New sources needed down the line; will they be there?

No one has to tell Kay Brothers that there isn't an infinite water supply to serve the ever-growing Las Vegas Valley.

As resources director for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, Brothers is constantly on the lookout for new ways to get more water.

"We're saying our existing supplies will take us through 2007," Brothers said.

Brothers and the authority are confident, though, that Southern Nevada can get the additional water needed to meet the valley's needs through 2025, when the population is expected to reach 2.2 million people. That's about 1 million more than are being served today.

Nevada, one of seven states with access to Colorado River water, has had permission to use a net 300,000 acre-feet annually since the Law of the River was enacted by Congress in 1928. The other states in the compact are Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Close to 375,000 acre-feet of river water actually will be diverted by the water authority into the valley this year, but because treated waste water is returned to Lake Mead the authority's net use will be only about 220,000 acre-feet.

Other users in the state such as the National Park Service consume an additional 20,000 acre-feet, leaving Nevada with about 60,000-acre feet to spare from its 300,000 acre-foot allocation. An acre-foot of water equals 325,892 gallons.

The water authority anticipates that Nevada will need its entire river allocation by 2007, forcing the state to look elsewhere for additional sources. These options are among the water authority's priorities in securing new sources:

* Apply to the federal interior secretary for unused allocations and surplus flows from the river. California, with access to 4.4 million acre-feet annually, is the only state that has exhausted its share and gained permission to take unused allocations from other states. The four upper basin states -- Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming -- rarely use all their allocations.

"It's political suicide for anyone to give water away," said Richard Wimmer, deputy general manager of the water authority. "I do not see changes in specific allocations, but I do see changes in the availability of water to use."

* Take advantage of the Arizona Groundwater Bank, created in 1996 to help that state replenish its own sources. Nevada and California have both gained tentative permission from Arizona to bank unused and surplus river water in that state for future use.

The water authority has already banked 50,000 acre-feet in Arizona as part of a pilot project. Nevada is awaiting interstate water banking regulations from the interior secretary that would allow the state to negotiate with Arizona on a long-term agreement.

One option would be for Nevada to pay Arizona to create credits by storing river water in that state's underground aquifers. When Nevada wants to redeem those credits, Arizona would pump water from the bank's aquifers for its own use. Arizona would then allow an equal share of its unused river water to be diverted to Nevada.

* Obtain permission from the interior secretary to "wheel" water from the Virgin and Muddy rivers, which flow into Lake Mead. Under current law, any water that flows into the lake is considered part of the Colorado River system and therefore subject to allocation restrictions for each state. With wheeling, Nevada would be able to use the Virgin and Muddy water without having those flows count toward its Colorado River allocation.

The water authority, for instance, purchased about 8,000 acre-feet of Coyote Springs ground water last year for $25 million from a company owned by Reno developer David Loeb and Harvey Whittemore, the state's most powerful lobbyist. This water has not yet been used by the water authority, but it could be if wheeling is approved.

The Coyote Springs water could then be wheeled through the Virgin or Muddy rivers to the lake. Otherwise, it would cost the authority about $25 million to build a pipeline to bring the water into the valley. "It will be utilized, and we'll look back and see that it was a bargain," Brothers said.

Larry Paulson, a retired UNLV biology professor, countered that wheeling also has potential problems, such as evaporation and reduced quality as river water is moved through the system. "Salinity is not removed by water treatment. In fact, you end up concentrating the salt more."

* Expand the Southern Nevada Groundwater Bank so that more unused water can be stored locally. About 160,000 acre-feet are stored in the bank's underground aquifers, a supply the water authority hopes can be doubled. But Brothers said the authority wants to use this source only as a last resort because "we want to keep levels in the basin up."

Another problem is that caliche, a hard layer of underground minerals, makes it more difficult for water to reach the valley's aquifers than is the case in Arizona. That's one reason why water banking in Arizona is so attractive to Nevada.

The water authority believes that a combination of these and other options will give the valley enough water through 2025, but Brothers conceded that several factors would have to break in Nevada's favor.

She said, for instance, that Nevada would have to get cooperation from California to share unused portions of river water in the future. The problem is that California continues to demand more unused river water for itself, much to the chagrin of Nevada and the other states.

"California has been using 5.2 million acre-feet, but other states want California to come up with a program to ramp down to 4.4 million acre-feet," she said.

Desalinization of ocean water is also being explored, but with current technology the cost per acre-foot is still prohibitive, Brothers said.

Ultimately she believes all seven Colorado River states must come to realize that "everyone has to be a part of the solution."

"It's hard to get a regulation through without everyone agreeing on it," she said. "We can come to negotiated agreements easier than changing the Law of the River."

Though Nevada faces political challenges, Wimmer said they're solvable. "Our prospects are much brighter today than five years ago," he said.

Rick Nielsen, executive director of the Citizen Alert watchdog group in Las Vegas, isn't entirely sold on the prospects for cooperation with other states, however.

"California's thirst is not going to go away, and I don't think the deal has been done in Arizona entirely," he said. "Any additional water we acquire will cost us through the nose."

Some of the authority's assumptions about the quantity of additional water that will be needed by the valley are based on projections of the effects that conservation and rate increases will have on future demand. In its water resource plan the authority trumpets its educational efforts to get the public to reduce summer consumption.

There also have been studies into ways that yards can be landscaped to use less water, and programs that encourage household conservation by using water-saving gadgets such as low-flow shower heads. The authority also established a telephone hotline that gives conservation tips to consumers and allows the public to report incidents of wasted water to authorities.

But Nielsen said he would like to see the authority more aggressively pursue water wasters by slapping them with large fines.

"Water-conservation cops right now basically give you a slap on the wrist," he said. "The water authority continually points to residents as the culprits for wasting water, but I don't know how they derive those figures. They allow those big hotels to go up with fountains, so they kind of have a double standard."

The valley also could be more creative in saving storm water and reusing waste water, Paulson said. He advocated using old gravel pits to trap storm water, noting that the valley could gain up to 12,000 acre-feet of water annually that way. He recalled growing up on a Minnesota farm where they trapped water from the roofs.

"Why are we allowing all this storm water to go past us?" he said.

Paulson, who has butted heads with local politicians and water officials for years, also believes resorts and new housing developments ought to consider recycling their own "gray water" -- waste water from showers and sinks, excluding that from toilets. He said this is one way of decentralizing water and waste water systems to reduce the reliance on Colorado River water.

"We're contaminating gray water with waste water from a commode," Paulson said. "Why do that? If gray water is 75 to 80 percent of the water we use in our homes, that's 75 to 80 percent less pipe you need to return waste to the waste treatment plant."

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