Friday, Jan. 17, 2003 | 11:16 a.m.
Water price increases, limits on the use of turf in yards, and reductions in lawn watering are probably coming to Southern Nevada this summer, officials said Thursday.
After more than three years of drought, the consensus at the Southern Nevada Water Authority board's special meeting was that the scarcity of water in the Colorado River will lead to less landscaping, more cash to encourage residents to take out their water-hungry lawns and greater costs for heavy water users.
Water authority staff recommended a three-stage system to respond to the water crisis. The first step, which the area is effectively already in, is a "drought watch."
The second step, which would require curbs on uses and higher costs for profligate users, would be "drought alert." That status could become a reality for Southern Nevada water users within a few months.
The third stage would be a "drought emergency," and staff said Thursday that it would probably mean dead lawns and deep restrictions on use. But the details of the third stage are waiting for recommendations from a new citizens' committee, which could be created next week at the board's regular meeting.
The water authority will formally consider the three-stage response system next Thursday at its regular meeting. The plan then will go to the regional water agencies for ratification.
How much more residents and businesses will pay for water use was not on the agenda, but will have to be determined by the five regional water agencies that bring the resource directly to consumers' taps.
Water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said Southern Nevada is in a crisis.
"We have to talk about ... one of the toughest situations Southern Nevada has faced in a long time," Mulroy told the board, which includes representatives from Clark County's elected governments. "This is about as ugly as it gets on the Colorado River.
Lake Mead, the source of more than 80 percent of Clark County's drinking water, is at 65 percent of capacity and dropping. By January 2004, officials here expect to lose rights to about 18,000 acre-feet of water from the lake every year because of the drought, which is simply not leaving enough water in the river system for all users.
But a tangle of river law and a failure by California water agencies to reach an agreement on how to share a reduced volume of water from the Colorado led to the federal government cutting off so-called "surplus" supplies Jan. 1, leading to the loss of 37,000 acre-feet this year for Nevada.
One acre-foot is about enough water for a family of five for a year, or 326,000 gallons.
Mulroy, as she has in the past, said the federal cutoff simply accelerated a process that the drought almost guaranteed anyway. If Lake Mead water levels continue to drop, the law of the river would have required a complete cutoff in January 2005 of the surplus.
"The driver here is the drought," she said.
Mulroy told the board members that ordinances, including rules governing subdivision landscaping requirements, will have to be changed throughout the Las Vegas Valley.
Water authority Deputy General Manager Kay Brothers said the specific form that those rules would take -- and the enforcement provisions that the laws would include -- would be up to the regional distributors.
Those agencies include the Las Vegas Valley Water District, which serves the unincorporated Clark County and the city of Las Vegas, the Big Bend District serving the Laughlin area, and the cities of Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City.
Henderson Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers said the changes could deeply affect the way business is done throughout the region. She said some new developments in Henderson now require, through community rules, a specified amount of turf around new homes.
With agencies fighting for more desert landscaping, called xeriscaping, such rules don't make sense, Cyphers said.
Mulroy said that if the region hits the third level of a drought emergency, it will not matter what the subdivision rules say. Water for turf will be lost.
Those with the most turf "will be the hardest hit," she said.
One aspect of the plan that is controlled directly by the water authority is incentives to curb water use, more than 60 percent of which is used by residential consumers and most of that outdoors.
The authority now pays about 40 cents a square foot for residents who take out their turf and replace it with xeriscape features. Mulroy said that amount could go up to a dollar, making it far more economical for residents to convert their lawns.
Ken Albright, the authority's water resources director, said every water use has to be examined and potentially addressed.
"This plan has to cover everything that is an unnecessary use," he said.
He said changing the rules now, in the midst of the worst drought in the modern history of the Colorado River, and enacting the tiered response to water scarcity will prevent future problems.
"Taking care of this today could prevent future problems," he said.
Boulder Councilman Bryan Nix said residents in Southern Nevada have to come to the realization that water use must be cut back. The region's seemingly never ending population boom demands it, he said.
"It's inevitable. Drought or not, California situation or not, we would have to be looking at some of these measures," Nix said.
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