Water official: Drought won’t stop growth

Wednesday, June 9, 2004 | 11:40 a.m.

Water will not be the factor that stops Las Vegas from continuing to grow, the leader of the region's two main water agencies told the Clark County Growth Task Force on Tuesday.

Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the region's water wholesaler, and the Las Vegas Valley Water District, the region's largest distributor to homes and businesses, said even while the worst drought in more than 500 years ravages the West, there is water to slake the thirst for growth.

"As bleak as it looks on the surface, there are solutions," Mulroy said. "It is going to require some action and some political response on the part of Southern Nevada.

"People always ask me, when are we going to run out of water?" she told the panel, which is charged with coming up with ways to better manage the region's rapid pace of growth. "As long as there are options available, we don't have to. It is a matter of going from your least expensive supply to your most expensive supply.

"The notion that we have a finite supply of water, and when that finite supply is gone you stop growing, is in the past."

Mulroy and Deputy General Manager Kay Brothers detailed the water authority's plans to include "in-state resources" -- groundwater from Clark, Lincoln, Nye and White Pine counties and diversions from the Muddy and Virgin rivers -- to the agency's water supply, which is now 90 percent dependent on the Colorado River. The river supply is increasingly threatened by the drought, which is in its fifth year.

The goal is to have 40 percent of the region's water needs supplied by those in-state resources.

The water authority has accelerated those plans because of the drought. Where once the agency believed that the Colorado River could supply Las Vegas' needs through 2016, the rush is on to build wells and pipelines as soon as possible, probably within a few years.

The water authority also is negotiating with Arizona, California and the federal government to lease rights to river water used for agricultural purposes, but those efforts also face significant legal hurdles.

Former Clark County commissioner, developer and task force member Jay Bingham saluted the water authority's efforts.

"This is not a community that is asleep at the wheel," Bingham said. "This is not a broke car. This is a car that needs some tuning."

Bill Bible, president of the Nevada Resort Association, asked Mulroy if it would help her efforts to develop the groundwater resources if the task force endorsed the water authority's plans to establish rights-of-way for pipelines to bring water through eastern Nevada to Las Vegas.

The pipeline corridors would be components of legislation being crafted by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. The corridors would be part of the Lincoln County Land Act, which Reid and staffers have worked on for months.

Mulroy said such an endorsement of the legislation would help, but "would not guarantee water" for Las Vegas. The wells in Lincoln and White Pine counties, the prime targets for the water authority's efforts, still have to win approval from the state engineer and the pipeline would have to go through environmental assessments, she said.

"It is very important for the community to support the Lincoln County Land Act," Mulroy said.

The support from the community and from the task force will not be unanimous. Task force member Jane Feldman, an activist with the local arm of the Sierra Club and a representative of the conservation community on the task force, indicated she would not support the proposed endorsement.

Feldman and other environmentalists are concerned that the water authority's proposed use of groundwater could affect the desert habitats of rare species or the ranching lifestyles of rural residents. The Sierra Club and other groups have become some of the loudest critics of the water authority's proposals.

"There's always water," Feldman said after the task force meeting Tuesday. "The trouble is that the water is already being used somewhere for something. It is a trade-off."

Leonard "Pat" Goodall, former University of Nevada, Las Vegas president and task force chairman, said he was not surprised by Mulroy's points.

"For years we've heard that getting the water was an economic and engineering problem as much as it was a resource problem," Goodall said. "That doesn't mean the economic and engineering issues are not significant."

In another presentation to the task force, Gale Fraser, general manager of the Clark County Regional Flood Control District, told the panel that his agency has made significant progress in building the concrete channels and detention basins to block flooding. The agency has so far constructed 62 detention basins, 359 miles of channels and storm drains, and has removed 38 square miles of homes and businesses from flood zones.

The agency still has another $1.7 billion and 25 to 30 years of work to go, including work on 64 new detention basins and 460 miles of channels, Fraser told the panel.

Regional Transportation Commission General Manager Jacob Snow said the region's growth has been and will continue to be a challenge for transportation planners. He said a mix of urban mass transit systems, including better buses, the monorail and light commuter rail, is essential to get people out of their cars.

He said the region has added an average of 100 cars a day over the last 15 years.

"We don't have the financial resources and especially we don't have the rights-of-way to accommodate that kind of demand," Snow said. "It is not sustainable."

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