Friday, June 18, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

DEEPENING DROUGHT: Lake level in fast fall

Emergency status predicted to hit Southern Nevada in January

Lake Mead's low water level exposes intake towers at Hoover Dam as seen Thursday from the Arizona side of the dam. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

Southern Nevada's drought alert will deepen to a drought emergency in January if the latest water supply projections for the Colorado River come to pass.

In its monthly operations report released this week, the Bureau of Reclamation projects that the water level at Lake Mead will finish the year at 1,124.8 feet above sea level, its lowest point in 39 years.

Anything below 1,125 feet at the start of a new year would prompt the Southern Nevada Water Authority to declare a drought emergency because no surplus water would be made available from the Colorado River, which supplies the Las Vegas Valley with about 90 percent of its water.

Until now, bureau projections indicated that Southern Nevada might avoid a drought emergency until January 2006, at least by a foot or two.

Kay Brothers, deputy general manager of engineering and operations for the water authority, announced the new projections Thursday as part of her monthly drought update to the water authority board.

"One day, I'm going to come to you with good news, but today is not that day," Brothers said.

If an emergency is declared, it could come with water rate increases and new restrictions on water use throughout the Las Vegas Valley.

A drought code implementation team made up of technical experts from the water authority and its member utilities is evaluating various restrictions and other measures that could be imposed under a drought emergency. They include raising water rates for the second time in less than 18 months, imposing a surcharge on excess water use and reducing the number of days people would be allowed to water yards each week.

The final list of drought emergency response measures should be completed in the fall, authority spokesman Vince Alberta said.

The falling lake level also could bring some expensive improvements to the system that delivers water to the valley from Lake Mead.

In mid-July, the water authority expects to complete work on $6.4 million project adding 150 feet to one of the two 12-foot intake pipes used to draw water from the lake.

Once the work is finished, both pipes will reach a depth of slightly below 1,000 feet. But that might not be deep enough to protect the valley's water supply if the drought persists.

"We're going to have to do more to deepen (those intakes) is my guess," water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said.

Current Lake Mead projections aside, the final word on the region's water supply for 2005 will come late this year when the Bureau of Reclamation releases its annual operating plan for the lower Colorado River region.

Bureau spokesman Robert Walsh said the operating plan will spell out whether any surplus water will be made available to Nevada, Arizona and California beyond their basic allocations.

Nevada gets 300,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River. Arizona gets 2.8 million acre-feet and California gets 4.4 million acre-feet, leaving 1.5 million acre-feet for Mexico.

The operating plan for next year will be based largely on water supply projections and current conditions in August, Walsh said.

But there is little hope that the situation will have improved by then. With most of the winter snowpack in the western Rocky Mountains now melted, the National Weather Service's Colorado Basin River Forecast Center is predicting that Lake Powell, and the Colorado River as a whole, will receive barely half of its normal inflow of water this year.

During each of the past five years of record drought, the river has received 62 percent of its normal inflow or less. In 2002, inflow was 25 percent of normal.

"It's absolutely worse than the Dust Bowl. It's the biggest drought in 500 years," said Robert Webb, a Tucson, Ariz.-based hydrologist and co-author of a drought fact sheet released this week by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The good news, according to the fact sheet: An analysis of tree rings indicates that droughts seldom last longer than a decade.

The bad news: That could mean the current drought is only half over.

After Thursday's meeting, Brothers and Mulroy caught a flight to Salt Lake City for a meeting of representatives from the U.S. Department of Interior and the seven Western states that share water from the Colorado River.

Mulroy said the purpose of the closed-door meeting was to discuss whether to set a minimum elevation for Lake Mead and what it might take to keep the lake from falling below that level. No decisions were made. The representatives will meet again July 22-23 in Salt Lake City.

By late this year or early next, the seven basin states hope to hammer out a drought response plan amid pressure to protect municipal water supplies, meet existing water delivery agreements and keep Lake Mead and Lake Powell from running dry.

Emergency is the most severe of three drought stages used by the water authority. Southern Nevada officially went from drought watch to drought alert on Jan. 1, triggering a ban on front lawns at new homes and restrictions on misting systems and washing cars at home.

The drought watch was declared in August 2003 and resulted, most significantly, in a 25 percent increase in water rates for most valley residents.

Water authority board member Shari Buck used Thursday's drought update to raise the issue of artificial turf, which has been banned as an alternative to front lawns by some local homeowners associations.

Buck said she was disappointed to see such bans enforced in the midst of a drought, and she called on the water authority to push homeowners associations to loosen their rules governing artificial turf.

The water authority currently has no official position on the use of fake grass and plants for outdoor landscaping, but Mulroy agreed that residents should have every option open to them when it comes to conserving water.

After the meeting, Mulroy suggested that the water authority sponsor legislation at the state level to prohibit homeowners associations from outlawing artificial turf.