Unusually dry March exacerbates West’s water worries

Friday, April 9, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.

Water agency officials from across the West had hoped that this year would bring some relief from five years of crushing drought that has dropped water levels in Lake Mead, the source of water for drinking and irrigation for 20 million people.

But the most recent projections from the Rocky Mountains show a situation potentially going from very bad to much worse. Officials with the federal Bureau of Reclamation indicate that an abnormally warm and dry March means that the spring melt of mountain snow will provide only half of the normal amount of water to Lake Powell, Lake Mead's sister basin on the Colorado River and the reservoir that supplies the lower lake.

"April to July 2004 has dropped to 50 percent of average," said Tom Ryan, an Upper Colorado Region hydrologist for the bureau, from the agency's regional offices in Salt Lake City.

Ryan said that means Lake Powell will likely receive about 54 percent of the annual average. Some water officials estimated that 150 percent or so was needed to bring the water system back to health.

A month ago, bureau staffers and Southern Nevada Water Authority officials were predicting 77 percent runoff for the year.

Lake Powell, which was full to the top of Glen Canyon Dam in 1999, now is close to 60 percent empty. Lake Mead is about 40 percent empty. Together, the missing water totals almost an entire Lake Mead-size reservoir.

Current projections show that Lake Powell will have only 35 percent of capacity a year from now, Ryan said.

Pat Mulroy, Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager, said the reduction in Lake Powell's inflow won't be felt downstream immediately because the upper reservoir still has enough water to meet needs for at least a couple of years.

However, another hot, dry summer could affect inflows to the Colorado River below Lake Powell, and that could affect Lake Mead's water level more directly, she said. Local officials fear the lake could fall below 1,125 feet above sea level by Jan. 1.

That level, 80 feet below where it was four years ago, would mark the lowest it has been in 30 years and would trigger a "drought emergency," the most severe of three drought-response stages, and deeper water-use restrictions in urban Clark County.

Those restrictions have not been formally codified by the water authority and the local distributors in the county, which include the Las Vegas Valley Water District and the cities of North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City.

"It's an eye-opener," water authority spokesman Vince Alberta said Thursday of the new projections. "We, and I mean the Colorado River basin including Southern Nevada, are going down a road on which we've never been before.

"Everyone needs to understand -- all the basin states and all the communities along the river -- need to understand that efficient water use and sustainability are going to be more than themes," he said. "We need to translate these themes into action."

Alberta said the Las Vegas community has done much to conserve water, slicing 15 percent off the per-person use over the previous year.

"We've made progress in that area in Southern Nevada, but we have room to improve," he said. "I think for everybody along the Colorado River basin, if these numbers hold true, it will require a cultural shift. We are not going to have a choice."

The local and federal officials agreed that as bad as the situation is, it would have been much worse without the 31-year-old Lake Powell. The upper reservoir has cushioned the shock of the drought.

"We can handle two, three maybe even four more years of drought," Ryan said. "It really underscores how critical these reservoirs are to water users on both (upper and lower) basins.

"We don't have a crisis now, but if Powell wasn't there, we would have one," he said.

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner John Keys of Salt Lake City said from the bureau's standpoint "that whole system is just flat doing its job."

"The system was designed to carry the basin states through an extended drought period," he said.

Some observers say that if the situation isn't a crisis yet, it is reaching a critical stage. One of the fears of those users who depend on Lake Mead water, particularly in Nevada and California, is that the basic allotment provided to those states will dry up.

Already, the Bureau of Reclamation is warning of the complete loss of so-called "surplus" above the basic allotment, which is 300,000 acre-feet for Southern Nevada and 4.4 million acre-feet for California. A few years ago that surplus, which for Nevada could have equaled 40,000 acre-feet, was considered so reliable it was factored into the regions' long-term water resource plans.

Now the water users are facing a cutback in the basic allotment, although how much and how it would be implemented are issues that are still under discussion.

"If you do the math, and you have two more 50-percent-of-less winters, you have problems," Mulroy said. "Now there is no more inflow to Lake Mead. And what happens? The lake starts dropping like a rock.

"This is forcing the states to look at it in a way they've never had to look at the issues before. What Mother Nature decides to do, she decides to do. As water planners, we have to plan for the worst eventuality."

Mulroy said it is critically important for water users in Nevada to save wherever they can so that the region, as it did last year, will have some reserve water to "bank" in the ground against future needs -- an eventuality that is increasingly likely as the drought continues.

Robert Walsh, a Bureau of Reclamation spokesman in Boulder City, said the hope and belief at the agency is that the drought will not continue. If it does, the agency has the legal authority to cut that allocation "in consultation with the basin states," including Nevada's water authority.

"Everybody is aware we are in the fifth year of a drought," Walsh said. "The discussions now are what happens if the drought continues."

In the meantime, there is always a chance that the season could eke out some more snow for the Rockies and heavy rainfall this summer, Ryan said. Utah joined Southern Nevada in having some welcome spring rains this month, he noted.

"It can always turn around," he said. "We're hoping for more rain. At least it's not hot and dry like it was last month."