Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005 | 9:24 a.m.
SAN DIEGO -- A call for greater cooperation to meet the growing water needs in the West came from officials on the first of a three-day conference on urban water issues Wednesday.
The first day of the conference focused on issues affecting California, which has 17 times Nevada's population with 35 million people but has similar difficulties supplying clean water to residents living in arid areas.
The Urban Water Institute, of which the Southern Nevada Water Authority is a member, presented the conference. Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy is scheduled to speak at the conference.
Pete Silva, vice chairman of California's Water Resources Control Board, said his agency is working with nine regional water control boards throughout the Golden State to protect both the water supply and water quality for people and the environment. He said it is not always easy.
"The public does not understand the issues, the complicated issues, involved," Silva said. "For them, all they demand is a safe water supply and, in addition, a healthy environment."
The state and regional boards work with the California Department of Water Resources and regional agencies, among them the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, to protect the myriad of water sources, from the mountains to the coast, that supply the homes and farms of the state.
California's complex web of water agencies face a significant challenge from lawsuits filed by Mexican farmers and environmentalists to block the state's efforts to stop leakage from a key agricultural conduit from the Colorado River, called the All American Canal.
The savings from ending the leaks are a critical component of California's plan to shift more needed water from agricultural to urban uses, and still stay within the federal limit of what the state can take from the Colorado River.
Silva said it is not yet clear what California will do to respond to the federal suits. The response could include filing a "friend of the court" brief. The state, however, does not agree with the suits, which argue that agricultural and environmental needs have a right to the water now seeping from the canal.
"It is our opinion that the water in whatever form, in the canal or leaving the canal, belongs to the United States" Silva said. "That is going to be our position throughout this discussion."
Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources, said the focus of his agency is to ensure that the lack of a clean, dependable supply does not hurt the economic vitality or environmental health of the state. Achieving that means integrating decision making from the local level to the statehouse in Sacramento.
One of the most important of those agencies is the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, described as the largest and most comprehensive water management and environmental restoration program in the nation. CALFED brings together 25 state and federal agencies to work with local communities to resolve competing demands for California's water.
CALFED's authority includes pipelines and aqueducts linking nearly the entire state to rich water sources in the central valleys.
Joe Grindstaff, CALFED's interim executive director, said the program has been successful. He also told about 150 officials at the conference that droughts such as the one that has threatened water supplies on the Colorado River are usually transitory.
Lake Powell, now only about half full, "will fill again," Grindstaff said.
The network of pipelines supplying California's water agencies stands in remarkable contrast to Nevada, where a patchwork of a few inter-basin transfers, groundwater and river water supplies and the Colorado River supply the Silver State's needs.
Clark County, with 70 percent of the state's population, now gets 90 percent of its drinking water from the Colorado River.
But if plans from the Southern Nevada Water Authority come to fruition, the Silver State's map of water resources could look a lot more like California's. The Water Authority plans to build a $2 billion network of wells and pipelines to bring rural groundwater from Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties to the urban area in the south.
Vince Alberta, Water Authority spokesman, said California's regional cooperation, "achieved despite sharp divisions over use, environmental protections and other issues," may be a model for Nevada.
He noted that the Las Vegas agency already has cooperative agreements with agencies in Moapa Valley and Mesquite in Clark County and a pact with the Lincoln County government to cooperatively develop water supplies.
Even in White Pine County, where some residents there and in neighboring Utah are working to thwart the Water Authority's development plans, Mulroy has proposed a cooperative agency to mutually develop and control the groundwater program, Alberta said.
Cooperation doesn't stop at the state line, he added.
"Going forward, water agencies throughout the West and among the states are going to have to find ways to collaboratively work together, to find new ways to cooperate if we are going to succeed," he said.
"The partnerships are going to have to go beyond water agencies to include rural and urban community leaderships. All of these stakeholders have to be involved in the conversation, and ideally, they have to be part of the solutions."
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