We can’t let companies use our water as a tool for profit

Sunday, March 13, 2016 | 1 a.m.

Of all the natural resources associated with the West — including gold, silver, timber, natural gas, oil and coal — none is more precious than water, which sustains life itself.

Wresting control of water was vital as the West was settled, leading to disputes that grew into water wars among ranchers and conniving manipulations among big-city water bosses, as played out when Los Angeles began draining water from the agricultural Owens Valley a century ago.

We are fortunate to have had visionaries at the Southern Nevada Water Authority commit to various strategies and tactics — in terms of engineering and conservation — to ensure we have enough water to meet the needs of burgeoning Clark County. It has always come through for us, even in the face of the drought and the fact that we got short-sheeted when Colorado River water was divvied up in 1922.

Everyone here has water — clean, safe, very affordable water.

So imagine our surprise when we saw the editorial in the newspaper that accompanies us on driveways and newsstands. It embraced the notion that we — or at least those with enough money — would be better served if our water was controlled and sold by private companies.

The editorial, beneath a sub-headline that read, “Capitalism could help solve West’s woes,” suggested entrepreneurs could buy the water rights from those who have them and then “have an incentive to direct water to where it will bring the highest price.” This would result in water conservation, the editorial posited, because water users couldn’t afford to waste it. But depending on market conditions and the capricious leanings and revenue scheming of the private water company, it could be that some people would have to pay inflated market prices just to have water for their basic needs. Where on Earth, literally, is water intentionally priced high as a business profit model? It is immoral.

The editorial concludes by taking a different point of view: that a for-profit company could “help allocate water to where it’s most needed.”

Either way, Nevada would not benefit from companies running our waterworks. It would find it all but legally impossible to move water away from the basins where the water rights are assigned because of all the state and federal laws it would encounter.

It is equally far-fetched that lawmakers would privatize the nonprofit Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has done so well managing our water needs. Unshackled of a profit motive, the water authority can finance infrastructure improvements and ongoing maintenance by selling tax-exempt bonds, which a private company cannot.

People have a basic right to water. With that comes the responsibility of sharing in the cost of an expensive infrastructure that treats and delivers water to their faucets. We already have in place a fiscally smart, well-executed and reliable system of water delivery that is meeting the needs of Southern Nevada.

As a society, we are well-served by capitalism, but on something as fundamental as the delivery of snowpack and aquifer water to our faucets, we are grateful for what already is working. We need to leave well enough alone and let the private companies stick to selling water in plastic bottles with attractive labels.

We should put our most basic need for survival in the hands of those with a profit motive? That’s nuts.