Monday, March 08, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

WATER AUTHORITY: Growth study questioned

Critics urge look at development's costs, not just impact of limiting it

Carpenters Gustava Diaz, left, and Manuel Adrrade work last week on the roof of a home being built on Midnight Rambler Street in the northwest. Environmentalists are criticizing a study that determined a major interruption in growth could crash the local economy. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Though few have managed to plow through the 642-page growth study presented Feb. 26 to the Southern Nevada Water Authority, already there are calls for another study that looks at the costs of growth rather than the impacts of stopping it.

Environmentalists and growth-control advocates have begun to critique the study's scope and its findings, namely that a major interruption in growth could crash the local economy.

According to the study, the devastation would start in construction but no industry would be spared, and even a slight interruption in growth could have lasting, negative effects in Southern Nevada.

But that is only part of the picture, says Las Vegas environmentalist Jeff van Ee. "What should be done is a study that shows how we can grow and live within our means, to look at our water resources and how they can be used efficiently."

Jane Feldman, conservation chairwoman for the Sierra Club's Southern Nevada group, hasn't read the study yet but questions its dire predictions about the impacts of curbing development.

"I can't imagine so much doom and gloom when it's such a complex system and there are so many different things we can do to manage it," Feldman said of the Southern Nevada economy. "It's not just conserving water. It's conserving water, controlling housing interest rates, varying what we build and where, and so on. I think we have lots of options."

Like Feldman, van Ee has yet to read the entire document, but he said the only way to truly measure the importance of growth in Southern Nevada is to weigh both the benefits and the costs.

Any such analysis, he said, must include the price tag for the water authority's plans to pipe in groundwater from Lincoln and White Pine counties and develop other in-state water resources.

"You're talking about billions and billions of dollars just on infrastructure, and these costs will have to be passed on," van Ee said.

Declining air and water quality, increased traffic congestion, and prices that rise faster than wages are other costs that must be considered, said Ken Mahal, an advocate of regulated growth.

Mahal is president of the Nevada Seniors Coalition, a group he said is dedicated to improving the quality of life "for senior citizens, their children and their grandchildren."

"An honest study," Mahal said, also would address impacts from the construction industry itself, which employs a significant number of workers who do not receive medical coverage and other benefits. That places a strain on the valley's overburdened social services and health care system, Mahal said. "They didn't do a balanced study."

Nor did Mahal expect them to. "We're not surprised by what came out of it because when (water authority officials) hired Guy Hobbs they knew what he was to come up with."

Hobbs is president and managing director of Hobbs, Ong and Associates, the financial consulting firm that authored the study. Mahal called him the man to hire if you work in government and want someone to tell you what you want to hear.

Hobbs dismisses that as a "sticks-and-stones comment." "There's obviously no merit to it," he said.

As for the study, Hobbs said, it thoroughly answers the questions asked by the water authority. "Now it's part of a bigger discussion that hasn't been fully vetted."

If a study is launched to examine the negative aspects of growth, Amanda Cyphers, who chairs the water authority board, said it is unlikely to come from the water authority or the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition, a 10-member panel of local officials formed by the Legislature in 1999 to coordinate planning and policy in the Las Vegas Valley.

Cyphers, a coalition and Henderson City Council member, said she doesn't need a study to tell her the pitfalls of rapid, unregulated growth.

"As an elected official, those are things I have to look at on a daily basis," she said. "It's all about growing well, growing smart."

Boulder City Mayor Bob Ferraro, who serves on the coalition with Cyphers, said he doesn't expect a second study to be done, either, but not because it shouldn't be.

Growth is "a major question for many, many residents of Clark County, especially in the valley," Ferraro said. But he said most coalition members are unlikely to support a study of growth's downside because of how important growth is to the municipalities they represent.

The same cannot be said of Boulder City, which has long maintained strict controls on growth.

"The emergency is almost here," Ferraro said of growth in the Las Vegas Valley. "There's no doubt that the area is out of water. That's going to be the limiting factor."

Though the study has made her reluctant to "tamper with the natural course" of growth, Cyphers said she is willing to talk about growth control. The proper forum for that discussion is the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition, not the water authority, she said.

"Growth brings benefits and it brings costs," said Keith Schwer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas economics professor and director of UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research. "Up to now, Las Vegas has been consumed with the benefits. One study probably won't address all the issues."

Schwer was one of six college professors Hobbs, Ong called on to review their work. He was the only one who also was involved in the development of a 1992 study, commissioned by the Las Vegas Valley Water District, that reached similar conclusions about the impact of growth restrictions.

He refused to speculate about why the study was commissioned or how the results might be used.

"That quickly moves into areas of politics, and I'm not a politician. I'm a pointy-headed academic," he said.

Ultimately, though, motivations should not matter, Schwer said. "A venting of the issues is critically important, and the study is a credible effort of putting the issues on the table. If we have a good discussion on the issues at play, all the talk about who did it and for what purpose will be forgotten."

The study's 28-page executive summary is available for download from the water authority's Web site, www.snwa.com. So is an electronic request form for people who would like to receive a copy of the complete document.

There have been about 50 such requests so far, water authority spokesman Vince Alberta said.

Although the particulars of the growth study don't matter so much to water officials in Arizona, the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plans to supply that growth do.

So says Bob Barrett, spokesman for the Central Arizona Project, which diverts approximately 1.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River Water to Phoenix and Tucson.

The project's canals also carry water that is eventually pumped into a groundwater storage bank in which Southern Nevada has saved up about 110,000 acre-feet in credits under a cooperative agreement with Arizona.

"It's not like we're going to tell you that you have to use your water in a certain way. That is a decision strictly for the people of Nevada," Barrett said. "We just don't want to get into a situation where one user is chronically using more than its allotment."

Barrett added that the Arizona groundwater bank is not a permanent water source for Las Vegas but a "bridge" to help the city buy enough time to develop other water resources.

Arizona water officials want to be reassured that their counterparts in Nevada understand this, Barrett said.