Friday, February 27, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Officials speed up plans to tap rural Nevada water

Southern Nevada water officials, reacting to the ongoing drought, accelerated plans Thursday for more than $1 billion in wells and pipelines connecting Las Vegas to water resources in rural Nevada.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority adopted a plan that calls for three water projects to be built over the next 10 years as a way to reduce the region's reliance on the Colorado River. The projects would tap groundwater in Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties and develop surface water rights that the authority owns on the Virgin and Muddy rivers.

The board agreed to begin developing groundwater resources in the Three Lakes Valley in northern Clark County, a project authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said could be completed by 2008.

Original estimates by the water authority suggested new, in-state water resources would not have to be developed to supplement the Colorado River water that the Las Vegas Valley uses until 2016. But the record five-year drought has prompted the authority to start developing those resources now.

The projects would require the construction of pipelines that branch into northeastern and northwestern Clark County, bisect Lincoln County and stretch as far north as Ely. The largest of the three projects could increase the water supply for the Las Vegas Valley by as much as 200,000 acre-feet, two-thirds of its annual allotment from the Colorado River.

An acre-foot amounts to 325,829 gallons, enough to cover one acre of land with one foot of water.

The authority also authorized plans to negotiate an agreement with CH2M Hill for the engineering design for the Three Lakes groundwater development project.

Authority staff members during Thursday's board meeting told officials that the valley currently relies on the Colorado River for about 90 percent of its water supply.

The goals of the plan include reducing reliance on the Colorado River to 60 percent by 2050, with 40 percent of the valley's supply coming from in-state sources and the Arizona water banking project, which could store up to 1.2 million acre-feet of Arizona's unused Colorado River water over then next 20 years for Nevada.

Mulroy said the authority plans to establish a public task force by July to "have that conversation about conservation" and the environment.

"The single biggest issue in developing these resources is doing it in such a way that there's a high degree of comfort that we're not destroying the communities of origin or the environment," she said.