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<br />High Country News -- Printable -- February 21, 1994: Las Vegas wheels and deals for Co... Page 1 of6 <br /> <br />. ,/ <br /> <br /> <br />High(:OlliltryNe\vs.org \, ,". <br /> <br />119 Grand Avenue' PO Box 1090' Paonia. CO 81428' (970) 527-4898 <br />www.hen.org <br /> <br />-- Vol. 26 No.3 I February 21,1994 <br /> <br />Feature Article <br />Printable Version <br /> <br />Las Vegas wheels and deals for Colorado River water <br /> <br />by Jon Christensen <br /> <br />by Jon Christensen <br /> <br />Las Vegas is prepared to give up its controversial quest to pipe underground water from <br />rural Nevada, says the area's top water official. But only ifthe booming metropolis can get <br />more water from the Colorado River. <br /> <br />That's a big if, requiring changes in how the Colorado River has been run for most of this <br />century. But Las Vegas, one ofthe fastest-growing cities in the nation, just might have the <br />juice to pull it off. Patricia Mulroy, the hard-driving general manager of the Southern <br />Nevada Water Authority, is betting everything on it. <br /> <br />As Las Vegas has boomed in recent years so has the power of her agency. It merged over <br />the past few years with several competing water districts, and now serves 900,000 people, <br />65 percent of the state's population. <br /> <br />Mulroy is throwing that power into changing how the Colorado River is managed. If she can <br />get access to Colorado River water for Las Vegas, Mulroy is offering to abandon one of the <br />biggest urban water grabs in Western history. The move puts Las Vegas at the center of <br />reforms that are changing the way water is managed throughout the West. And it may unite <br />her urban constituency and environmentalists against traditional water interests. <br /> <br />It's a startling about-face. Four years ago, when Mulroy unveiled a plan to pump all the <br />available groundwater from 26 valleys stretching as far as 200 miles north of Las Vegas <br />(HCN, 4/6/92), she asserted that rural Nevada could not stand in the way of the state's <br />economic engine. The plan seemed a bold blast from the past. Its scale - over 1,000 miles of <br />pipeline - would dwarf the Owens Valley pipeline to Los Angeles, to which it was often <br />compared. <br /> <br />Mulroy now acknowledges that the groundwater importation plan has been proclaimed "the <br />singularly most stupid idea anyone's ever had." But, she says, "I don't think we would have <br />gotten attention to southern Nevada's needs without the outpouring of concerns on those <br />applications. " <br /> <br />http://www.hcn.org/servletslhcn.PrintableArticle?article_id=118 <br /> <br />9/1212006 <br />