Keeping the water flowing to Nevada

Jill Lagan, Boulder City

Monday, Nov. 18, 2013 | 2:02 a.m.

Recently, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell gave her first major speech on conservation and spoke about the Colorado River, affirming that we must make sure that every drop counts and that there is more that can be done to use water more efficiently.

These comments come as the Colorado River faces a grim future. Jewell’s own agency, along with the seven Colorado River Basin states, recently completed a study that predicts that demand for the river’s water will soon outweigh supply.

The same study also demonstrated that water conservation and reuse alone can yield at least 3 million acre-feet of water in the basin and is the most cost-effective and easily implementable way to bring water supply and demand on the Colorado River back into balance. In Nevada, the river supports 25,329 jobs and pumps $2 billion into the economy each year from people spending money on river-related recreation and tourism. These comments are a wake-up call for stakeholders to continue to work toward the conservation and efficiency measures that will ensure that all of the users of the river have the water we need to sustain the economies of the West.

The writer is the CEO of the Boulder City Chamber of Commerce.