Las Vegas will have water even if release to Lake Powell is cut

Thursday, March 31, 2005 | 11:05 a.m.

Even if federal officials reduce the amount of water sent to Lake Mead from Lake Powell, the Las Vegas Valley will have enough to get through the year thanks to the large amounts of precipitation the region has enjoyed in recent months, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority said Wednesday.

The U.S. Interior Department is moving forward with a required mid-year review of the amount of water that can be released from Lake Powell, federal officials said Wednesday. Officials from the Upper Basin states of the Colorado River have suggested that because of drought, the amount should be less than what has been released in other years.

The annual amount sent down from Powell has been 8.23 million acre-feet. But five years of the worst drought in the modern history of the river have prompted officials from states along the Upper Basin of the river -- Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah -- to call for a reduction in the volume released from Powell to 7.5 million acre-feet. That would keep more water for energy production and recreation in the upstream reservoir.

The amount of the release is important to the Las Vegas Valley because that water runs downstream to Lake Mead, and Southern Nevada takes about 300,000 acre-feet annually from Lake Mead, using the resource to supply about 90 percent of water needs here.

An acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons. That's enough water to supply up to two average-size families for a year.

Powell is now two-thirds empty, while Mead stands at a little over 60 percent of its capacity.

Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said, "If there is a way we can allow more water to stay in Powell, we should consider that. We all need to be looking for ways to help one another."

Heavy rain and snow has particularly benefited the Lower Basin of the Colorado River, which includes Lake Mead, Mulroy said.

"Given the huge amounts of water that have come into the system in the Lower Basin as opposed to simply fed out of snow melt in the Upper Basin, the worst place Nevada could be in January of '06 is where we were predicted to be last January," she said, with a Lake Mead water level of 1,125 feet above sea level.

The Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation had predicted Lake Mead would fall to that point before rain and snow added water to the lake and cut downstream demand. Instead, the lake level is at 1,147 feet and holding, for now.

In a related issue, Mulroy said the states of both basins will not meet an April deadline to recommend how cuts would be instituted along the river if water shortages continue. The federal officials said they want those recommendations before the end of April because in May a formal, 2-year process to develop the "shortage criteria" would begin.

Federal officials said the danger for the state agencies, including the Southern Nevada Water Authority, is that without recommendations in hand, the federal government might not have enough time to include those provisions in any final policy package.

Mulroy, however, discounted the danger to the state agencies. She said if the Lower Basin states of Nevada, Arizona and California agreed on shortage rules within the next two years, the federal government would likely adopt those recommendations.