The water authority wants to pay Southern Nevadans to plant shade trees to maintain and grow the region’s tree canopy.
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If the bill were to become law, Nevada would be the first state to give a water agency the power to cap the amount of water that flows into individual homes.
After dropping more than 50 feet since 2000, latest forecasts show Lake Mead rising by roughly 22 feet by the end of the year.
The two proposals show that “the tools available to the federal government are very blunt,” said John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Since the 1980s, Southern Nevada has been banking its unused Colorado River water, storing hundreds of billions of gallons away underground and in Lake Mead.
Two competing proposals to achieve federally mandated cuts to Colorado River water use are on the table, but agreement between states has remained elusive.
The mountains that feed the Colorado River already have seen more snow this winter than they normally would through an entire snow season.
One of the Colorado River’s two major reservoirs is expected to collect better than average runoff this year, thanks to an unusually wet La Niña pattern that dropped a deluge of snow up and down the basin.