Commentary: Pat Mulroy explains how efforts to ensure water supplies for our area are paying off

Pat Mulroy

Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

The past few years have been the most challenging in my long tenure with the Southern Nevada Water Authority. As the region's water resource planning agency, we realize that our community's continued security depends upon a reliable water supply . Anticipating Southern Nevada's water needs and finding supplies to meet those needs for decades to come is our top priority.

The drought that has plagued the Colorado River since 2000 has been more severe than anyone could have foreseen. In 2002 alone, the river's flows were more than 3 trillion gallons less than normal.

To protect our community's water supply, the Southern Nevada Water Authority quickly began implementing backup plans and finding engineering solutions. We have amassed hundreds of billions of gallons in water reserves and asked the Nevada state engineer's permission to draw on vast unused, renewable ground water supplies in east-central Nevada that represent a secure supply independent of the Colorado River.

A new drinking water intake deep within Lake Mead that will allow us to reach water even under more severe conditions is also in the works.

On a larger scale, the Southern Nevada Water Authority recently completed an extensive study of projects that could improve conditions along the Colorado River. Some of the options include desalination, cloud seeding in the Rocky Mountains and the removal of the invasive plant tamarisk, which consumes almost four times more Colorado River water than our entire community.

These efforts represent a major investment in our region and our state, but it is an investment that is crucial to the health and welfare of our community.

All of our efforts would be in vain, however, if not for your willingness to embrace conservation and use our water resources wisely. We at the Water Authority have played our part by working with local water agencies to develop landscaping restrictions for new homes and businesses, crafting a common-sense watering schedule to prevent overirrigation and creating innovative incentive programs such as Water Smart Landscapes, which pays residents and businesses as much as $2 per square foot to replace unused grass areas with water-efficient plants.

You, in turn, have made these programs so successful that communities around the world are now looking at us as a model. We have asked a great deal of you, but neglected to tell you what a fantastic job you have done. Here are a few of your accomplishments:

There are other smaller but no less significant victories. During our recent all-too-brief wet spell, enough of you turned off your sprinklers that water demand decreased by more than half a billion gallons during just a two-week period. These efforts haven't diminished anyone's quality of life, but they have helped us become a more water-efficient community.

The bottom-line result of our collective efforts is this: In 2006 our community consumed 18 billion gallons less water than we did in 2002, despite accommodating approximately 330,000 new residents and 40 million annual visitors during that span.

In so doing, we have proven that it is how we manage our water that really matters.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has made significant strides toward ensuring a reliable water supply for the future. Your contributions to this effort through continued conservation are critical to our success. Working together, we have formed a partnership that has worked, and I am confident that our community will continue to prosper for generations to come.