Columnist Susan Snyder: With water, we’re on the take

Thursday, March 31, 2005 | 8:20 a.m.

It's hard to imagine why someone would need to water a sidewalk.

But the man who lives around the corner from me in Summerlin was hosing down the walkway in front of his house last week.

And the landscaper working along Sandstone Bluffs Drive on Tuesday morning was spraying down the sidewalk.

Maybe it's faster to grow concrete than pour it?

In any case, it's hard to look at people watering the pavement or to see gas stations putting fountains out front (Hualapai Way and Sahara Avenue, if you must know) one day and read comments from people such as Connie Simkins the next.

She lives up in Lincoln County in one of the rural communities from which Southern Nevada Water Authority officials say they will need to take water.

Water that right now we use to sprinkle pavement.

"I have owned a small farm of 26 acres for the past 39 years. I have watched as our subirrigated pasture went from being very wet and lush all year-round, to being bone dry in the summer when the irrigation sprinklers were being used in this Panaca Valley," Simkins said in September.

She was testifying about the Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act that when passed by Congress paved the way for pipelines to our valley.

Members of the SNWA's Integrated Water Planning Advisory Committee are to spend Friday and Saturday touring White Pine County and talking with the people from whom they plan to take our future water.

Would be interesting to be a fly on the interior of that 15-passenger van. In their meeting Monday, the Las Vegas Sun reported, these same people were at odds with each other regarding the population projections for our area and the rural counties.

For example, the water authority has projected only 1,000 new residents for Lincoln County over the next 20 years. But the proposed Coyote Springs development, which is to sit on the Lincoln County side of the Lincoln-Clark county line, is expected to bring about 50,000 residents and 10 golf courses.

Undoubtedly, the committee members will have no lack of topics to discuss inside and out of their touring vehicles. And likely they will hear more comments such as those made by Simkins back in September.

"Right now, my fields are very dry when (Panaca Valley) sprinklers are running," she said. "We can only imagine what will be the effect on this and many other valleys of rural Nevada and Utah if this pipeline is allowed to be built."

Maybe we ought to imagine that as we sprinkle our sidewalks.

For information on when to water and how to conserve it, log onto www.snwa.com.

In an unrelated note, my deepest sympathies to Polly Gonzalez's family and her fellow coworkers at KLAS Channel 8 in the wake of her tragic death Monday.

Those who wish to honor Gonzalez and her unyielding efforts to improve her community through her work as a newscaster and private citizen should donate to the scholarship fund set up for her daughters, ages 5 and 8. Checks payable to the Polly Gonzalez Scholarship Fund may be deposited at any Bank of America branch, account No. 004966598212. Or log onto www.klastv.com for a mailing address.