Friday, March 11, 2005 | 9:13 a.m.
Water agencies along the Colorado River might not meet an April deadline to draft a recommended policy to deal with shortages of river water.
In December Interior Department officials warned the seven states of the Colorado River Basin, including Nevada, that unless recommendations for criteria for instituting cuts were forthcoming, the federal government could impose some.
Deputy Interior Secretary Steve Griles said then that the department wanted recommendations from the inter-agency group working on the issue by April.
The threat of cuts comes as massive Lakes Powell and Mead, the reservoirs for Las Vegas and 25 million people in Arizona and California, are less than half full after five years of drought. Although a relatively wet winter has helped Lake Mead recover by about 10 feet, the lake is still 75 feet below the level it had five years ago.
Further declines could lead to cuts to some users as the federal government seeks to avoid loss of electric-generating ability from the lakes or to access to the water for urban and agricultural use.
Who would give up water and how much they would give up has pitted users from the Upper Colorado River Basin against users in the lower basin, agricultural interests against the agencies supplying urban users and the states against each other.
Kip White, an Interior Department spokesman, said this week that the department is still hoping for those recommendations while the group, with representatives from all seven states, continues to meet.
"The issues are very complex," he said. "We're still relying on the states. We're still hopeful that the states will reach a consensus."
Kay Brothers, deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said the April deadline probably could not be met, but would not likely trigger any immediate calamity. The Water Authority is the regional wholesaler for drinking water, of which 90 percent comes from the river through Lake Mead.
"It is something that the bureau had asked for in April," Brothers said. "That is going to be hard to meet."
However, that doesn't mean that the states will have nothing to show for their efforts.
"We're still discussing basic concepts and working together on it," she said. "I think we're making progress."
Regional and federal officials agree that Southern Nevada and the other users along the river don't have to fear immediate cuts from the federal government because any new rules would have to go through public vetting under the National Environmental Policy Act. Such a process would probably take at least two years.
Dennis Underwood, vice president of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said the states are making progress and could have recommendations on general shortage guidelines soon, perhaps by the end of April if not the beginning of the month.
He noted that it took years for the seven basin states to come up with rules on how to share "surpluses" on the river, a problem now regulated to the past because of the drought.
"We're making substantial progress," Underwood said. "We will have something, at least a framework, to give to the bureau.
"If we have a framework by April 1, or by the end of the month, does it really matter? The main thing is you have a framework. There is still a lot of work to be done."
The federal government, he said, wants the states to write the recommendations and would not be eager to step in unnecessarily.
"They (federal officials) let us have the food fights," Underwood said. "They let us get that our of our system, then they work with us."
Those food fights aren't always easy to resolve, he said, as each user and interest group works to protect their position.
"Some of this takes some time," Underwood said. "Sometimes we can spend all day, you go round and round and make no progress. That's part of the process."
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