Southern Nevada will host water meeting

Thursday, May 27, 2004 | 9:11 a.m.

Southern Nevada will host a "water summit" Friday that will bring together two of the state's key federal lawmakers and Interior Department officials for discussions on strategies to deal with a crippling regional drought.

Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, and Sen. John Ensign, his Republican counterpart, are scheduled to join Interior Assistant Secretary Bennett Raley for the discussion to be held on the shores of Lake Mead. Raley is the Bush administration's point man for water issues, and officials here believe his agency's support for locally backed drought responses is essential.

Also attending will be Pat Mulroy, Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager. Mulroy said she asked the senators for the summit in an effort to shed light on the threat the drought poses to Southern Nevada -- and on the water authority's agenda for response, both local and regional. The senators' presence can help leverage the water authority's influence and arguments, she said.

"We asked Sen. Reid if he could get in touch with Sen. Ensign to have a forum. We want the senators to focus on the water supply for Southern Nevada," Mulroy said. "Let's talk about the drought response and what it will take... When the senators are present and hosting this, it takes on a whole new meaning."

Mulroy said she hopes to shore up support for the water authority's efforts to convert water used for agricultural purposes in California and Arizona to Las Vegas' urban needs. She plans to demonstrate the conservation measures that trimmed 15 percent from last year's water use in Southern Nevada compared to 2002.

The water authority, the water wholesaler for Clark County, gets 90 percent of the resource from Lake Mead. The lake and its source, the Colorado River, have been hit hard by what scientists are calling the worst drought in 500 years in the Rocky Mountains and the West.

Lake Mead water volume has dropped from its full capacity four years ago to 60 percent now.

Lake Powell, upstream on the Colorado River and the critical reserve for Lake Mead, is down to 40 percent of its total volume. A fourth bad year for snowfall in the Rockies means the water levels in the lakes will continue to fall.

Mulroy said one of the primary points she hopes to make is that Nevada already is sacrificing.

"Nobody knows that we are the only city on the lower river basin that has put in a drought response plan," she said, pointing to the conservation measures adopted throughout Clark County over the last two years. "Our economy is at stake. Our community is at stake."

The summit also provides an opportunity to show that portrayals in the national media of a water-wasting oasis in the desert, accounts that are often illustrated with the dramatic fountains at the Bellagio Hotel, do not reflect the reality of a community increasingly conservative in its water use, Mulroy said.

Representatives of MGM MIRAGE, the Bellagio owner, will attend the summit, Mulroy said. The hotel uses its own groundwater sources for the fountains, not Lake Mead water.

The proposal to temporarily take water that now goes to agricultural purposes and instead ship it to urban consumers is a measure that water authority officials believe would provide a critical bridge past the drought. However, officials in the upper basin reaches of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah fear that short-term buys of agricultural water would evolve into long-term dependence on the resources and eventually the loss of river water, which they will need for their own states.

California already is involved in transferring agricultural rights to urban users and Arizona is considering such a move, but only within the state lines of both states. Arizona officials have said they share the concerns of the basin states to the north.

All seven states are now joined in ongoing talks over the future of the river and the drought. The Interior Department, by federal dictate the legal master of the river, also is participating. June 7 is the next scheduled formal meeting of all the players in Las Vegas.

The federal and state governments need to understand that the use of the agricultural water is temporary until the water authority taps planned wells throughout much of central Nevada, Mulroy said.

The use of the other states' water would be "no harm, no foul," she said.

Mulroy said the future of Southern Nevada depends on ultimately winning water to bridge the curve of drought and demand that suggests the water authority might not have enough of the resource in the near term. That means getting water both for use and simply to keep the water level above the two water intakes that supply the cities here, she said.

Reid and Ensign did not immediately return phone calls for comment on the Friday summit. Raley said the issue and the invitation are important.

"Sen. Reid and Sen. Ensign are very important to the future of the Colorado River in general and obviously to Nevada," Raley said. "Anything that Sen. Reid and Sen. Ensign propose we look at very, very seriously."