What will we pay for water?

Ed Dornlas, Las Vegas

Saturday, Jan. 25, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

Our country is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. In the rainy Northwest where I used to live, it was unthinkable that lack of precipitation should be a problem until the rains failed to come in 1973 and Oregon Gov. Tom McCall took the remarkable step of outlawing Christmas lights to save electricity since we depended on hydroelectric power.

Now it seems the rains have again taken a break in the West, and we are going to hear a lot more about drought. My reason for this letter is our problem of getting dependent on what seems like a limitless resource until suddenly it’s not limitless.

Case in point, the Colorado River. I read the Jan. 18 letter to the editor “City should explore capping water use,” suggesting that our building be curtailed because water is limited. That seems logical, but I don’t agree.

Water can be freely available even in our drought-challenged state if we are willing to pay the price of negotiating for it or importing it from the coast, and that’s what we should be discussing.

The question is: What’s water worth to us?