Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2005 | 9:59 a.m.
An advisory group ended a 14-month odyssey Monday night with a series of recommendations that could help guide Las Vegas' water policy future.
The Integrated Water Planning Advisory Committee, which included 29 members from across the state, produced the 22 recommendations that now go on to the Southern Nevada Water Authority board.
Most of the recommendations closely match elements of the Water Authority's long-range resource plan, while the wording of many of the recommendations reaffirms the agency's commitment to avoid negative impacts on communities and the environment in rural Nevada.
Among the recommendations:
The Water Authority should do more to conserve water, decrease per person water use, and continue to work to increase its access to Colorado River supplies.
All of the agency's resource plans for groundwater and surface water development are maintained in the recommendations.
The committee also urged the Water Authority to pursue ocean water desalination as a long-term resource.
The advisory committee began meeting last year as resistance built first in White Pine County, and then in western Utah, to the Water Authority's plans to build wells and pipelines to bring water from rural parts of the state to supplement Las Vegas' supply from the Colorado River.
The Water Authority, which supplies almost all the water used by Clark County's residents and businesses, hopes to as much as double its supply from rural groundwater sources and surface water in the Virgin and Muddy rivers.
Members of the committee from Lincoln and White Pine counties continue to have concerns about the Water Authority's plans.
Glenn Zelch, Lincoln County's representative, said a recommendation that the Water Authority re-examine the impact of rural water development on rural White Pine County after 75 years should have a shorter time frame and be extended to his county.
"It should be done everywhere," Zelch said. "It should be done in Lincoln and White Pine counties."
He said the re-examination, which the Water Authority has had on the table for several months to try to assuage White Pine politicians and critics, should be done after 50 years, not 75.
Pat Mulroy, Water Authority general manager, said two factors made that untenable. The first is that financing institutions for the wells and pipelines, which would cost billions, needed 75 years to pay for the projects. The second is that Lincoln County's government and the Water Authority already have an agreement in place that governs how the water development in Lincoln County will go forward.
John Hiatt, a conservationist and advisory committee member, agreed with Mulroy.
"What it comes down to is that Lincoln County signed binding legal documents regarding water in Lincoln County," he said.
Zelch's concerns were kept in the final document that includes the recommendations, but as thoughts from an individual committee member, not representative of a consensus.
Rancher Dean Baker, the committee representative from White Pine County who has been one of the most vocal opponents to the Water Authority's plans for rural Nevada, was able to get language in the recommendations that call for the water agency to do a "baseline assessment" of existing water resources in his area. That baseline would include both natural springs, seeps and other features with existing wells in southern White Pine County.
The language, however, said such a baseline study should not impede the development of the Water Authority's groundwater development effort. That didn't meet Baker's hope for the recommendation.
"That's the critical part -- that it be before the pumping," he said.
Mulroy cautioned that adding difficult recommendations could affect more than just the users in Las Vegas.
"This will affect everyone in the state of Nevada," she said, because it would serve as precedent for other projects. "We have to be very careful here in terms of what we are suggesting."
Mulroy said the recommendations would go to the Water Authority board for consideration and possibly inclusion into the long-range resource plan in October or November.
"This has been a very difficult 14 months," she said. "These are extremely difficult issues. They are not only going to affect Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Valley, but they will have implications for the entire state."
Although the committee endorsed virtually all of the Water Authority's existing plans for rural water development, White Pine County citizen and conservationist Jo Anne Garrett indicated the agency still has a potential battle in her neighborhood.
The resident of the tiny Nevada town of Baker, representing the Snake Valley Citizen Alliance and the Great Basin Water Alliance, said she attended Monday night's meeting "to defend our turf." Baker is located near the Utah border, outside the entrance to Great Basin National Park.
"I'm here to speak for all us desert dwellers who would be affected by the water pipeline," she said.
Garrett said people, when faced with the necessity, have been able to carve out lifestyles in the arid desert.
"We don't have to jeopardize it by experimenting with massive water extraction," she said.
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