Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Landmark water deal is approved

A hard-fought battle to settle rights to Colorado River water in California ended Thursday night, and the resolution of the issue could provide Southern Nevada with water supplies to serve its growing population for more than a decade.

The Imperial Irrigation District, California's biggest user of Colorado River water, was the last of four water districts that needed to approve the complex Quantification Settlement Agreement, the linchpin of a federal and interstate deal setting limits on use of the river. The district board approved the deal with a 3-2 vote Thursday night.

The 75-year pact would limit California's use of the river while transferring water from desert farming to fast-growing San Diego County.

For Las Vegas, the approved agreement means that the Silver State can reclaim some of the so-called "interim surplus" lost Jan. 1 when the settlement talks in California collapsed. Nevada has taken more than 30,000 acre-feet of water over both its base allocation of 300,000 acre-feet and the "extra water" -- actually unused allocations from states in the northern basin of the Colorado River. The extra water formed a critical component of the Southern Nevada Water Authority's resource plan for the next 15 years.

An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons of water, or about enough for the needs of a typical Southern Nevada family for one year.

"These have been 10 very painful months," said Pat Mulroy, water authority general manager. "With this (agreement), it stabilizes Southern Nevada's water supply for the next 15 years."

Mulroy, however, repeated the calls for conservation that have prompted residential, business and institutional users to reduce consumption of the resource by an estimated 15 percent this year. While the return of the surplus, potentially before the end of this year provides breathing room for the area, the conservation measures were in response to a crippling four-year drought, not the loss of the surplus, she said.

The water authority has used the surplus to "bank" water in Arizona and in Southern Nevada. The banked water will be a savings account against the expected future needs in the booming Las Vegas area, which adds about 70,000 people to the 1.8 million population annually.

But under federal Bureau of Reclamation rules, Nevada cannot bank surplus water when the water level at Lake Mead is below 1,180 feet above sea level. The level is now 1,143 feet above sea level, and expected to fall even more.

Next year Nevada will likely only have access to half of the surplus it has needed in the past because of the dropping lake level.

While some of the most complex and intractable legal issues surrounding the use of the Colorado River have apparently been solved, the meteorological issues haven't, Mulroy said.

"We've bought ourselves more than two decades because of the water supply, but we need that water to bank and to protect ourselves against this drought and future droughts," Mulroy said. "As water managers, we need to put water away for those dry spells."

But the Quantification Settlement Agreement allows water authority engineers to dream of huge new solutions to quenching Southern Nevada's thirst.

"One day, we will have to turn our eyes to the (Pacific) ocean," Mulroy said. "Without the quantification, that was impossible."

The idea would be to build the plants in California, providing our neighbors with water, and taking California's share of the Colorado River water out of Lake Mead.

The rolling priority system that existed prior to the agreement prevented partnering with California's water agencies serving the heavily urban, densely populated coastal areas, she said.

Nevada had a delegation including Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and water authority staff pressuring their colleagues in California to approve the pact during the last three weeks, Mulroy said.

"We practically lived in Sacramento," she said.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the San Diego County Water Authority and the Coachella Valley Water District agreed last month to sign the accord, but the Imperial district -- the river's largest user -- held out until Thursday night's agreement.

"It's time to get this deal done and go on and do what we do, which is farm," said Bruce Kuhn, the Imperial board member who cast the deciding vote needed for approval.

Approval of the long-awaited deal also restores California's privileges to draw surplus water for 18 million people. The U.S. Interior Department took away those privileges after Imperial rejected the pact in December.

Many in the heavily agricultural Imperial Valley view the Colorado River as the region's lifeblood. That belief created opposition to a cornerstone of the deal: agreement that Imperial will transfer up to 200,000 acre-feet a year to urban San Diego and possibly another 1.6 million acre-feet to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

The deal was crafted to reduce California's long-standing overuse of the river so other Western states can claim their fair share, and to ease fears that Southern California would have to look north to meet future water needs.

Mulroy said transferring river water from agricultural to urban use "is a new way of doing business that has never happened before.

"It will change the whole dynamic of how water use is handled in Nevada, Southern California and Arizona," she said. The Associated Press

contributed to this report.

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