When … WATER … is the topic in the … WEST … today Las Vegas almost instantly become everyone’s favorite “whipping boy” …
Las Vegas Gambles With an Uncertain Water Future …. By Lauren Morella of ClimateWire …Boulder City, Nev. — November 10, 2009 … excerpted … Straddling the border between Nevada and Arizona, the Hoover Dam is a symbol of human engineering might.
For more than 70 years, its massive walls have tamed the flows of the Colorado River, fueling the growth of cities like Las Vegas that depend on it to supply water and power from its generating station.
But these days, what’s most striking is the lack of water stored behind the dam’s concrete arch. A thick white band of mineral deposits marks the walls of Black Canyon above the water line. Locals call it the “bathtub ring.” It’s where the water used to be, before the start of the current decade-long drought.
For officials charged with keeping water flowing to Las Vegas and other Colorado River communities, the bathtub ring isn’t a curiosity. It’s yet another reminder that worries about climate change are reshaping their future.
“Around 2002, we really began to look at whether this was one of those traditional droughts the Colorado River has experienced — or are we looking at something very different?” said Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Spring warming is coming earlier and harder, evaporating mountain snowpack that feeds the river and its two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
Mountain snowpack evaporates … “In two weeks in April, we lost the equivalent of 14 feet of Lake Powell in snowpack,” said Mulroy. “So it’s a pretty daunting and disconcerting reality that we’re beginning to get our heads around.”
Mulroy is not alone. Across the United States, water managers are beginning to grapple with climate change. And it’s changing the way they think about almost everything.
For the utilities that supply the nation’s drinking water, one of the first casualties is the idea that the conditions of the past can predict the future, said David Behar, deputy to the assistant general manager for water at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
“It’s a game changer for water managers,” he said. “It takes the variability that we understand, and can live with, and amplifies it by an order of magnitude.”
“You have to plan decades ahead, in terms of water supply and source water needs,” said Dan Hartnett, director of legislative affairs for the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies. “It’s too late if you wake up one morning and the tap runs dry.”
A tale of tree rings and ‘Sin City’ … Walking along Las Vegas Boulevard, it’s hard to believe Sin City is facing a water crisis. The dancing fountains at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino spring to life every half-hour, captivating tourists who gather to gawk.
The nearby Mirage features a lagoon complete with towering waterfalls and a fake volcano. And on a hot summer’s day, visitors who find the scorching desert sun discomforting can still have their drinks outside at bars equipped with machines that cool the air with a fine mist.
But those are illusions. For Mulroy, it is Lake Mead that tells the tale of Las Vegas’ water future. The reservoir’s water level fell this summer to its lowest point since 1965, when officials diverted Colorado River flows to fill the newly constructed Lake Powell. By late August, Lake Mead’s elevation hovered at just 1,092 feet above sea level.
Under the complex system of allotments that governs how Colorado River water is distributed to seven U.S. states and Mexico, that leaves just 17 feet of wiggle room before the Southern Nevada Water Authority must, by law, begin seeking alternate sources of water.
If the lake dips to 1,050 feet, the Hoover Dam’s hydroelectric power plant will shut down and Las Vegas will have to begin weaning itself off the river. It’s hard to tell how soon Lake Mead could hit this ominous milestone
The pact that governs the Colorado’s supply was negotiated early last century, one of the wettest periods in the past 1,200 years, based on climate records drawn from tree rings across the southwestern United States. Many scientists say it’s nearly inevitable that the region will become drier, moving closer to the historical average.
Right now, the best climate models predict a drop of anywhere from 5 to 25 percent in the mountain runoff that supplies the Colorado by midcentury. But a recent study by researchers at the University of Colorado suggests that the decisions water managers make can — temporarily — blunt the effects of climate change and continuing population growth.
Preparing the ‘third straw’ … The water authority has embarked on a massive construction project to build a new intake pipe to pull water from Lake Mead. Known locally as the “third straw,” it will ensure the utility can siphon water if the lake level dips below an elevation of 1,000 feet, rendering two existing intakes useless.
SNWA is also seeking permission to build a controversial $3.5 billion pipeline to transport groundwater from rural eastern Nevada, a plan that has drawn ire from ranchers and environmental groups and is currently tied up in court.
“Right now is the perfect storm,” Mulroy said in late August. “You have a daunting drought in the Colorado River that is forcing us to spend $800 million to build a third intake we never anticipated having to build, which is an excruciatingly difficult construction project. And you have connection charges that were 57 percent of the revenue for our capital funding plan that evaporated. And you have to balance the two, but you have to build the third intake. You don’t have a choice … not without endangering the community as a whole.”
If a recent study by two water utility trade groups is correct, Las Vegas’ spending could be just an opening wager in a game of climate change poker. The report, by the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, estimates that the United States’ drinking water and wastewater utilities will spend $448 billion to $944 billion between now and 2050 to adapt their infrastructure and operations to cope with the shifting climate. This estimate, large as it is, doesn’t include big societal costs likely to spring from climate-induced changes to the nation’s water supply, including impacts on ecosystems and public health.
Living with uncertainty … While the fate of America’s energy and transportation systems has dominated the country’s climate debate, water utilities have begun making their case on Capitol Hill and in academic circles. “Water utilities, right now, feel like we’re going to be among the first sectors affected by climate change,” said Marc Waage, manager of water resource planning at Denver Water.
Meanwhile, a group of larger urban systems — including Las Vegas, New York, Denver, Seattle and San Francisco — has formed the Water Utility Climate Alliance. The group is less than 2 years old, and its members’ general managers meet every three weeks via conference call as they pursue an aggressive research strategy. WUCA is finishing two white papers: one examining the latest science on how climate change will affect the water cycle, and a second that examines strategies for making decisions in the absence of precise information about what the future will look like.
What that means is that some timeworn practices in the water business “have to be challenged,” concluded Mulroy, Las Vegas’ water chief. “I think it’s a conversation for the country that’s almost unavoidable. … The worst case, as far as I’m concerned, is if we are surprised by the magnitude of climate change. We can’t move fast enough.”
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE . . . One might be inclined to note that Las Vegas choice to speak loudly, take strong positions on water, actively pursue securing water via legislations, lawsuit, collaboration or outright “taking” positions them with an extremely large target painted on its back giving others a single focus of the West’s contemporary water-villain … surpassing by leaps and bounds Los Angeles’s taking of the Owens Valley water as quintessential water villain of the West…?
Time and circumstances coupled with a population exceeding 33 million makes Los Angeles and/or California a most formidable target extremely difficult to ignore and even more difficult to challenge.
Boldly and audaciously upstart Las Vegas maneuvers on multiple levels … playing to this point quite skillfully the old “shell-game” … keeping everyone guessing what venue Las Vegas will next pursue in its chase for more water and still more water.
While I have difficulty with the ethics Las Vegas appears to demonstrate they are not the only … water-seeker … in the WEST choosing to utilize a multi-venue attack in their pursuit of water and still more water.
In Arizona both Central Arizona Project (CAP) and Salt River Project (SRP) utilize similar deceptive methods though with less finesse than it appears LV is capable of, though with equal aplomb knowing the deck is stacked in their favor with Arizona’s regulatory agencies … ADEQ (Az Dept Environmental Quality) … ADWR (Az Dept Water Resources) … ACC (Az Corp Commission) … as well as Az State Legislature … willing to kowtow to their every request.
Residents in both Arizona and Nevada currently residing in what we term – RURAL – areas, especially those currently utilizing surface water as well as subsurface water are being squeezed as they watch … alone … “metro” water purveyors in camouflage usurp water they thought they would enjoy forever.
What is for me most interesting is that Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming all part of the COMPACT OF THE RIVER are all interconnected like links in a chain. And that chain has several links which are either broken or about to break. But steadfast all these states champion positions which captures more water than actually flows in the COLORADO RIVER. Tell me, please, how does that work …?
Is it magic, voodoo, slight of hand, what is it that permits “us” … that’s you and me … to believe more water can be continuously extracted from the Colorado River than its watershed is capable of producing …?
I know it can all be explain by … neuromarketing … that emerging amalgam form of brainwashing now being regaled as science … where climate change and global weather are said to be nothing more than anomalies and not permanent nor fostering potential dire consequences for mankind.
WOW … I feel so much relief knowing that neuromarketing can save us, don’t you…?
Or is the WEST in fact looking into the eye of a perfectly forming WATER storm the likes of which mankind has not seen in many millennia…?
… I invite “us” to consider not to shame, blame or criticize but rather simply ask … what would it look like when it’s fixed … and own that ONLY we have the power to bring about the change needed to fix it …
Posted by PAUL MILLER 
Posted by PAUL MILLER 
Posted by PAUL MILLER 
