south of Lake Mead. Throughout the tour, the group was enveloped by sometimes heavy rain.

Mulroy said the rain, while welcome, is far short of what it will take to turn around the years of drought that have left the entire West parched.