LV wash seen as key to future of valley

The future of Las Vegas depends on restoring 2,000 acres of wetlands to improve drinking water, preserve wilderness and expand recreation, according to Southern Nevada's top water official.

The questions the community has to answer include who will fund projects to protect the Las Vegas Wash, how to slow the water enough to grow marshes and who is in charge of maintaining the wetlands.

"The whole economy of Southern Nevada hinges on the Las Vegas Wash," Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said. "It's an issue we can no longer afford to take for granted."

In the past 20 years increased runoff, treated sewage and ground-water flows have threatened to turn Las Vegas into a major polluter of the Colorado River, which serves seven Western states.

At one time, the Las Vegas Wash was not considered by local officials as a resource that could lead to improved water quality. Past attempts by environmentalists, residents and recreationists to save the green ribbon of cattail marshes, willows and cottonwoods were ignored.

That was before perchlorate, a rocket-fuel booster, was discovered contaminating the Las Vegas water supply last year. Toxic chemicals, including ones that cause sex changes in fish, also were found flowing through the wash, which acts as a funnel into Lake Mead, Southern Nevada's major source of drinking water.

"It's a matter of survival for the Las Vegas community," Mulroy said, adding that clean water helps Southern Nevada in its efforts to secure more water from the Colorado River. Las Vegas receives the smallest river share at 300,000 acre-feet a year. That amount should supply the valley until the year 2008.

After that, Nevada will have to scramble for every drop of water by conserving it, storing water in Arizona and searching within the state for yet-to-be discovered sources, Mulroy said. That's why a wetlands that can remove chemicals and poisons from current water supplies is critical, she said.

Water flows have eroded the wash's channel to depths of 60 feet, and in only one year the water dug another 10 feet out of the channel's bed.

"In the 1970s, the wash was looked on as a nuisance," Clark County Sanitation District Director Jim Gans said, recalling local water practices that returned water to Lake Mead as fast as possible. "We've been very unfair to the Las Vegas Wash. It can't handle the (wastewater) load today."

That load drains 100 million gallons of treated sewage a day into the channel. During a flood, the flows can increase 14 times.

The water authority should lead the way in solving the valley's water-quality problems, biologist Larry Paulson said, and that means taking responsibility for the wash. He served on a citizen's advisory committee for water quality which recommended that the SNWA was a natural to lead 20 federal, state and local agencies with stakes in the wash.

Allen Wentz, conservation and communications manager for Ducks Unlimited, based in Memphis, Tenn., said the wash can be restored. "It's not impossible," he said. It will take time and money to stop swift flows and allow marshes to clean the water, he said.

Saving the Las Vegas Wash would protect resting and nesting places for birds flying between North and South America, Wentz said. "It's an international resource, a continental benefit," he said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been fighting for funds for flood control, desalting water entering the wash, acquiring 540 acres of sensitive land in the wash and researching perchlorate's effects on people.

Reid said he has secured $40 million for Nevada water projects. The Army Corp of Engineers will receive nearly $30 million for flood-control projects. Those funds include $23 million for work on the Tropicana and Flamingo washes -- main flood channels that slash from west to east across the valley.

The Bureau of Reclamation is in line for $11.8 million, $3.25 million of which will go toward desalting the shallow aquifer that runs into the Las Vegas Wash. Salinity runs as high as 10,000 parts per million, compared to 35,000 parts per million of salt in ocean water.

Another $300,000 has been included for Las Vegas Wash studies.

After a tour of the washed-out roads and deepening channels caused by floods in the past six months, Reid said he was surprised at the changes that had occurred in the wash.

"All the lectures in the world couldn't tell me what I saw today," he said.

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