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SCIENCE Be ENVIRONMENT '- George Douglas, Assistant City Editor. 892-2743 Colorado could-slake Nevada thirst - EAD lor-' ard, lobe! iver Ga- atS ,Audi- 10f 'orrna- Chevron and Getty Oil would rent their water near Grand Junction in swap for reservoir By Bill Scanlon News EnDiwmmen.tal Writer LAS VEGAS - Nevada is so dry and growing so fast that water officials here contemplate pur- chasing icebergs from Alaska or desalinizing Pacific Ocean water to supply casinos, hotel bathrooms and suburban'backyards. So. a proposal from a Denver water lawyer to rent water from Colorado for 50 years - at one- fourth to one-tenth the cost of the other schemes - sounded' great to Nevada's Colorado River Com- mission director, Tom Cahill. "I said, 'Sure rd be interest..; ed: .. Cahill recalled of the phone call he received eight months ago. "I asked him where it was coming from, and he said he couldn't tell me." Over the next several months, he slowly found out. -' Chevron and Getty Oil, two of the companies with an eye on western Colorado as an oil~shale . center, own land and senior water rights east of GrandJunction along Roan Creek. . Oil shale - the rOck that can be made into fuel in a water-intensive process - boomed, then busted in the early and mid-19S0s_ Getty and Chevron don't believe the nation will need oil shale for another.30 to 50 years, but want to build a reservoir ahead.of time. Instead of spending $150 million .themselves, they want Nevada to . pay for it - in exchange for leas- ing water from the reservoir for the next 30 to 50 years. "If yOu want to devel9p storage for water, you want to use some- one else's money," former Colora. lyteri- a free no- n, rn.c 2S, ltyBar ural at the ;chool lsium riders .Fri- :am- 28S, -7 rick- "S I.m. ~ -Th< ,d- oyers ycon- , 'g 8 p.m. ad- p.m. te an- p.m. Dol- 7 6, . The PhotocourtesyLasVegasCOnventlon,Nisitol'$Authority Above, the Luxor resort in Las Vegas will be an intensive water user in Nevada. Below, Chevron and Getty Oil want Nevada to build a dam in Colorado in exchange for ieasing water from it, Creek. project say Colorado will never get the water back - what is rented for 30 years will be lost forever. Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Au- thority, agrees that the Colorado connection may not be the right solution for her state. "The idea of temporarily leased water makes sense ,when you have a readily. available source to replace it with. Wedon't," she said. Colorado Department of Natu. ral Resources executive director Ken SalaZar believes establishing Rocky Mountain News water as a commodity of interstate commerce will set a dangerous precedenL It can ruin farming communities as first, one, then a stream of farmers sell their water to the thirstiest state, he said. "Once you accept the proposal . that transfers money ITom one state to another, it raises grave concerns about what it means to all the water in Colorado - includ- ing the water that runs in the Rio do state legislator Chris. Paulson, who represents the oil companies, said. Last. week, news, of promising research raised the possibility that oil shale may be produced for $30 a barrel, hastening the day when production would make sense for western Colorado. uIt doesn't really change our plans.... Paulson said. ''H Chevron needs to pull 'back grea t"er amounts of water earlier than an- ticipated, theY'll have to pay for a substitute 'SUpply for Nevada - from Indian water rights or some- place else." .... Better that Nevada rent the state's water than California steal it. say Coloradans who back the plan to lease 175,000 .cre-feet of the Colorado River for $200 an acre- foot. . But opponents of the Roan. See NEVADA on 121 ay, Logic'goes out the window when matters are heating up Questlo~: Why does soup take longer to heat up .. sday, Here are the main factors in the heating of food in a microwave. acco~ding to . ~b Schiffmann! a heats up. extremely slowly, be- cause the water molecules are locked in a .rigid crystalline struc- ansnarent to rh"" cause of geometry. This is how it was explained to us by physicist Francis Slakey of the American Phvsica1Socie.tv: