As the West dries up, water managers, politicians and environmental groups alike are searching for an option -- any option -- to create water.Recently, desalination has been the popular answer. Even the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has said the technology is no silver bullet, is considering desalting despite its many challenges.Last month, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons made waves when he said he would rather see Las Vegas rely on desalination plants on the Pacific coast than on the controversial planned pipeline to move rural Nevada water to Las Vegas.Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy has not talked with the governor since he made those comments in Fallon on Feb. 21, but last week she said Gibbons just doesn't understand how complex it would be to build a desalting plant on the coast of California or Mexico and trade the water it produces for more water from the Colorado River."I know that the governor is a rancher himself, and he would probably love to have an alternative for the in-state (pipeline) project," Mulroy said. "I would love to have an alternative to the in-state project."Desalination is sure to be part of the valley's future water supply, she said, but there are environmental and political challenges to using the technology, which is expensive and uses lots of electricity.And in the end, Mulroy said, a desalting plant would be useless if drought continues to diminish the Rocky Mountain snowpack that feeds the Colorado River's flow into Lake Mead, the source of 90 percent of the Las Vegas Valley's drinking water.If the lake continues to shrink and shortage guidelines enacted by the seven Colorado River Compact states kick in, Las Vegas would no longer be able to use traded or stored river water."When shortages get declared those become impossible to take," Mulroy said. "All those opportunities either disappear completely or become severely limited in times of shortage. The only thing we can rely on in times of shortage are things that begin in Nevada."That's one reason Mulroy says developing a pipeline or some other native Nevada water source is so important."Additional resources we're trying to develop to protect against a drought would also disappear if we take them as Colorado River water," she said. "They're not useful at the time we need that reliability most."Another major consideration is the state's relationship with the six other states, Mulroy said. Because those states were told Nevada was committed to the pipeline project, Las Vegas has been promised the first 75,000 acre-feet of any new Colorado River water-augmentation project, such the Drop 2 Reservoir planned for Southern California adjacent to the All-American Canal. An acre-foot of water is enough to supply about two single-family homes for a year. In return, the state must develop an in-state water resource."If Nevada were to not develop in-state, its credibility would be so badly tarnished," Mulroy said. "We (would be) saying, 'We will not do what all the other states have done.' It would be viewed very much as a breach of good faith, on Nevada's part, to rely completely on other states' resources, particularly during shortage."Despite the need to develop water resources that don't rely on the overstretched Colorado River, the Water Authority is seriously considering desalination in general and an existing desalting plant in Arizona in particular as options, officials said.Desalination is part of a 2006-07 study of options to augment Colorado River flows commissioned by the seven states. The results of that study are expected to be released within weeks, according to the authority. The study also examined other augmentation options such as cloud seeding and vegetation management.The study was the first time the authority formally studied desalting, although a spokesman said the option has been discussed informally since 2000.For now, the authority's official position on desalting remains that the technology "is not promising as a near- or middle-term option in the face of the drought on the Colorado River ... because it does not reduce our 90 percent reliance on the Colorado River. It has been viewed as more of a longer-term option," spokesman Scott Huntley said in an e-mail last week.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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