The Chosen One June 8 2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The Chosen One - Las Vegas Sun Page 3 of 10 Mormon irrigation farmers and renowned city burghers. One uncle had been among the U.S. senators to get Henderson hooked up to Lake Mead, another as a state assemblyman had tackled the crisis when casino wells threatened to cave in the ground beneath their golf courses. His father had led the formation of the Las Vegas Valley Water District. By this point, Bunker himself was such an effective gaming lobbyist he all but spoke for the Strip. He understood, from the water mains upward, what was unfolding in a town that was about to give rise to the megaresort. The man who as county manager had chosen fire chiefs and city planners did not want a buffalo running the Las Vegas Valley Water District. A buffalo would passively allow Las Vegas' potential to be capped by its allocation from the Colorado River. A buffalo would be a true believer in the Colorado Compact, the treaty behind the building of Hoover Dam and Lake Mead and what Bunker regarded as the 1922 selling out of Las Vegas by Northern Nevada. No, Bunker wanted Mulroy, so he did what came most naturally to him. He lobbied her. At first she resisted. "Richard talked me into it," Mulroy recalls. "He talked at me like a Dutch uncle. It took a while." The vote was 6 -1 to appoint her general manager of the district. Clark County Commissioner Jay Bingham cast the dissenting vote. He said he didn't think she was tough enough. He may be the last person ever to hold that view. As Mulroy took over the job, at first on an interim basis, even Bunker was not prepared for her daring. She abhorred waste. The Las Vegas she inherited epitomized it. Rep. Shelley Berkley was working at the Sands when she first noticed the Water District's new general manager. Berkley still shakes her head on recalling walking into a hotel conference room and seeing Mulroy berating some of the biggest names in town on water conservation. If they didn't come to the table, Mulroy went to them. "Probably the first confrontation was with Steve," Mulroy says. Steve Wynn. "He was just about to build Treasure Island. We were in the midst of banning lakes and water features, so he calls me down to the Mirage and grilled me for two hours. I was very blunt with him. He said, `OK, what do I need to doT I said, `you need to use gray water "' — treated wastewater. When she left his office, she carried a check for $100,000 for her conservation program and a dare to get every other casino owner to match it. "The biggest of the big shots in town became her most vocal advocates," Berkley says. Ironically, the most egregious waste wasn't from the casinos but from the seven local water companies serving the Las Vegas Basin: Boulder City, Henderson, North Las Vegas and so on. "You got what you used," Bunker recalls, "so everyone was using everything they could." If they couldn't use it, they dumped it into storm drains to protect their allocations. Mulroy headed only one of the seven. She needed the other six to get with the program. Almost immediately, Mulroy was pressing them to pool their collective water under a new agency. Bunker didn't like her chances. "There was too much jealousy." But Mulroy had bait. Since the mid- 1980s, the Las Vegas Valley Water District had been hunting Northern and Central Nevada for new water. http: / /www.lasvegassun.com/news /2008 /jun/08 /chosen -one/ 6/17/2008