Water Authority looks at conservation successes

Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004 | 9:30 a.m.

An intrastate committee looking at water issues took a close look at Southern Nevada's water-conservation programs Monday as part of a larger examination of where the resource will come from in the future.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority's Integrated Water Planning Advisory Committee learned that from a high of about 325,000 acre-feet of water used in 2002, the region last year used an estimated 270,000 acre-feet last year, and expects to stay at about the same level in 2004, even as the population continues to grow by about 75,000 people annually.

An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or about enough water for 1.5 typical families in Southern Nevada for a year.

Doug Bennett, Water Authority conservation manager, said the cuts in water use can be attributed to an aggressive conservation program, including a $1-per-square-foot rebate for grass turf to be replaced with desert landscaping. More than 2.3 billion gallons annually have been saved because of the program, he said, which has paid for the removal of 43.3 million square feet of turf.

Bennett noted that two years ago the Water Authority's effort to reach 25 percent conservation compared with 1990 water use levels looked like it would fail, with conservation stalled at around 15 percent or less from 1999. But with the new conservation push, the region has reached 23.1 percent, just a few points shy of the Water Authority's goal, which it hopes to reach by 2010.

One of the tasks of the committee, which includes a broad swath of developers, business interests, and representatives of the rural areas, will be to recommend how much conservation the Water Authority needs in the future.

Conservation is in a sense a source of water, because when less is needed, other sources will not be necessary to augment the Colorado River resource coming to Southern Nevada through Lake Mead. Bennett suggested the region can now do better than the old 25 percent goal.

"It's very conspicuous," Bennett said. "The 25 percent goal is obsolete."

The Water Authority discussed the conservation program in the context of its effort to turn to rural ground water to fulfill what will inevitably be growing demand here. Kay Brothers, water authority deputy general manager, noted that the Colorado River, source of 90 percent of Clark County's drinking water, "is very important to us and always will be," but five years of drought have shown that it can be a fickle source.

The drive to import rural ground water as well as divert water from the Muddy and Virgin rivers has sparked opposition in White Pine, Nye and Lincoln counties, all of which have representatives on the water committee. The opposition sparked creation of the committee, which is to come up with long-term recommendations for handling Southern Nevada's need for more water.

Not everyone has bought into the agency's drive to bring rural water to Las Vegas. Dean Baker, a White Pine rancher and committee member, drove eight hours to attend the meeting.

He raises about 2,000 head of cattle in the rural county. Although he has a small plane, the plane was grounded by several inches of fresh snow, necessitating a long drive down to Las Vegas.

Baker said he does it to look out for the economic and environmental interests of his home.

"I have a resource, a family and a community that I feel an obligation to protect," Baker said.

He supports test wells, which Baker believes will show that there is not the water available for Las Vegas that the water authority believes. Baker believes that the result of large-scale diversions of rural groundwater to Southern Nevada will dry up wells throughout the vast rural parts of the state.

Already, the water tables are dropping in Nevada and Utah, he said.

If the Water Authority drilled test wells, "it would become abundantly clear that the water isn't there," he said.

Baker said more than farmers and ranchers would suffer.

"It doesn't serve the consumers in Las Vegas to spend the kind of money they're talking about," he said.

The Water Authority has not publicly released estimates of the cost of the wells, pipelines and treatment facilities envisioned in the rural water effort, but outside observers have estimated a price tag in the billions of dollars.