Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.
Las Vegas has run out of options for water and will see growth pinched off in seven to 10 years unless plans are approved to pump ground water south from rural White Pine County, a water agency official said Tuesday.
The comments by Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, represented the strongest warning to date about the region's looming water shortage. In recent years, the lengthy Western U.S. drought and the failure of efforts to find other water sources have left the agency with just one option, Mulroy said: The water must come from ground water in White Pine and other rural areas of the state.
Mulroy's comments came in an interview with Sun editors and reporters. Immediately after her appearance, the Sun interviewed two White Pine residents who came to Las Vegas at the Sun's invitation to speak against the water export plan.
Rancher Dean Baker and White Pine Commissioner Gary Perea said they do not believe the Water Authority's analysis of the amount of water underground in their county nor the effect the ground water plan will have on their ranches, farms and the environment . They also said they do not trust the agency's promises to stop pumping if the environment is hurt.
Mulroy acknowledged that her sharp warning is, in part, due to her anxiety about how the state will rule on the Water Authority's plan. The state's top water official, State Engineer Tracy Taylor, will have hearings in September and then decide in the coming months whether to approve the agency's proposal to pump the water more than 200 miles south.
If he does not, Mulroy said, the economic effect on Las Vegas will be immediate. Even before the agency could appeal the decision in court, lenders who bankroll construction and business expansion in Las Vegas would begin turning down loans, she said.
Without the rural water, "the whole economic confidence of Southern Nevada would start eroding," she said. "There's a whole market collapse that would happen."
If Taylor does not approve the ground water plan, he "will be the first state engineer to stop signing subdivision maps in Clark County," Mulroy said. "It is just that simple."
The argument ups the ante in the fight over the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan to bring 200,000 acre-feet of water from rural Nevada. Mulroy and her staff have consistently argued that the agency must find new sources of water to complement the 300,000 acre-feet drawn up annually from the Colorado River, which now supplies 90 percent of the local demand.
Mulroy said that six years ago, she thought surpluses from water on the river would supply the growing needs of the region for decades into the future. But years of crippling drought coupled with growing demand from other states have effectively killed expectations for surplus water from the river.
Mulroy has lined up union, business and political leadership to testify on behalf of the Water Authority at September's hearing before the state engineer. The hearings will cover applications to take 91,000 acre-feet annually from the Spring Valley in White Pine County.
Taylor has scheduled the hearings to last three weeks. Witnesses expected to testify against the plan include ranchers and environmentalists. Representatives of the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey are scheduled to speak, but could withdraw their opposition.
Although the region has stopgap sources, such as water banked here and in neighboring states, Mulroy said, Southern Nevada could run out of water for new growth as early as 2013 to 2016.
Growth is not a new issue for the Water Authority, whose board includes three Clark County commissioners and one representative each from Henderson, Boulder City, North Las Vegas and the Clark County School Board. In 2004, the agency commissioned a study on the economic effect of stopping growth.
The study by financial analysts Guy Hobbs and Jeremy Aguero found that a sudden end to growth in Clark County could lead to hundreds of thousands of unemployed people in Las Vegas and more than $200 billion lost to the state tax collections over the course of 14 years.
The effect would extend beyond Clark County. Two-thirds of all state tax revenue comes from Southern Nevada's cities, and 15 percent of state revenue comes from construction, Aguero said. If the construction industry starts to shrink, tax revenues will fall.
Billy Vassiliadis is head of the marketing firm R&R Partners in Las Vegas and has clients including the Water Authority, the Nevada Resort Association, and the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association.
He said growth is a mixed blessing for the region, but growth is here to stay - and the Water Authority has to service the growing demand.
"Growth has become a double-edged sword for us," Vassiliadis said. "On the one hand, clearly, growth creates service demands, and not just water demands. At the same time, growth has also become government's cash flow in a state where we don't have things like income tax, other sources of stable revenue We have become somewhat dependent on growth because of the construction industry.
"At the end of the day, Clark County contributes well over 65 percent of tax revenue to the state of Nevada," Vassiliadis said. "Clark County's economic well-being supports and sustains schools and roads, all sorts of projects, health care all over the state."
The arguments on growth do little to reassure the environmentalists and White Pine ranchers opposed to the Water Authority's project.
For them, the question is also about survival. They don't trust the agency's promises that it will ensure no harm comes to the local water supply in White Pine County. They also fear that once pipelines are built to Las Vegas and the water turned on, the state engineer would never turn it off, even if the water table falls in their county.
"It's not about politics or money or whatever. It's about water," said Baker, who has served on a Water Authority advisory committee - and has never accepted the agency's arguments.
The water tables in his valley already are dropping from agricultural use in the area that doesn't begin to rival the amount the Water Authority wants to take. "What we're doing is a drop in the bucket compared to what Southern Nevada is doing."
Baker, one of a couple of dozen Nevada ranchers in the region, questioned the fundamental model of new water supplies fueling continued growth.
"By definition, something that has to survive on growth is going to die sometime," Baker said.
Perea said he wants to see the water stay in his county for economic development - more homes and people, perhaps a ski resort.
"Who's to say that it's not White Pine County that is the future of Nevada? ... The future of Nevada is not necessarily in Clark County."
Perea fears that if the pumping begins, it would be impossible to turn it off, even if negative effects on the environment or ranches start to show up.
"Will the state engineer actually turn off the pumps and pipelines to 2 million people?" he asked.
Jim Deacon, a UNLV professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, has argued on behalf of environmentalists against the ground water plan.
"The fundamental flaw is the idea that you must maintain constant growth in Las Vegas," he said. "There is some point in time where we will reach a resource limitation.
"Growth is eventually unsustainable. At some point that constant growth can no longer be sustained. We have neither infinite resources nor infinite space in which we can expand."
Deacon, the White Pine critics and some hydrologists argue that the Water Authority has overestimated the amount of water it can take from Nevada's rural valleys.
The Water Authority has argued that it won't know how much water is there for the taking until they start pumping it out and gauging the effect. The agency hopes to take 25,000 acre-feet from Snake Valley, where Baker lives, but the hearings in September are over the Spring Valley request alone.
"There is a vast amount of water in that valley," Mulroy said.
Both sides could continue to fight over the issue well past the September hearings. If Taylor, who took over the office two months ago, follows precedents established in previous contentious water issues, he will allow the Water Authority to take only a portion of the agency's request, ramping up the amount the agency can take over a period of years.
If one side or the other believes the state engineer's decision is overly lopsided, they can appeal the issue in the state courts. The Water Authority is also keeping the option open to take the issue to the Legislature in Carson City as another avenue to get the water.
Vassiliadis said the Water Authority, state engineer and state policymakers have to ensure that the economic and environmental health of eastern Nevada are not hurt by the ground water plan - but Southern Nevada needs the resource to protect its own economy.
Failure to provide that resource would mean that the state would have to revisit state water laws, he said.
An unacceptable decision from the state engineer also could lead to a change in that office, Mulroy suggested.
"The governor can remove the state engineer and appoint a new one," she said.
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