We need the water

Friday, Sept. 11, 2009 | 3 a.m.

Credit Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy for continuing to think creatively in the face of an extended drought about ways to potentially bring more water to the valley.

As reported last week by Stephanie Tavares in the Las Vegas Sun, a sister publication of In Business Las Vegas, Mulroy has suggested that her agency help keep afloat a cloud-seeding program that could provide more precipitation to aquifers between Clark and White Pine counties. The authority owns the water rights to four such aquifers and has plans to one day pipe water from them to Southern Nevada to supplement flow from the Colorado River.

The Desert Research Institute program, which induces precipitation by adding chemicals to clouds, has created 65,000 acre-feet of precipitation in Nevada annually, mostly in the form of snow. But the Nevada Legislature, confronted with a state budget crisis this year, slashed the institute’s budget. It, in turn, was forced to strip money from the cloud-seeding program.

Mulroy’s timely suggestion is for the authority to pick up the financial slack and keep the cloud-seeding effort going in Nevada. It would be a smart thing to do from a long-range planning viewpoint, especially when there is no evidence that the drought will ease anytime soon.

It is also consistent with the authority’s financial support of the institute’s cloud-seeding efforts in the mountains between Denver and Grand Junction, Colo. The aim there has been to increase the snowmelt that feeds the Colorado River.

As the drought continues, the authority will be faced with mounting pressure to make sure that the valley has adequate water supplies. There is no question that the institute’s cloud-seeding efforts should be part of that mix.