DRY SPELL, BEHIND THE SCENES

Sunday, May 13, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

Nevada turns Colorado River warfare on its ear, by giving thirsty rival states an out

It was friendly, too friendly. As April came to a close and May breathed a spring furnace over the Mojave, rivals from seven Western states and the Republic of Mexico met in Las Vegas to present a 20-year austerity plan for managing the drought along the Colorado River.

In wetter years, the states would have fought over rights to every last drop from every last Colorado River tributary. But as they gathered in the Florentine Room of the Tuscany Suites, all but Mexico had already agreed to the compromise.

If proof were needed of climate change, the good behavior from this crew of sworn enemies was it.

The Colorado River is in realignment, its supplies are dwindling, and for reasons as freakish and unpredictable as the American West, Southern Nevada is at the center of the shift.

Just what happened among the seven states in the Florentine Room that day is a tale of power, cleverly exercised. To understand it is to understand water in the West, and how a gambling metropolis with the smallest allocation of Colorado River water came out not only as peace broker, but the apparent winner in the worst drought of the past 100 years.

When taking to the stage to snatch triumph from the teeth of disaster, it helps to know the host. It helps even more to be the host.

The Colorado River Commission of Nevada hosted the gathering of the seven states. But not so subtly in the shadow stood a co-host: the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency charged with keeping water running in a certain desert city.

The Nevada commission and the Water Authority were a study in mutual admiration. George Caan, executive director of the commission, introduced Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy, the keynote speaker. He called Mulroy a "leader, a visionary and advocate for the protection of our natural resources," not to mention "Nevada's most valuable resource on the Colorado River."

As Mulroy took the stage, she had a message for the delegates concerning the water austerity plan they were forwarding to the Interior Department.

"I am convinced that next week we will have all the signatures on the documents," she said. "You know why: We cannot afford to fail. Not a one of us has 20 years to go to court" to battle over water rights.

Her audience had long been headed that way. You might say they live that way. Their warring factions are no strangers to the U.S. Supreme Court. Soothing them now took finesse.

So the unlikely love fest began with what amounted to encounter therapy for malcontents as representatives from the seven states took their seats on the stage.

The floor went first to representatives from Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah.

Under the Colorado Compact, those northern river states are collectively guaranteed 7.5 million acre-feet of water a year, or enough in urban terms to supply 15 million households.

For the better part of the past century, every year they have let 1 million, 2 million, 3 million acre-feet of it flow south unused on the understanding that one day they would need it.

Runaway cities, including Las Vegas, sprang from the surplus, a behavior the northerners regard as wanton. In the words of Don Ostler, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, "We're not saying that we're smarter than you are, but we plan our growth."

At the conference, each northern delegate delivered the same message. The days of surplus are over.

"Utah intends to use all of the water that is allocated to us," said Dennis Strong, director of the Utah water resources division.

Wyoming is going to flood irrigate and no southern region with more people than farms is going to tell it to stop.

New Mexico has a duty of social justice to the Navajo.

Colorado will keep its water (as soon as its voters have the wit to pony up the bond money to pay for the water-catching infrastructure).

Under the Colorado Compact, which governs water allocations, the southern states and the unplanned cities of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego and Tucson are also guaranteed 7.5 million acre-feet a year. But if the drought worsens, as shortages click in, that could be as low as 7 million.

In one of the worst-case scenarios modeled by the Bureau of Reclamation, in as little as six years, Arizona could face losing 480,000 acre-feet of water a year. Under Arizona's drought plan, it will come first at the expense of farms and underground water banks. To put it in perspective, that's enough for 960,000 households.

Nevada could lose 20,000 acre-feet, or enough for 40,000 households.

California, however, wouldn't take a hit because it has senior rights on the river. Hence the source of abiding warfare among the southern states.

Because of a congressional deal in the 1960s, when surpluses were the rule, Arizona thinks it has been shortchanged. The state agreed then to take the first shortages on the river in exchange for California's backing of the Central Arizona Project, a vast canal from Lake Havasu City to Tucson.

Now that those shortages are bearing down on the south, California is immune until the Central Arizona Project runs dry and a Nevada intake in Lake Mead draws air.

That leaves California quite sated and smug. So when, at the conference, the Californian ventured that "some of the chips have to be taken off the shoulders," the Nevadan fidgeted and the Arizonan's eyes bulged.

But there was little more spoken of the looming shortages, particularly dry times ahead for Arizona.

Nevadan heraldry was beating in the wings.

After state delegates left the stage and the man from Reclamation finished a PowerPoint presentation bearing some painful water math, Nevada came on with a story of triumph wrenched from adversity.

Yes, Southern Nevada may be losing 20,000 acre-feet of river water a year , but in presentation after presentation, the Water Authority touted its plans to bring Las Vegas a projected 200,000 acre-feet of new water.

This would come from the Groundwater Development Project, a scheme calling for 285 miles of pipeline, three pumping stations, buried storage reservoirs, two electrical substations and 265 miles of overhead power lines marching from the unspoiled heart of White Pine County south to Las Vegas.

Thus the conference morphed from discussion of shortage on the river to new plenty for Las Vegas, a fresh supply that will not only let the city grow, regardless of what states up river think, but will also take heat off the river as it does so.

If it seems odd that the Colorado River Commission should be devoted to a ground water project, it helps to meet Caan, the executive director and tireless Las Vegas booster.

To Caan's mind, Southern Nevada may have missed a California -size share of the river when it was divided up originally, but ground water now offers the state an opportunity to catch up.

Moreover, the plan is consistent with the advantages other southern states enjoy. Southern California has alternatives to the river: the State Water Project and Los Angeles Aqueduct. Arizona has its massive canal and deep reserves of ground water.

Las Vegas, however, has some dwindling springs and is 90 percent dependent on the Colorado River, and water managers say that credit line is maxed out.

The normally genial Caan was so vehement on the subject at a lunch two weeks before the conference that he stabbed the air with his fork as he declared : "California has done for itself. Arizona has done for itself. Now Nevada is doing for itself!"

And part of that doing was this very conference.

With Caan booking the speakers, the list included a Southern Nevada Water Authority ground water engineer, its landscaper and its hydrologist. From Caan's staff came a lawyer and two resource analysts.

Opponents didn't make the playbill.

"We had requested equal time and didn't get it," said Susan Lynn of the Reno-based Great Basin Water Network, which is fighting the ground water plan. "The conference was so scripted by SNWA that we didn't bother to attend."

Environmentalists weren't completely shut out. Jeff van Ee of the Sierra Club was there to speak after dismal turn out at a film he had made opposing the plan.

In enemy territory, he was so depressed by the time the microphone reached him that the best he could do was mutter vaguely about the good old days when Las Vegas was sustained on spring water and traffic was tolerable.

If the conference made the pipeline seem a foregone conclusion, it is not there yet.

State Engineer Tracy Taylor last month issued the first permit to remove ground water from only the first of five valleys. The entire plan also has yet to emerge from a Bureau of Land Management environmental impact study.

For opponents of the plan, this offers fresh opportunity for scrutiny, which they say the ground water plan needs and won't pass. They are regrouping behind the Bureau of Land Management, one of the last federal agencies with the power to stop the pipeline.

But the opponents have been dealt what might prove a political coup de grace.

The peace that Nevada brokered with six other states on the river was made over the pipeline plan.

Instead of relying on the Colorado for 90 percent of its water, a Nevada with a pipeline would see its river draw fall to 60 percent. That soothes an anxious north. At least one ballooning southern city, the driest, the thirstiest and the most cash-rich and canny, wouldn't try to seize northern water.

Thus the river and Nevada's pipeline may be two sources of water, but in the words of conference shadow host Mulroy : "They couldn't be more linked. We wouldn't have a basin states agreement were it not for the ground water application."

So as Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado signed off on their cover letter to the Interior secretary for the new drought plan for the river, they might as well have signed a petition for the pipeline.

Thus, the not-so-subtle subtext of the conference was: It's not just Nevada asking for permission to build a pipeline, it's the entire West.

Boil it down and the West backed a plan with the Nevada pipeline built into it for the simple reason that , in a time of staggering loss, there was the prospect of some relief.

The beauty of it was that there were no losers, at least on the river. Those were miles inland, in the valleys of White Pine County, where even before pumping has begun, they can sense the ground water slipping from beneath their feet.