Dave Johnson, right, deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, leads a tour of the low lake level pumping station to Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, center, and Congresswoman Susie Lee, D-Nev., before a news conference at the Alfred Merritt Smith Water Treatment Facility at Lake Mead Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022.
Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022 | 2:21 p.m.
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Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak on Wednesday announced the formation of a committee made up of what he called some of the smartest people in the water conservation realm.
The three-person committee comprises Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsminger, former SNWA General Manager Pat Mulroy, and UNLV professor and governor’s office climate advisor Kristen Averyt.
“I feel these three people are the most knowledgeable and have the most experience in the state of Nevada when it comes to water consumption,” Sisolak said. “We need to do whatever we can to put our brightest minds together to come up with a plan on how to continue on our path of conservation.”
Sisolak made the announcement after a tour of a low-lake-level water pumping station at Lake Mead, about 30 miles from downtown Las Vegas.
Amid a relentless drought in the Southwest, leaders in Nevada and other states have worked to raise awareness about the region’s finite water resources.
The Colorado River, which feeds Lake Mead, provides water to more than 40 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico.
Last week, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that Nevada will lose 8% of its water allotment from the river next year.
During Sisolak’s tour of the pumping station — completed in early 2020 at a cost of $522 million — he lauded regional water authorities for their planning and work to help conserve water.
But other states need to do more to help with the effort, he said.
The water level in Lake Mead has fallen more than 150 feet since the turn of the century. It is now about 1,045 feet above sea level, some 176 feet lower than its capacity.
“Southern Nevada has been ahead of the curve when it comes to water for decades,” Sisolak said. “Water levels have been going down quicker than we expected, but we’ve taken remarkable forward-thinking steps, and we’re not going to stop here. We desperately need the rest of the states that rely on Colorado River to do what we’re doing. We also need the federal government to act with the same urgency that we’ve had.”
Solutions like Lake Mead’s newest water pumping station will help Southern Nevada in the near term, Sisolak said.
In April, another pumping station became inoperable because of the low water levels.
The addition of the new station, which can pull water from deeper in the lake, will protect Southern Nevada water users even if the water level reaches dead pool territory, about 895 feet above sea level.
At dead pool levels, Hoover Dam would no longer be able to release water downstream to California, Arizona and Mexico.
“If we hit dead pool, which I think we will not hit, we can continue to take water out of the lake and provide water for everybody in the (Las Vegas) Valley,” Sisolak said. “Obviously, if we get to the dead pool point, nobody else would be taking water out of the lake, so that water would last a lot longer. We need to continue to conserve and have best practices, but we’ll be OK.”
Nevada Assembly Bill 356, which prohibits the watering of decorative, nonfunctional grass, was signed into law by Sisolak earlier this year. The law applies to areas served by the Water Authority and requires affected properties to replace grassy areas.
Sisolak and regional water experts have long touted Southern Nevada’s recycling of water used indoors, which eventually ends up back in Lake Mead. It’s water for other uses — landscaping, pools and golf courses — that is lost to the system forever.
About 60% of the water used in Southern Nevada is for residential purposes, according to the authority.
Though the Las Vegas tourist corridor welcomes tens of millions of visitors each year, about 5% of water is used by resorts along the Strip. In all, Las Vegas has over 150,000 hotel rooms.
“The resort properties are conservation-oriented; they do a great job,” Sisolak said. “Is there more than they can do in terms of maximizing their use of water? I think there’s always more we can all do.”
While Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, Sisolak said it’s not time to start to think of limiting that growth.
Southern Nevada actually uses less water than it did 20 years ago.
Sisolak said, however, that economic development officials would be best suited to recruit out-of-state companies that don’t use a lot of water for their operations.
Averyt said the new committee will develop “different ideas and best practices” for water conservation within the seven-state Colorado River Basin region.
“I challenge anyone to come to Lake Mead, look at what’s happening here, and say, ‘Oh, gee, we don’t have a problem here.’ This is truly the manifestation of climate change,” she said.
