Thursday, Jan. 2, 2003 | 11:02 a.m.
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
The Southern Nevada Water Authority is accelerating plans to cut water use in the Las Vegas Valley after the federal government moved Wednesday to reduce available Lake Mead water.
The U.S. Interior Department and its Bureau of Reclamation followed through on a month-long threat to cut off extra supplies of Colorado River water that California and Nevada have relied on for years after California water agencies failed to agree by year's end on a plan to reduce their consumption.
The direct impact on Las Vegas-area consumers will be limited because of stored water, but consumers here should prepare for changes in water uses and prices, Water Authority Deputy General Manager Kay Brothers said.
Local officials also hope the cut can be reversed later this year.
The federal action came after California's agricultural Imperial Irrigation District rejected a multi-agency plan to reduce water overuse. The California waters users had until Dec. 31 to agree to a plan or trigger a cut of 13 percent of the water the state has been taking from the river.
Irrigation district officials met the deadline with an alternative plan that would share its water with growing San Diego County, but neighboring districts in California rejected the 11th-hour offer because Imperial could back out in as little as a year. And, they said, the deal would be too expensive for consumers.
Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett Raley, head of the department's Western water issues, told reporters in a conference call before Imperial's 3-2 vote Tuesday that it was already too late to stop the cuts.
The last-minute timing of the vote left no time for three other agencies to approve the deal, he said. The supply cuts could be rescinded if the water agencies eventually reach an agreement, Raley said.
Caught in the mix is river water used by Nevada, the only other state to use more than its annual allocation from Lake Mead, and local water officials hope that the California agencies can end the federal cutoff by the end of this year.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority already had a plan to cut water use under development because of more than three years of drought along the Colorado River, the source, through Lake Mead, of nearly all of Southern Nevada's drinking water. The drought plan foresees a reduction by about 15,000 acre-feet at the end of the year. An acre-foot is about enough water to supply a family of four for a year.
The impact from the federal cuts because of the Imperial vote would nearly double that shortage.
If the cuts are enforced throughout the year, Southern Nevada would lose about 30,000 acre-feet, 10 percent of its total normally available, or about enough water for 150,000 people.
Southern Nevadans will not feel the effect immediately because the water authority has been banking water for several years.
"We have our groundwater bank," she said, that can meet the needs of Nevada consumers above the base allocation of 300,000 acre-feet from Lake Mead.
A similar plan in California also will blunt the blow.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a wholesaler that serves 17 million people through other agencies, says it has enough water to supply its millions of customers for two years through "banked" groundwater supplies.
But Brothers hopes that continuing negotiations will end the impasse in California and free the water Southern Nevada also lost through the Imperial decision.
"We're hoping that there will be no impact whatsoever," she said. "We're hopeful that they'll put the deal back together by the end of the year and we can use what we need."
The Imperial board voted after meetings that lasted much of the day. Board member Bruce Kuhn said he believed the panel had approved a better deal than it originally was offered.
"There's no such thing as a perfect document. No document is," Kuhn said. "This has divided the farm community. I have good friends who were friends from grammar school who are fighting over this thing. It's time to put it behind us."
But the Metropolitan Water District, anticipating the vote, said Tuesday that the reworked deal proposed by the Imperial district will not work.
Chief Ron Gastelum said in a statement that the water district could not support it because of "last-minute terms which deviate substantially from aspects of the October agreement" which Imperial tentatively signed, then rejected by a 3-2 vote early in December.
"In the end IID's demands ask every household in the state to put up about another $30 for its transfer deal with no caps for future costs. The last time an 11th-hour proposal was hastily approved (in California) it created an energy crisis. This will not be the case with water," Gastelum said.
Brothers said the vote may be disappointing but the Imperial board has come closer to the original terms negotiated in October.
"I think it's a positive step," she said. "There are still a lot of things that are going to be worked out. It's going to be a thing that unfolds over time."
For almost a century Imperial County has used more than a trillion gallons of Colorado River water a year to turn the desert into rich, green farms that provide much of the country's winter vegetables. The district has balked at giving up water.
But in recent years pressure has mounted on all sides to share that wealth. To the west, fast-growing San Diego wants to secure more of the river as a long-term water supply for homes and businesses. To the east six other states along the Colorado River want California to cut its overuse of the river so they can take their rightful shares.
And Imperial Valley farmers also are required to keep water flowing to California's largest inland water way, the Salton Sea. The brackish water of the sea supports fish and rare migratory birds.
Sun reporter
Launce Rake and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
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