Legislative panel hears upbeat water report

CARSON CITY -- The Las Vegas Valley can continue to grow and flourish with proper management of water and continued conservation efforts, legislators were told Thursday.

"The lake (Mead) isn't going to go empty and stay empty," said Richard Wimmer, deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. "We are going to find more ways to save water during surplus periods and use groundwater (from rural Nevada) to help us through periods when (river) water is not available."

Wimmer made a largely upbeat presentation to members of the Legislature's Committee on Public Lands in a meeting teleconferenced between Las Vegas and Carson City. Several panel members are rural Nevada legislators who oppose water authority efforts to pump water from rural areas.

"This isn't the final answer," Wimmer said after outlining a host of measures his agency is taking to conserve and acquire water. "But it is the answer for a number of years."

State Sen. Dean Rhoads, R-Tuscarora, and Assemblyman Peter Goicoechea, R-Eureka, expressed concern that pumping groundwater from rural Nevada ranches acquired by the water authority will hurt future agriculture.

But Wimmer said the water authority intends to continue to operate the ranches and is negotiating to buy several more. It already has purchased seven ranches in Spring Valley in eastern Nevada from where it proposes building a pipeline to carry water to Las Vegas.

Groundwater from the ranches would not be taken in years when there are water surpluses in Lake Mead, he said.

But Goicoechea said if the drought continues in the Colorado River Basin, that same drought also might affect ranches in rural areas.

"Twenty years from now there still could be a drought on the Colorado and we also would see a decline in groundwater in Nevada," he said about the river from which Las Vegas gets about 90 percent of its water. "We need to look ahead at something else."

Wimmer, however, noted that the water authority has banked 1.2 million acre-feet of water in Arizona. There are about 326,000 gallons in an acre-foot, which is roughly the amount used by two Las Vegas homes in one year.

Through a conservation program started in 1999, 96 million square feet of turf has been removed in the valley, he said.

Wimmer said water consumption in the Las Vegas area fell from 325,000 acre-feet in 2002 to 270,000 acre-feet last year even though a 330,000 people moved into the valley.

But below-average snowfall in the Rocky Mountains has meant a lower-than-normal flow of water into Lake Mead in seven of the past eight years. Lake Mead now stores water at 48 percent of its capacity, compared with 96 percent in 2000.

The lake's elevation has fallen 100 feet in eight years. If it drops another 61 feet, it will reach the elevation of one of the two intake stations that carry water into Las Vegas.

Wimmer said that could occur as early as 2010. The water authority hopes to open a new pumping station at a lower elevation before 2012.