Water utility joins climate change group

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has joined forces with seven of the nation's largest water agencies to push for improvements in the way global climate change is studied and addressed.

Members of the newly formed Water Utility Climate Alliance want more accurate models to help them predict the regional and local impacts of climate change.

As water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy put it in a written statement announcing the alliance, "Water agencies throughout the nation will invest hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure over the next 15 years alone, and those investments must be informed by climate projections that are as accurate as possible."

Southern Nevada's wholesale water supplier is joined in the alliance by water utilities in New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Denver. The eight member agencies serve a total of 36 million people.

The announcement of the alliance comes on the heels of a widely publicized study that gives Lake Mead a 50-50 chance of running dry by 2021.

The peer-reviewed paper by the University of California-San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography blames the lake's downfall on climate change and overuse of water from the Colorado River.

The Las Vegas Valley pulls 90 percent of its water supply from Lake Mead.

Water authority spokesman Bronson Mack said the new alliance was not formed in reaction to the Scripps research.

"It was already in the works prior to when that study was announced. It's not really timed out with the Scripps study in mind," Mack said.

The alliance began meeting late last year. Its first official act came Tuesday, when it provided input on a revised research plan by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a group of 13 federal agencies with climate research responsibilities.

Alliance members identified several key areas of research and data sharing that would improve the drinking water industry's ability to cope with potential impacts of climate change.

Future alliance activity will include the development of strategies for adapting to changing weather patterns and the implementation of tactics to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Mack said each member agency has pledged $100,000 to assist the alliance's work but added that it is too soon to say how that money would be spent.