Director: Brookings Institution happy to welcome Mulroy, a ‘national leader’ on water issues

By Conor Shine

Tuesday, April 15, 2014 | 2:59 p.m.

The managing director of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said today that his organization is “delighted” to add former Southern Nevada water chief Pat Mulroy to its roster of experts tackling climate change.

“We now have somebody whose core expertise is water,” Bill Antholis said. “In water circles, (Mulroy) is known as someone who started as an advocate for Southern Nevada, pure and simple, but came to be a national leader in things like conservation and water treatment.”

Mulroy announced Tuesday she will be joining the Brookings Institution as a senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program. She will be based out of Las Vegas, where she also will work with Brookings Mountain West at UNLV and the Desert Research Institute.

Antholis said Mulroy had been on Brookings’ radar since 2012 when she co-chaired a conference on international water issues in Las Vegas.

The organization has a long history working on climate change and energy issues, but it hadn’t focused specifically on water issues, Antholis said.

“In some ways, Pat brought us to this set of (water) issues and got us interested in getting our own resources to address them,” he said.

Antholis praised Mulroy’s breadth of expertise as “deepening the bench” at Brookings. She’ll be responsible for thinking about and planning strategies for water resources and infrastructure development in a warming world, he said.

“We now have someone whose principal focus is on the impacts of climate change,” he said. “(Mulroy) is someone who understands the hydrological cycle, the impacts (climate change) has on not just water and water use, but also the broader infrastructure.”