Editorial: Water future: Urgent issue

Friday, Aug. 5, 2005 | 5:32 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

August 6-7, 2005

Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, is highly concerned about our water future for the coming decades. In 60 or 70 years, Mulroy acknowledges, ocean desalination technology could be in place, enabling Clark County's continued growth. She is, however, highly concerned about the period between now and then, which is why she believes a plan her agency has developed for those interim decades should be approved by state government.

In 1989 the water authority filed claims for unused groundwater in rural Lincoln and White Pine counties, north of Clark. After 16 years of negotiations, the claims have been whittled down to what Mulroy believes is the absolute minimum. If the claims, along with billions of dollars worth of pipelines, are ultimately approved, they would provide far and away the most water from a larger plan to back up Nevada's annual allotment from the Colorado River, which is being fully used.

Mulroy speaks with increasing urgency about this plan, whose future is uncertain. White Pine County fiercely opposes it while Lincoln County, which has been more cooperative, is complicating matters by developing its own large-scale plans for drawing its groundwater. This threatens long delays, as those plans would likely have to be incorporated into the years-long studies of the water authority's plans that will be undertaken by the state and federal governments. Even without the delays, the earliest that rural water could reach Southern Nevada is somewhere between 2015 and 2020.

Mulroy has been traveling to the rural areas this summer to explain her plan. She says the rural counties would be protected by an agreement strictly regulating Clark County's draw. She points out that northern counties have for decades drawn water from basins outside their own borders, and if that tradition ever ended, Nevada would "shut down." It's only right that Clark County should participate in that tradition too, she says.

We understand Mulroy's sense of urgency, as there is no other long-term backup plan to a drought-ravaged Colorado River, which supplies 90 percent of our water. We hope that the state engineer, who will decide on the water authority's plan, can find a resolution short of harming the rural counties and that also enables Las Vegas to continue to thrive as the state's economic center.