Priceless commodity

If you think you’re paying a lot for water now, just wait. Your bill is headed up. Way up.

Considering the water challenges confronting the West, the cost, whatever the amount, will be cheap.

The Las Vegas Valley draws about 90 percent of its water from Lake Mead, which has seen its surface level plunge throughout more than a decade of drought. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation issued its official Colorado River forecast for the next year, which sets the amount of water released into Lake Mead and Lake Powell.

As a result, Lake Mead will get its smallest water delivery ever: 7.48 million acre-feet, 750,000 acre-feet less than any year since the reservoir’s creation. Lake Mead’s surface will plunge farther, faster, toward the critical level of 1,075 feet above sea level. That’s expected to happen by April 2015, just 20 months from now.

At that point, the federal government would issue a shortage declaration, reducing Nevada’s already-small allotment of 300,000 acre-feet of river water. The 1,075-foot threshold also would trigger a final vote by the Southern Nevada Water Authority Board on the design and construction of hundreds of miles of wells, pumps and pipelines to carry groundwater from rural, east-central Nevada to Clark County. That project could cost as much as $15 billion.

As it is, residents and businesses have been hit with a water bill increase to fund the completion of a third and final intake deep inside Lake Mead. Another rate hike is coming in 2015 to cover debt payments. Without that $817 million intake, the authority’s ability to deliver water to the valley would be in jeopardy. One intake could be rendered useless, because of the falling lake level, as soon as next year.

Our water supply must be protected against further drought. It hasn’t been cheap. But imagine the cost if water stopped coming out of our taps.

Over the years, Americans somehow have managed to build into their household budgets bills in the hundreds of dollars for smartphone service, cable and satellite television, and Internet access. Plenty of folks say they’d have a hard time living without any of those services.

Try living without water.