Saturday, March 1, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Two million people in the Las Vegas Valley?
It'll never happen.
We'll run out of water first. And if we don't, the air quality will get so bad that the feds will shut us down. At the very least, we'll run out of buildable land.
But city, county and utility officials scrambling to plan for the valley's growth don't buy any of those assumptions.
Jeff Harris, manager of the county's Advanced Planning Division, points to a 1990 water quality management plan for the Las Vegas Valley that tried to find physical limitations to growth.
"We went and evaluated limiting factors," Harris says, "and found that we didn't have any."
With a huge river flowing by, he says, even though we may only have rights to a tiny fraction, it's hard to say we can't get any more.
"Nobody knows how much water we can get," Harris says. "There's so much uncertainty that it's impossible to say water will be a limiting factor."
That is backed up by the Las Vegas Valley Water District. David Donnelly, deputy general manager for engineering and operations, says the district already has "hard contracts" for 535,000 acre-feet of water, enough to serve 1.8 million people.
"It's the firmest water you're probably going to find in the West," Donnelly says.
The district, Donnelly says, needs only another 60 acre-feet to take its service capacity up to 2.2 million.
"That's one-third of 1 percent of the flow of the Colorado River. It's such a small amount, it's just not a limiter."
While Donnelly admits the district would have to work out the "legal and political and historical restraints," he's optimistic.
Who, after all, is going to make people go thirsty so they can grow cotton in California?
OK, maybe we have enough water, but what about air quality?
The Environmental Protection Agency is about to classify Las Vegas in the "serious non-attainment" category for carbon monoxide, aren't they? Won't that slam on the brakes?
First of all, says Harris, the air has improved dramatically.
True, the dust problem, which is what everybody sees, isn't any better, and true the EPA is likely to reclassify the valley because it had three bad air days last year.
But, Harris says, "we're getting lower levels of carbon monoxide today -- in spite of all the growth -- than we had in the early '80s." And once the EPA moves, the county will have more time to draw up a plan to fix the problem.
Once again, those assertions are backed up by air quality officials at the county and federal level.
In 1976, says Michael Naylor, director of the county's Air Pollution Control Division, the valley had 100 bad air days. In the early '80s, we had 50 to 60 bad air days.
Thanks mostly to improving automobile and fuel technology, the '90s have seen the pollution readings nosedive. In 1993 and 1994, the valley had only one bad air day each.
"The last few years have been our best years yet," Naylor says.
The federal air quality requirements, however, have gotten more stringent. In addition, officials see the air quality improvement curve bottoming out, perhaps reversing itself as more cars pour into the valley.
Still, says the EPA's John Kennedy, if the agency reclassifies Las Vegas this year, the county will have 18 months to adopt a plan to clean up the air. The federal agency then has 18 months to determine if the plan meets the Clean Air Act requirements.
Sanctions would be imposed only if the plan is rejected and the county doesn't come up with a better one within another 18 months.
Kennedy says federal money for highway projects would be withheld until a plan is in place. But nobody believes the county wouldn't come up with an approvable plan when millions in federal funds are on the line.
Even if it couldn't, sanctions don't mean the end of life as we know it.
After all, Los Angeles has been in violation of Clean Air standards since they were adopted in 1970, and it's still growing, according to the latest census figures.
So water and air quality won't stop growth, what about land?
Nope. At least not until long after the county shatters the 2 million mark.
The county estimates there are about 94,000 acres of vacant privately owned land in the valley. In addition, the federal Bureau of Land Management has about 27,000 acres in the valley that could be developed through land swaps or purchase. Put it together and you have 121,000 acres -- 189 square miles -- waiting for the bulldozers.
That's enough to house 1.03 million people at the density of 8.5 people per acre forecast in the city of Las Vegas' Northwest Area Master Plan. Of course, the density could go up.
And when that's built out, if there's still demand, you can bet developers will be looking at Pahrump and Indian Springs and Jean and the Moapa Valley.
If Southern California can develop all the way from San Diego to Santa Barbara, why couldn't Nevada develop from Primm to Mesquite?
The bottom line, says advanced planner Harris, is there is no calculable end to growth in Southern Nevada.
The sky's the limit.
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