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Using less — but why?
The news, good for Lake Mead, bad for water authority revenue, likely reflects a slumping economy and more use of desert landscaping
Steve Marcus
A drought has lowered the surface of Lake Mead 100 feet since 2000.
Friday, Feb. 13, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Southern Nevada residents used 5.2 billion fewer gallons of water in 2008 than in 2007, the biggest year-to-year drop since 2003, when a drought plan and higher water rates went into effect.
Water Woes
Nevada's agriculture industry is taking a strong stand against a proposed water pipeline that would take billions of gallons of groundwater out of rural valleys.
With Clark County in the grip of a drought that has lowered the surface of Lake Mead 100 feet since 2000, the drop in water use is a bit of good news as Southern Nevada continues to weather its worst economy since the Great Depression.
Officials say there is little doubt the economic crisis contributed to the water savings, but there has yet to be a detailed analysis of exactly how and to what degree.
The decrease in water usage also is a blessing and a curse for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Sure, the agency has been pushing water conservation for years, but this drop is so large it could cause problems. The water agency’s revenue is way down, a condition that is stirring up second thoughts and questions about the agency’s plans and projections.
Clark County’s economic problems are multifaceted. In 2008 housing starts in Clark County fell 40 percent and 67,223 properties went through foreclosure, a 121 percent increase from 2007.
The county also is estimated to have lost 10,000 people, but that population drop would account for only a drop in the bucket of last year’s change in water use. At an average of 2.5 people per household, 10,000 people equal 4,000 households. On average a Southern Nevada household uses 144,000 gallons of water per year, according to the water authority, so those 4,000 households would be expected to use up only about 576 million gallons.
Our slew of foreclosed homes, noted J.C. Davis, the water authority’s spokesman, would not necessarily result in a massive drop in water consumption either. Water for showers, cooking, flushing and other interior uses isn’t the issue because “we recapture and recover virtually every indoor drop of water in the valley,” he said. “It hits a drain, we get it.”
The lion’s share of residential water use is on lawns. And while one might figure that banks and others who want to resell foreclosed homes would keep watering the lawns of those properties, homeowners associations have complained that in too many cases lawns and landscaping have been allowed to die.
The water savings piqued the interest of the Colorado River Commission of Nevada, which met at the Clark County Government Center this week. Commission members were told the water authority was looking for an answer, but Davis said the water authority isn’t sure there is a single cause. He rattled off a list of factors: A rate increase took effect in March; 20 million square feet of turf was converted to water-stingy desert landscape; foreclosures jumped; tourism fell.
“In short, the answer as to contributing factors is E: all of the above,” Davis said.
The low-use finding coincided with a dire show-and-tell Wednesday in Carson City, where Pat Mulroy, water authority general manager, laid out in a PowerPoint presentation the dramatic decline her agency has seen in revenue in the past two years. In 2006 the agency took in $188.45 million in connection fees, which cost about $6,000 per household. That fell to $121.36 million in 2007 and $61 million in 2008 with another decline forecast for this year.
Mulroy was trying to make the point that the Legislature should not look to the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s revenue, or its reserve of $480 million, to help fix the state’s fiscal woes. The reserve is needed to maintain the agency’s good bond rating, which helps it obtain money needed for major capital projects.
One of those projects is a third “straw” into Lake Mead to ensure a supply of water in case the lake drops below one of its two existing intake pipes. Davis said a vertical shaft for the straw is under construction. The project is expected to cost $837 million.
For longer-term water needs, the agency wants to build a pipeline to counties to the north, using it to import water to Clark County. The water authority estimates the pipeline will cost $3.5 billion. The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, or PLAN, which opposes the pipeline, says the estimate is outdated and the real cost will be more than $10 billion.
At least one Clark County commissioner, Chris Giunchigliani, said the 5.2 billion-gallon drop in the water use last year makes her wonder whether PLAN and other opponents of the pipeline are right, that “we need to take another look at that pipeline and whether we want to spend all that money, especially considering the economic times we’re in.” Most of the water authority’s money for construction comes from a quarter-cent sales tax, connection charges, commodities surcharges and proceeds from the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act. So if the pipeline were not built, Davis counters, it would not suddenly free up billions for other uses.
And the need for the pipeline is indisputable, in the water authority’s eyes, Davis added. He pointed to a Scripps Institution of Oceanography report in February 2008 that gave Lake Mead a 50 percent chance of drying up by 2021 if the drought continues and water use s not curtailed.
“That’s the whole point,” Davis said. “If Lake Mead craters, we lose 90 percent of our water supply and we can’t survive on the 10 percent we get from local ground water. We have to have another supply that isn’t the Colorado River.”
Discussion: 26 comments so far…
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CLARK COUNTY RESIDENTS NEED NOT WORRY ABOUT THE USE OR EXCESSIVE USE OF WATER...WITHIN 20 YEARS LAKE MEAD WILL BEGIN TO BECOME A VERY LARGE DESERT POND.
ALL OF CLARK COUNTY, ESPECIALLY LAS VEGAS WILL BEGIN TO SHOW THE RESULTS OF THE GREAT ECOLOGICAL DISASTER CALLED 'THE GREA DRYING OF LAKE MEAD'. LAS VEGAS WILL RAPIDLYBECOME THE LARGEST AND MOST EXPENSIVE GHOST TOWN IN THE WORLD.
THE DOUBTERS OF GLOBAL WARMING AND FOLLOWERS OF THE ANTI-BUSH SCIENCE ERA WILL THEN CONTINUE to SAY ' ... IT IS JUST PART OF A CYCLE'.
WHY ARE YOU SAVING WATER? IS IT FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY OR IS IT TO BRING MORE RESIDENTS AND BUSINESS TO CLARK COUNTY? WAKE UP! THE POLITICIANS ARE STILL DREAMING OF A VALLEY FILLED FROM MOUNTAIN TO MOUNTAIN WITH HOUSES, SHOPPING CENTERS AND ROADWAYS... good gluck!
If SNWA keeps using money to run political ads promoting what they believe should become future public policy then that means they have lots of money to waste.
Carson City should take or "borrow" the SNWA to help during this shortfall.
SNWA should not be using my user fees to tell me what to think on public policy issues.
vsestini,
First, turn off caps lock.
Second, global warming is a scam. We need to be sensitive to our environment not enslaved by it.
Third, there has been a gigantic education and conservation effort going on or were you to busy yelling to notice.
vcestini "good gluck!"
What's gluck schmuck?
unfortunately for getalife and the rest of us it is wrong about Global Warming being a scam. For those interested in knowledge versus right wing spin click on the "Start Here" option at the top of this page:
http://www.realclimate.org
For the consensus around the world and even from the Pentagon (imagine that!) see this:
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/...
Without Lake Mead, not just Las Vegas but Southern California, too, is in deep trouble. The rural Water Grab would not save us - but it will pump Harvey Whittemore's water from northern Lincoln County to his golf courses in Coyote Springs! I hope the ratepayers appreciate the importance of propping up his failing real estate ambitions.
What's amazing is that the SNWA claims that the rates, taxes and charges it places on residents of Clark County somehow don't count - like SNWA is printing free money in the basement somewhere.
The billions that SNWA is using to destroy rural Nevada - you know, where they make silly stuff like FOOD - could be used right here, right now, for essential social, educational and physical infrastructure.
The idea that the money somehow doesn't count does reveal the cavalier attitude of SNWA staff towards the financial contributions of the ratepayers of Clark County, however.
And finally, Mulroy and the SNWA staff complaining that people aren't using enough water reveals the reality behind the agency's vaunted "conservation" ethic - a hollow PR pledge designed to deflect criticism of its environmentally and socially destructive policies.
If you want to see something interesting, plug Pat Mulroy's home address into the interactive water use tool that accompanies this story. Very enlightening!
I'm sure glad I paid thousands of dollars to convert to desert landscaping to do my part to help conserve water!
Commissioner Chris G and PLAN are right on - the water grab pipeline must be seriously questioned i view of not only the leveling economy, but also in terms of the question, "what is a reasonable sustainable population level for Clark County, considering the considerable subsidies (like a multi-Billion dollar pipeline) that must be put in place to sustain life in a desert".
SNWA did not have to buy those ranches in Spring Valley. Pat Mulroy was playing chicken with Vidler Water and she blinked. Most of the surface water in Spring Valley naturally recharges the aquifer anyway. Now the rate- payers are being charged for a boozing Drug Store Cowboy to play weekend Rancher. Launce is right! Harry Reid's partner Harvey is the only one that needs that pipeline.
As for Mrs. Mulroy's water usage, 685,000 gallons annually isn't so bad when you have six bathrooms and a huge swimming pool. But it does help explain why she is so opposed to heavy premiums for profligate water users.
The main use for Hover Dam discharge water is irrigation. Electricity is just a money making byproduct. Where you going to find a source to replace that electricity? What will happen to the price and availability of food when the water stops flowing? I play golf, but I also think it's stupid to play it in the desert. Shut em all down from Palm Springs to Vegas to Phoenix. Swimming pools? Ditto. Of course people with money want those pools and golf courses so we let them stay. Another case of the rich wasting resources while us little people pick up the tab.
Our founding fathers tried to structure a country on democratic principles with checks and balances so that the majority was in charge, but couldn't run rough-shod over the minority. Well, back in the latter half of the 20th century part of that principle was recinded for Nevada and our rural counties lost most of their say in state government. Now Clark County is the tail that wags the rest of the state and is rapidly, until this recent down-turn, filling with outsiders that have little knowledge about Nevada other than it has low taxes and is a great place to make a buck. You can probably preserve Las Vegas for a while if your tenticles suck water from the rest of the state; but I have a news flash, the rest of the state may not be as dry as you, but it is still mostly desert, so what next? Do you shut off Hoover Dam and go to war with California? This water grab is not about preserving Las Vegas, it is about fueling constant growth and the creation of a megopolis. Every time anyone tries to limit growth the excuse is trotted out that construction is 10% of the areas economy and must continue unchecked. At what point does your decreasing quality of life make you wake up or start screaming for mercy? We need to either start limiting growth in the west or jump-start the economy with a Manhattan Project to re-plumb the west with water from more humid regions (which probably isn't going to happen any time soon). You can't put up a wall around cities and lock out newcomers, but you can be frugal with new projects that attract them and the state planners should absolutely axe projects like Coyote Springs that plant new megacities in our desert. We have a double burden to shoulder in Lincoln County. We have to slake the thirst of both Clark County and Harvey Whitimore and still manage to survive.
Excellent post, piocheresident
This is the reality. Whether you are pro- or anti-global warming, this is what we have to work with. So stop trying to start class warfare. Let's all work together to solve this problem. And it looks like we're getting there, but who knew SNWA really WANTED us to use more water!???
So SNWA doesn't think the drought is effecting the aquifers of Eastern Nevada. 2008 saw historically low stream levels in White Pine County. Please explain the difference between the drought effecting Lake Mead and the one in Eastern Nevada.
What happened to the climate
consensus?
By PAUL SCHNEIDEREIT
Tue. Jan 20
Scientists DON'T all agree the planet is warming
precipitously, or that humans are responsible for that
supposed warming. In fact, more and more experts in a
number of fields have been speaking up to challenge
the supposed scientific "consensus" on climate change.
As the headlines scream out the latest sensational warning -- a NASA scientist now predicts
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has just four years to save the planet -- let's not forget
that last month, more than 650 international scientists went on record as dissenting from the
man-made global warming findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change.
Who are these scientists?
The list, which grew by a substantial 250 new names from a similar statement in late 2007,
includes prominent names in fields ranging from geology, atmospheric science and solar
physics to meteorology, oceanography and paleoclimatology. According to the U.S. Senate's
environment and public works committee minority report, released Dec. 10, the skeptics also
include many current and former IPCC scientists.
You can check it for yourself with a quick Google search, but here's a sample of some of the
comments from scientists:
"It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists
who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming." -- atmospheric scientist Stanley B.
Goldenberg
"Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good
science." -- physicist Will Happer
According to the document, the planet has actually been in a cooling trend during the last
decade, not getting warmer.
That claim certainly fits the theories of scientists who say warming and cooling trends on
Earth are closely related to sunspot activity, and that the lull in the numbers of these solar
phenomena in recent years has corresponded with dropping temperatures.
More worrying are claims by Russian scientists that their research has convinced them the
planet faces not overheating, but the imminent return of a major ice age.
Talking about ice ages as we shiver through another winter of record-setting cold in many
parts of North America is not meant to suggest there's more than coincidence at work in terms of short-term weather patterns. That,of course,would be as unfair as suggesting global warming is out of control in the middle of a
summer hot spell.
But the fact remains that scientists have long known the Earth has gone through a cycle --
for perhaps a million years -- of ice ages, lasting perhaps 100,000 years, which have been
regularly interrupted by short, warmer periods of 12,000 years or so. According to that clock,
we're apparently overdue for a major refreeze, since the last ice age ended more than
12,000 years back.
I'm not buying that we're on the brink of kilometre-thick ice sheets stretching down south
from the Arctic, but the report -- and the undisputed fact that the planet has cycled through
ice ages and warm periods for a very long time -- certainly shows that not everyone's on
board with Al Gore and the global-warming conformists.
Regardless of the shifting sands in terms of the science, I think it's safe to say that many
people are far more worried about the current global economic crisis than about claims by
either the warming or cooling crowd.
The acknowledgement there actually is a scientific debate about global warming and its
causes would be, at the very least, a refreshing change from the monotonous droning of the
climate change cultists that it's all a done deal. Um, no, it's not.
Prominent scientists, in ever greater numbers, are now speaking up to reject the group-think
paradigm. While there's no doubt the climate is changing, there's less certainty about just
where it's going.
I expect one trend to continue, however. I predict the number of scientists willing to defy the
global warming "consensus" is only going to get bigger
Coyote Springs will fail thanks to the forclosure crisis. That is a good thing. Karma really taught Harvey a good lesson.
nvnews01 quotes from an author with no credentials regarding a debunked report from a minority senator with no science standing. This is just sad. Again, for those looking to read and understand what the science is please click on the "start here" link at the top of this page:
http://www.realclimate.org
And for the consensus of all nationally recognized science bodies see this:
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/...
Finally take time here to see why the report referred to by nvnews01 should not be taken seriously by any rational person:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/...
The article says that the average household uses 144000 galons of water a year. This in a state which is almost all desert, how can this be possible. Where does all this water come from to be used in such a greedy manner. Where I live, we have abundant water supply, many times the USA average, yet my yearly useage is only 15000 gallons.
I found out recently if you are fortunate enough to have a well on your land and you own a certain amount of acre feet in water you have to use it all up or the SNWA will take what you do not use. So, if you own 4.4 acre feet in water but only use a partial of it to save water they will take the remainder away from you. That does not make sense since they are saying we are in a drought. I would think that everyone should take part in conserving water no matter what.
This means that the people that do have wells (home owners, maybe certain business) have to use it or lose it.
But water is not the only issue in Las Vegas. Recycling is another issue as well. There really are no programs. I think the politician should look at some of the programs that Southern California has in place such as local recycling spots in parking lots at grocery stores.
The politician or businesses should look at other states and take what they have in place but refine it to might the policies work better for the communities out here.
no house no use of water period
nvnews01
Do you actually believe in what you have posted, or are you just another brainwashed sceptic.
Global Warming or Climate Change is all around us, across the world. Forget all that claptrap about sun spots, earth tilting, wobbling etc etc.
If you live in Nevada, then you really should get out and travel a bit to see the results of the climate warming up, it will only take a couple of degrees more, and we shall have passed the tipping point, where everything just accelerates more quickly. You and I may not see it happen, but, todays children and their children will be asking, what were they thinking of in those days, they saw the signs, but they were so smug, and selfcentered, that they refused to believe what was happening.
Lake Meads water level has gone down by more then 105ft in the past 10 yrs, this means it is now less than 46% full. By the year 2017 there will not be enough water to produce electricty, and by 2021 it could be completely dry.
Launce, you opened a can of worms.
Just go to the Clark County Assessor's webpage at:
http://redrock.co.clark.nv.us/assrrealpr...
Type names of people who oppose the pipeline.
Then come back here and type their addresses at:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/water/map/
It s is very interesting to learn how much those "environmentalists" use water at their home.
The unemployment and the downturn of housing in the valley is a two sided sword when it comes to the water levels.I think they need to severly stiffen the laws regarding water abuse.Clearly pools are out so is grass and so many trees and plants brought into the area over the years.there is something very wrong seeing leaves fall of a oak tree in the desert.