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<br />High Country News -- Printable -- February 21, 1994: Las Vegas wheels and deals for Co... Page 3 of6 <br /> <br />Las Vegas to buy and dry up. Unlike California and Arizona, where huge chunks of those <br />states' Colorado River water goes to farms, the Southern Nevada Water Authority already <br />controls nearly all of Nevada's Colorado River water. Nor will conservation help much. <br />Even with the most optimistic projections for conservation, Mulroy says, the Las Vegas area <br />will need more water soon after the turn of the century. <br /> <br />To get that extra water, Mulroy wants to change the "law of the river" to allow southern <br />Nevada to buy, borrow or otherwise bargain for water from other states' farmers and <br />ranchers and deliver it through the agency's existing "straw" in Lake Mead. <br /> <br />The "law of the river" presents a formidable obstacle to her quest - an obstacle rooted in the <br />traditional West, much like the laws and traditions governing mining, logging and grazing. <br />But in an era when irrigation districts across the West are having trouble paying for their <br />water, Las Vegas has what they need: cash. Mulroy has also found new allies in high federal <br />positions, and in cities across the West, who share her vision of a changing region that needs <br />some new rules. <br /> <br />Before he became secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt advised the rural Nevada counties <br />fighting the Las Vegas groundwater importation plan. Now, Babbitt says, he is an <br />"advocate" for southern Nevada. <br /> <br />"I'm trying to find a way for Nevada to get an increased share of Colorado River water," he <br />announced last summer. "Las Vegas needs an expanded water supply from the Colorado <br />River." <br /> <br />Around the same time, Betsy Reike, the assistant secretary of Interior who oversees the <br />Bureau of Reclamation, was explaining her plans for reform to an annual gathering of high- <br />powered water managers and attorneys at the University of Colorado's Natural Resources <br />Law Center. <br /> <br />"The Colorado River has been locked up in the chains created by the law of the river," Reike <br />said. "It is time to figuratively melt those chains." Reike said the Department of Interior, <br />which manages most of the river, would "patiently leverage change" on the Colorado River, <br />starting in the lower basin. That was just what Patricia Mulroy, sitting in the audience, <br />hoped to hear. <br /> <br />The Bureau of Reclamation is drafting rules and regulations to "provide some new <br />flexibility by allowing and facilitating voluntary transfers of water" on the lower Colorado, <br />says Ed Osann, an assistant to bureau director Dan Beard. The proposal will be the subject <br />of public workshops and hearings after it is released in March. <br /> <br />"This is something that does not require fundamental changes in the law of the river" or <br />"tampering with the basic apportionments among and between states," says Osann. But it <br />will be "a big step forward in encouraging the marketing of water in the lower Colorado." <br /> <br />The Southern Nevada Water Authority has already opened a small crack in the Colorado <br />River arrangement with a three-way deal Mulroy put together last year with the powerful <br />Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Central Arizona Water <br />Conservation District. <br /> <br />http://www.hcn.org/servletslhcn.PrintableArticle?article_id=118 <br /> <br />9/1212006 <br />