Las Vegas Gambles on Finding Enough Water to Sustain Growth

Incongruous as it may seem, a pirate sea battle is one of the hottest acts in this desert playground.

Six times nightly, two 18th-century sailing ships slug it out in Buccaneer Bay at the Treasure Island resort. One, a stately British frigate, sinks slowly into the choppy waters along the Las Vegas Strip, only to rise and fight again 90 minutes later.

A sea battle in the middle of the desert?

It’s just one of the contradictions in a city where unbridled growth clashes with an ages-old concern: water.

Mormon settlers drawn here in 1855 established Las Vegas Springs, an oasis offering fresh water to travelers between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

Water was of little concern until recent years, when the emergence of giant gambling resorts brought a flood of newcomers to help build and operate them.

Las Vegas has led the nation in growth in recent years, with the population jumping from 708,750 in 1989 to 1,036,290 last year. The forecast calls for 1.75 million by 2006 and 2.62 million by 2016, said Dean Judson, Nevada’s state demographer.

The unrestrained growth soaked up the valley’s water surplus like a giant sponge and served as a wake-up call for area planners. Thus began a scramble to find new water sources for what was becoming an unquenchable thirst.

City and county officials have imposed strict residential water-conservation measures.

Watering lawns between noon and 7 p.m. in the summer can result in fines. Housing developments featuring lakes are banned. Desert landscaping is encouraged, and new homes face limits on the size of grass lawns.

Water restrictions aren’t likely to filter down to the gambling resorts, said Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, because they remain the engine driving the state’s lifeblood tourism industry.

Officials say they have enough water sources to cover needs until the year 2010. After that, the area faces growth restrictions if new sources are not found.

Ironically, Las Vegas is in an enviable water environment, next to Lake Mead and the Colorado River, a major source helping to quench the rural and urban thirst in seven Western states.

But under the “Law of the River,” drafted in 1922, Nevada gets only a fraction of the water allocated to the other six states--California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado.

The city’s multibillion-dollar building boom, which began in 1989, shows no signs of abating, with nearly a dozen new mega-resorts under construction or planned.

Many of the resorts include lavish water features, such as Buccaneer Bay, a volcano at The Mirage, and a 14-acre lake planned at the new Bellagio resort, scheduled to open on the Strip in 1998.

The owner of the three properties, Mirage Resorts Inc., has built costly water treatment and recovery systems to help save water.

Mirage plans a water treatment plant at Bellagio costing upward of $7 million that will transform waste water on the property. Bellagio, on the site of the old Dunes Hotel and golf course, is using water rights grandfathered with the course.

A water treatment plant beneath the parking garage at Treasure Island recycles waste water for the Treasure Island pirate battle.

“There is no drinking water in Buccaneer Bay,” said Alan Feldman, a spokesman for Mirage Resorts.

“Hotels in Las Vegas use an extremely small amount of water. All hotels combined use 8% of the total water available.”

The city has more than 93,000 hotel rooms, catering to 30 million tourists annually, with another 24,000 rooms under construction or planned. The water attractions use little of the water needed to sustain the hotel industry.

The average Las Vegas hotel room uses about 300 gallons of water per day, the experts say.

Mulroy of the water authority divides her time these days between pushing water conservation efforts in the Las Vegas area, and scouting new water sources that will assure future growth.

“Right now we have sufficient water until the year 2010,” she said.

And beyond?

“Everybody is looking for that silver-bullet solution, that one deal that can get us past the problem,” Mulroy said.

“The solution will be a carefully constructed jigsaw puzzle that will address a whole host of issues, a little bit of banking, a little bit of improved system operations, conservation improvements in agricultural areas.”

Banking water involves physically taking water from sources such as the Colorado River and storing it in underground basins, said David Donnelly, deputy general manager of the water authority. The water is pumped back into underground wells and basins that have been depleted in recent years.

Donnelly estimates the storage capacity beneath the Las Vegas Valley at 800,000 acre-feet.

Other measures include the River Mountains project. A 45-million-gallon reservoir, the size of eight football fields, is being built near Henderson to provide treated water to Las Vegas. A four-mile water tunnel more than 14 feet in diameter being built between Lake Mead and the Las Vegas Valley will boost the water output to the valley by about 460 million gallons a day.

Now, Nevada is using 241,000 acre-feet of its 300,000 acre-foot Colorado River allotment, storing some and yielding the remainder to California.

An acre-foot, 325,851 gallons, is enough to serve a family of five for one year.

“Under the law of the river, any water that one state is not using can be used by another state,” Donnelly said. “For many years, California has been using Nevada and Arizona’s unused water.”

California now uses 5.2 million acre-feet from the Colorado River annually, well above its 4.4-million acre-foot allotment. Arizona uses 2.5 million of its 2.8-million acre-foot allocation.

The use of unused water applies only to the lower basin states, California, Nevada and Arizona.

Upper basin states have talked of leasing some of their water. Utah uses about 857,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water annually, half its allocation. Wyoming uses only about half of its 1-million acre-foot allocation. The remainder runs downstream unused.

With Southern Nevada not using all of its current Colorado River allotment, it begs the question: Why worry?

“You have to look on a 20-30 year horizon,” Mulroy said. “Nobody’s ever made a good decision with a gun pointed at their head, standing at the edge of a cliff.”

After years of acrimony, water officials are nearer a consensus with Arizona over use of some of that state’s Colorado River apportionment.

“Arizona has passed a bill that would allow the state to bank and sell water,” Mulroy said. “The two states are in a discussion on how to implement that. It’s a very positive sign in the right direction.”

But Mulroy is concerned that leasing some of Arizona’s water will be only a temporary solution.

Once a temporary source is exhausted, “you end up in twice the mess you have today,” she said. “You’ve got to make up a huge deficit because the temporary water has fueled the area’s continued growth.”

One of the more controversial ideas, importing water from counties north of Las Vegas, has been moved to the back burner, Mulroy says.

“We still have applications out, but there are significant environmental hurdles,” she said.

And political barriers.

The water district filed applications with the state in 1989 to import 246,500 acre-feet of water from rural counties through 1,200 miles of pipeline, a move that could cost up to $7 billion.

Ranchers and leaders of rural communities enlisted the aid of Bruce Babbitt, now interior secretary, claiming that the siphoning of their ground water could spell their doom.

Mike Turnipseed, Nevada state engineer, said, “The idea of importation is not dead; it’s just gone dormant because of the cost and the political pressure.”

“Importation is an option we’re not willing to let go of,” Mulroy said. “The day may come when we may have to talk about it.”

The rural vs. urban battle is nothing new.

Mulroy has been critical of heavy water use for thirsty California and Arizona crops such as cotton, alfalfa and rice.

And she says rural Nevada communities would not have the tax base or jobs to survive without the vibrant Las Vegas economy.

“Let’s throw a little cold water of reality on this wonderful Disney picture of a rural community,” she said. “Anywhere USA doesn’t have any jobs.”