By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
If you think that the water levels at Lake Mead are low now, you haven’t seen the end of it! Dry times are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future; and its likely to get worse still before it gets better.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation annual operations plan, which was made public last month, proposes to slow the flow of water from Lake Powell into Lake Mead. That is something that has never happened before.
Under normal conditions, Lake Powell releases at least 8.23 million acre-feet of water a year into Lake Mead for use by Nevada, Arizona, California and Mexico.
But that is under normal conditions. With the current decade-long drought raging on, the Colorado River system hasn’t seen normal conditions in a long time. And federal water managers are calling the last two years the worst consecutive years of inflow in a century.
As a result, this year’s release from Lake Powell will be cut by 9 percent to 7.48 million acre feet. That is the lowest annual release since the filling of Lake Powell back in the 1960s.
The water level at Lake Mead is now expected to lose almost 25 feet in elevation over the next year to a new record low. By the fall of next year, the Lake could very well drop to an elevation of 1,075 feet above sea level. That is the notorious level where a federal shortage declaration is imposed on the river. Such a declaration would prompt water supply cuts for Nevada and Arizona. And that would be another first.
All this would likely bring a drastic situation for the 2 million urban residents of the Las Vegas valley. Southern Nevada Water Authority officials have said that a federal shortage declaration would be catastrophic for Las Vegas. SNWA chief Pat Mulroy has even gone so far as to suggest that the region should be considered for federal disaster aid.
But would rural Moapa Valley residents be affected by a federal shortage declaration? Water for local homes comes from the wells and springs in the Warm Springs area; not from Lake Mead. So a first reaction may be that there will be little affect on us. But while it is true that the local water supply would not be directly affected, Moapa Valley residents could still feel some significant impacts from a shortage declaration.
Of course, the first impact that comes to mind is reduced tourism. In this, our commercial sector has already felt the impact. With the Overton Beach area deserted, sitting high and dry; and with the marina closed at Echo Bay; the boat traffic that once kept downtown Overton afloat through the summer, has all but dried up and blown away.
In an interview with the Progress last week, Deb Wiggins, owner of Northshore Inn in Overton, said that business has been terrible for the small motel this summer.
“We thought that last summer was bad, but this summer was worse,” Wiggins said. “We have had very little boat traffic. With all the bad press about the water levels at the Lake and the closing of Echo Bay Marina, boaters from out of state seem to have decided that there just isn’t a lake there anymore and aren’t coming.”
Of course, this isn’t true. There is plenty of water left for boaters. Wiggins said that the hotel has been working hard to market the pristine and uncrowded waters of the Overton Arm to a broad regional market. But they have had limited success in combatting all the bad regional press.
“This community has got to find a way to get the word out that it is still wonderful on this end of the Lake,” Wiggins said. “The water is beautiful, the fishing is great and there aren’t anything like the crowds that you find down on the Boulder end. Unfortunately, that word is just not getting out there.”
Of course, the economic impacts of a federal shortage declaration on the Lake might have a wider local impact than just the loss of tourism. After all, a shortage declaration doesn’t only mean less water in the Lake but also less power from Hoover Dam.
Power production at Hoover has been declining gradually in recent years because of the low water levels. But at the 1,075 elevation trigger level, that decline goes into high gear. If lake levels reach an elevation of 1,050 feet, then the power reduction becomes drastic.
This would certainly take a toll on the customers of Overton Power District (OPD) in the Moapa and Virgin Valleys. according to OPD General Manager Mendis Cooper.
Cooper explained that the OPD gets about 20 percent of its power from hydro resources generated by the Colorado River dams. For that energy, OPD makes regular payments which, to the benefit of local ratepayers, are much less expensive than other sources of energy. This has historically kept power rates at OPD relatively low.
But if the power supply from Hoover Dam is no longer reliable and constant it could change the whole picture. If the district’s peak demand can’t be met by the hydro resource, it would force some difficult decisions, Cooper said.
“The options would be limited, and none of them very good,” Cooper said.
In that case, one option would be for the district to enter an agreement with a supplier to purchase more power than it normally needs in order to meet its peak demands.
This option would have to be weighed against the costly option of simply going out on the spot market and buying power as it is needed to meet peak demand.
Thirdly, the district could opt to build a renewable energy generation component; a small solar energy plant which could meet some of the peak summer demand. Cooper explained that the district is currently looking closely at the feasibility of this renewable component.
“Any one of those options would be more expensive than our current hydro allocation,” Cooper said. “But they would be better than the fourth option; and that is rolling blackouts. Nobody wants that.”
To add insult to injury, there would be yet another expense involved for OPD if hydro power production was stopped or drastically reduced at Hoover Dam. The district would still have to pay the assessment for the hydro energy it was not receiving.
“According to the agreements, our power payments go to pay for building the Visitors Center and the parking structure and other improvements at the Dam,” Cooper said. “We are obligated to pay those even if we are short on energy.”
While it is complicated to quantify it in advance, all of this seems to point to significantly higher power rates for OPD customers if the shortage declaration were to be made on the Lake, Cooper said..
Finally, we come back to the subject of water supply. The fact that Moapa Valley doesn’t get any of its drinking water from Lake Mead doesn’t necessarily mean that our water supply would be entirely unaffected.
“It probably wouldn’t affect us in the short term,” explained Moapa Valley Water District General Manager Joe Davis. “But it could definitely have a longer term affect.”
The shortage declaration would no doubt speed up a decision on the SNWA’s controversial plan to tap groundwater across rural Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties. The design and construction of the proposed network of wells and pipelines would be a mammoth project and could total more than $15 billion including financing costs.
Davis explained that the deep underground aquifer that feeds all of the rural eastern part of the state has been determined to be connected; all part of the White River flow system.
“If they’re pulling that much water out, even up around Ely; our Arrow Canyon well is sitting at the other end of that system,” Davis said. “If they take more water out, it could have an effect all across the system, even to our well sites down here. It could have effects all across the smaller utilities at Alamo and Caliente and Pioche and Virgin Valley and everywhere in between.”
Davis acknowledges that it is the task of the State Engineer to see that this doesn’t ever happen. The State Engineer would probably first allow SNWA to pump water from the system by degrees in order to monitor the affects; similar to what has been done at Coyote Springs. But it would require a major up-front investment in the pipeline to allow that type of testing to take place, Davis said.
“If they spend $15 billion on a pipeline, they are not going to just leave it behind if things don’t prove out,” Davis said. “That won’t be an option.”
More likely, it would instead bring tighter central management of resources across the system, Davis said.
“The danger in that scenario is that, if affects were shown, we might all be required to simply join forces with SNWA and they will just supply the water to us all,” said Davis. “I don’t think that this community, or the other rural communities, are very interested in having our water managed by a large urban authority.”
