Monday, March 22, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

DROUGHT CONCERNS: Curbs on water use backed

Poll finds overwhelming support in Clark County for restrictions

The water level at Lake Mead, shown Feb. 18, has continued decline as drought conditions persist in the region. Photo by John Gurzinski. Click image for enlargement.

They might complain about their dirty cars and dry fountains, but an overwhelming majority of Clark County residents surveyed support drought restrictions and favor limits on new construction to protect the region's water supply.

A Review-Journal poll of 381 Clark County voters found that 75 percent support the drought restrictions imposed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, while 58 percent said they oppose water-use exemptions for resorts on the Strip.

In the poll's most lopsided result, 77 percent of Clark County voters said they would support a limit on water permits for new construction until the drought restrictions are lifted.

"That's encouraging," said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz. "I think that shows people understand and are willing to curtail their water use."

The poll, conducted March 15-17 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C., has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points for the three questions on water issues.

Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon, said the results seem to fall into the category of a public mandate. "The margin doesn't even come into play on these questions," he said.

But how that mandate will be interpreted depends on whom you ask.

While Patterson considers the results proof that the public has come to understand Southern Nevada's water situation, water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy and others see the need for more education, especially when it comes to limits on new construction and exemptions for fountains on the Strip.

"Water is an often-misunderstood subject in Southern Nevada," said Alan Feldman, senior vice president for public affairs at MGM Mirage. "I doubt that there are any more water-efficient operations anywhere in the state of Nevada, and possibly the whole country, than the resorts on the Strip, particularly those built in the last 15 years.

"I would put our water use up against the Review-Journal's, as far as jobs created and tax collected per gallons used," he said.

Mulroy said, "It is all a matter of perception."

Strip resorts receive 7 percent of the water delivered every year by the Las Vegas Valley Water District and account for roughly 70 percent of the state's gross product and 50 percent of its employment base, she said.

Some of the fountains that local residents want to see shut off can't be touched anyway, Mulroy said, since they are connected to on-site groundwater wells with permanent water rights.

"This is not a surprising visceral reaction," Mulroy said. "A lot of it is the result of people not understanding how our water system works."

Understanding the system requires a macro approach, she said. Of the 7.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water that is divided among Nevada, Arizona, California and Mexico, 15 percent goes to municipal use. The other 85 percent is used for agriculture, including a number of nonfood crops.

Nevada's minimum allotment from the Colorado River water is 300,000 acre-feet, which supplies about 90 percent of the water used in the Las Vegas Valley, none of it for agricultural purposes. An acre-foot of water equals 325,829 gallons. The average household in the Las Vegas Valley consumes about 230,000 gallons of water per year.

Steve Hill, chairman of the Coalition for Fairness in Construction, put it this way: "Las Vegas could dry up and blow away tomorrow and it wouldn't appreciably effect the level of Lake Mead.

"We have to do our part to be responsible stewards of (the water) we have. Causing an economic catastrophe in Southern Nevada is not the way to do that," Hill said.

What the poll says to Patterson, though, is "that the people in Clark County are getting (the message) a lot quicker than the elected officials: You cannot look at water use strictly in economic terms. You also have to look at the long-term availability of water and quality-of-life issues."

To Coker, concerns over water played an incidental role in the response to the question on limiting new construction. Instead, the pollster said the results echo an overall public backlash to the valley's rapid growth.

"The water issue is a convenient excuse to slow things down," he said.

As for the strong support shown for current limits on water use, Mulroy is encouraged. "That is valuable information for us to have," she said. "You never know how drought restrictions are going to be received in the community."

Until now, one of the best indicators of public sentiment for water conservation came from the water authority's Water Smart Landscape program, which offers rebates to residents and business owners who replace turf grass with drought-resistant landscaping.

More than a football field worth of grass is being removed every day through the program, which has paid out more than $12.5 million during the current fiscal year.

In the first 11 days of March, 1,300 homeowners applied for rebates, up from 837 in February, 459 in January and 662 during all of 2002. "That's been huge," Mulroy said.

But water officials should not treat such poll data as a blanket endorsement of tighter water restrictions, she said. "We need to be very careful, and we need to test some concepts with the community before we implement them."