Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Study: Climate change effects on water supply potentially devastating

Climate change will create devastating drought in Nevada and throughout the Southwest and continue to lower the levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, threatening the water supply for 2 million Nevadans.

The prediction came as part of a study released Wednesday by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Center for Integrative Environmental Research. The study, paid for in part by the Environmental Defense Fund, analyzed the economic and environmental costs of global warming on 12 states around the country.

“Unless we take action to cut the pollution causing climate change we will further jeopardize Nevada’s water supply,” said Dan Grossman, Rocky Mountain Regional Director, Environmental Defense Fund, in a press release. “The threat to the water supply in Nevada and other western states demonstrate that the most expansive thing we can do about climate change is ignore it.”

According to the study, severe drought caused by climate change will also:

- Constrain development and construction, which account for 157,000 jobs across the state;

- Damage water-based recreation which brings in over $1 billion annually;

- Cost the state more than $3.5 billion to build new pipelines to meet Las Vegas' water demands.

View the full report here: www.ncsl.org/programs/environ/ClimatePubs.htm.

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