Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2004 | 11:11 a.m.
Nevada doesn't have an ocean like California. And for the most part, its underground aquifers aren't salty, like New Mexico's.
But desalination, the conversion of saltwater to fresh water, could still be a boon to the thirsty Las Vegas Valley. Many experts envision Nevada paying for desalination in Southern California in exchange for more water from the Colorado River.
That's a very expensive idea -- but not as expensive as some of the alternatives, according to a researcher who says he has done the first-ever complete economic analysis of such an arrangement.
McClain Peterson, a natural resources manager with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada, presented his study on a poster at the annual desalination conference that ended Tuesday at Caesars Palace.
The two-day national convention brought together federal, state and local agency representatives from across the West -- a region gripped by water crisis brought on by population boom and drought -- as well as policymakers, engineering firms, academics and nonprofits.
Water rights agreements currently in place give California priority access to the river -- the Southwest's single most important water source -- leading to grumbling from the other states, from Colorado to Nevada, through which the river runs.
Even so, in the current drought, neither California nor Nevada has enough water. California is already looking to desalination as a possible solution.
Peterson said his analysis was the first to consider the savings that would be realized if Nevada piggybacked on California's existing plans.
"There's a lot of research on how much desalination costs at the coast, but until now no one has looked at the economies of scale," he said.
That is, rather than shouldering the cost of building an entire desalination plant, Nevada would pay to double the size of the plant California is already planning.
Peterson also calculated how much California would save by not having to treat and transport water from the river, another variable that he said had not been considered before.
Peterson imagined Nevada paying for half of a desalination plant that would pump out 56,000 acre-feet of fresh water per year.
One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, a year's worth of water for 1.5 families.
Nevada would then trade its share of the desalinated water for 28,000 acre-feet of water from Lake Mead belonging to California.
Peterson estimated that such a plant would cost $255 million to build and $29.5 million per year to operate. Over 30 years, that works out to $941 per acre-foot per year for Nevada, and $815 per acre-foot per year for California.
Nevada's cost would be higher because it would have to treat the river water. McClain also accounted for the cost of the hydroelectric power that would be lost as a result of less water flowing over the Hoover Dam -- $11 per acre-foot.
The costs Peterson estimated are more than three times the current going rate. By contrast, a deal reached last week has Nevada paying Arizona $330 million for 1.25 million acre-feet, or $264 per acre-foot.
Peterson also compared his estimates to the cost of xeriscaping -- conserving water by replacing grass with desert plants -- and purifying shallow aquifer, the extremely brackish water found at depths of less than 100 feet from the earth's surface.
Xeriscaping costs a staggering $5,450 for every acre-foot of water saved -- but the water is saved forever, so the cost per year turns out to be quite small. On the other hand, only so much water can be conserved.
Shallow aquifer water, by Peterson's calculation, costs $2,287 per acre-foot per year. That makes desalination look like a bargain.
"When compared with some alternative sources of additional supply, seawater desalination appears competitive and may be a preferred alternative for Southern Nevada," Peterson wrote in his report.
Like most of the attendees at the conference, Peterson said he believes large-scale desalination as a solution to the region's water problems is years, perhaps decades off.
But at some point, it just makes sense, he said, pointing to a quotation on his poster from former Illinois Senator Paul Simon's book "Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About It."
"If we are heading toward a grave water crisis, which we are, and if 97 percent of the world's water is seawater, which it is," Simon wrote, "then one of the seemingly obvious answers to our looming catastrophe is to utilize seawater."
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