Friday, Dec. 10, 2004 | 11:03 a.m.
The board of the Arizona Water Banking Authority on Thursday approved a deal that would bring Southern Nevada 1.25 million acre-feet of water over the next three decades in what officials here are calling a critical hedge against continued drought.
The deal, which is expected to be finalized by the Southern Nevada Water Authority at a meeting Thursday, would cost Southern Nevada $330 million and would be paid with new connection charges. The water represents three years of water taken from the Colorado River, but will be used in smaller increments -- 20,000 acre-feet in 2007 and 2008, 30,000 acre-feet in 2009 and 2010, and 40,000 acre-feet in 2011 and beyond.
Because the water authority treats and returns household waste water to Lake Mead, there is an additional benefit in credits received for the return flow: for every 40,000 acre-feet the agency is authorized to draw up from the lake, the Las Vegas community actually uses about 68,000 acre-feet. The benefit comes because the water authority takes the water used indoors, treats it and returns it to the lake.
For every gallon of water the water authority puts back into the lake, the water authority can take another gallon out in "return flow credits."
One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or enough water for 1.5 families to use over the course of a year in Southern Nevada.
The agreement would be good until 2060 or until all the credits are used, whichever comes first. If Arizona needs water, it will turn to what it has "banked" underground, allowing Nevada to use the water Arizona would have taken from the lake instead.
If Nevada does not need the Arizona water in any given year, the water authority would forego pulling the water from the lake. Vince Alberta, water authority spokesman, said Las Vegas, which continues to grow, drought or not, may not need to use the Arizona supply in 2007.
If the most aggressive forecast for using the water comes true, Southern Nevada would use up the supply in 35 years. Alberta said that is not likely, but he said the region should use it by 2060.
Pat Mulroy, water authority general manager, flew to Phoenix for the approval vote. Consideration of the issue took about an hour by the Arizona Water Banking Authority. She noted that the Arizona board unanimously approved the deal, which was an extension of a 2001 agreement between Nevada and Arizona.
The new deal originally had sparked some concern from Tucson and Phoenix, she said, but a couple of key amendments brought the representatives of those cities on board.
"Today they stood up and wholeheartedly supported the agreement," Mulroy said.
The amendment affecting the cities said that if shortages cut into the water supply for Tucson and Phoenix, the amount delivered to Nevada -- all of which would go to the Las Vegas metropolitan area -- would also be reduced. Mulroy said that amendment is not likely to come into play since before it could be triggered, agricultural water use in Arizona would have to be eliminated.
"They have a huge ag(ricultural) buffer before they ever get to the cities' supply," she said. "600,000 acre-feet."
Shortages are a worry for all three lower basin states because of five years of drought, but Mulroy said the biggest benefit from the deal is that it replaces the wet-year "interim surpluses" that Nevada, Arizona and California lost because of the falling water levels in Lake Mead.
For Nevada, the deliveries from the lake under surplus conditions totaled up to 30,000 acre-feet a year, but the drought has made that additional resource history.
Mulroy said another key amendment that made the deal more palatable to Arizona was an agreement to reconcile the cost for either side. If the deal costs more to implement than Arizona receives from Nevada, Nevada will cover the additional cost.
If Nevada pays Arizona more than it costs to deliver the water, Arizona will reimburse Nevada, Mulroy said.
In the agreement, Nevada also formally backed Arizona's hope to change the historical division of water rights in the southern basin of the Colorado River. By 1964 congressional fiat, California holds the senior water rights, followed by Nevada and Arizona is last.
That means that Arizona could feel the brunt of cuts to usage along the river first. California water officials, although supportive of the water-sharing deal between Arizona and Nevada, are not happy with the idea of rearranging the water priorities.
"We certainly believe that the actual deal itself, the exchanges of water and banking and sharing, just makes sense," said Jeff Kightlinger, general counsel to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. "It's a good way for Las Vegas to make it through shortage times and prepare a cushion for the future."
But, he said, Arizona and the Central Arizona Project, which brings water from the Colorado River to the state's cities, is "trying to reverse its position in the river so it doesn't take the first shortage."
"We don't think it's useful for people to try to legislatively maneuver themselves to try to take water from someone else," he said.
California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet yearly from the river, Arizona 2.8 million and Nevada 300,000.
Herb Guenther, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and chairman of the board of the Arizona Water Banking Authority, said the water deal will enable his state to fully use Arizona's allocation.
"We will continue to have some water in excess of what we would be able to put to beneficial use," Guenther said. "As long as we have that water and it can be put to beneficial use by another state in the basin, we have the right to store that water on their behalf in exchange for compensation."
Guenther said the deal represents the new way of dealing with water in the West.
"We're into a new era," he said. "We have to stop litigating everything, arguing everything. We have to sit down and build bridges to get states over uncertainty, and hopefully those states will reciprocate ... You don't like lots of problems with your neighbor because that tends to create an uneasy legal and political atmosphere."
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