Wet April doesn’t dent drought

Friday, May 21, 2004 | 9:25 a.m.

Despite a relatively wet April, the snow and the rain delivered to the Rocky Mountains is far short of what it would take to reverse the effects of five years of drought.

Kay Brothers, Southern Nevada Water Authority deputy general manager, said the mountain snowpack, the critical source for the Colorado River and Lake Mead, is 38 percent of average, and the total runoff from the mountains to the streams that feed the river is expected to be 53 percent of normal.

That means as water deliveries to the Lower Basin states of the Colorado River -- Nevada, Arizona and especially California -- continue, the levels of Lake Mead and its upper reservoir, Lake Powell, will continue to fall.

Lake Mead now holds just 57 percent of what it did in January 2000, when it was full. Lake Powell holds 42 percent of its capacity.

The level of Lake Mead's water is at 1,153 feet above sea level. If it reaches 1,125 feet by Jan. 1, the federal Bureau of Reclamation will cut any access to so-called "surplus" water, meaning Southern Nevada must live within its basic appropriation of 300,000 acre-feet.

The federal agency, the rivermaster for Lake Mead and the Colorado River, now projects that the lake will reach 1,126 feet Jan. 1. That projection is subject to change, Brothers warned.

"We could well be at 1,125," she said.

Water authority officials have some good news: Conservation efforts are working, with the community consuming 272,000 acre-feet of water last year, down from 318,000 acre-feet the year before. That means Southern Nevada can, for a while anyway, live within its basic appropriation.

"If the community continues to respond they way it has, it could avert the need to go to extreme measures," said Pat Mulroy, water authority general manager.