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<br />fWl~::::J <br /> <br />Attachment No. 11 <br /> <br />- NT::V 11.01\ - <br /> <br />by <br /> <br />lIuqh A. Shamberger <br /> <br />Policies and Practices with Fesoect to Conservation of Water <br />Resources <br /> <br />In Nevada, the natural supnly of water is limited. I\lthough <br />Nevada is the seventh largest state, "ith an area of 110,000 <br />square miles, its average orecinitation of about 9 inches makes <br />it the most arid. In terms of overall supoly, about 54 million <br />acre-feet of water is derived from precipitation. It has been <br />estimated by the u.s. Geological Survey that of this amount, ~bout <br />3.5 million acre-feet, or about 6', percent, appears as surface <br />runoff available for beneficial use. The balance of 50.5 million <br />acre-feet is primarily lost by evapotranspiration. An additional <br />1.5 million acre-feet enters the state, mainly from the Sierra <br />Nevada watershed in California. Some 845,000 acre-feet leaves the <br />State, the major portion of which goes into the Snake River <br />drainage. Adding the 300,000 acre-feet decreed to Nevada by the <br />United States Supreme Court, in the Arizona vs California suit, <br />gives the approximate amount of surface water available to Nevada <br />as about 4.5 million acre-feet. <br />At the present time, about 2 million acre-feet of surface <br />water is being diverted for beneficial use. Due to the lack of <br />storage reservoir sites, it is not likely that much additional <br />surface water can be utilized for beneficial use. However, much <br />of the unused surface water will augment our ground-water reservoir <br />