Pickets seek other water answers

Thursday, Nov. 20, 2003 | 9:55 a.m.

About 50 mostly union pickets rallied in front of the County Government Center on Wednesday in an effort to draw attention to what they say is the biggest threat to water in the region: new homes.

John Wilson, a consultant to the group Raising the Standard of Living Coalition and the Teamsters, said new drought restrictions, although designed to be temporary, are likely to get tougher unless new sources of water come online.

The organizers said they chose the county building because the county commissioners were meeting Wednesday on zoning issues, including the approval of new homes. The commissioners did not meet with the picketrs.

The unions, including plumbers and pipefitters, painters and others, have tried unsuccessfully for years to unionize the residential construction industry. The Southern Nevada Home Builders Association and others have suggested that the latest moves by the coalition are an effort to put more heat on the homebuilders as an organizing strategy.

That's not the case, said Brett McCoy, an organizer with Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 525.

"When was the last time we as a community, we were ahead of an issue?" he said. "We are totally behind on this one."

The picket organizers said the Southern Nevada Water Authority has a good long-term plan for providing the resource.

But aspects of the plan, such as building desalinization plants in California so that water users in the Golden State can forego taking water from the Colorado River and give it to Southern Nevada instead, are expensive, they said.

They would like homebuilders to pay those costs, potentially billions of dollars.

Vince Alberta, a Water Authority spokesman, said homebuilders along with existing users already pay for new hookups. He said people are confusing the long-term conservation efforts, which are a part of the 25-year resource plan, with the temporary drought restrictions.

"We need to be more smart with how we use our water, but what we're dealing with today is drought," he said. "We need to be very careful when we start throwing out ideas that may have long-term impacts on our community."