Moving Toward the Millennium

Katzer, Terry; Brothers, Kay; ,

Moving Toward the Millennium

by Terry Katzer, Las Vegas Valley Water District, Las Vegas, United States,
Kay Brothers, Las Vegas Valley Water District, Las Vegas, United States,

Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Hydraulics/Hydrology of Arid Lands (H?AL)

Abstract:

The last decade of the 1990's is just beginning and paradoxically the water resources readily available to Clark County, Nevada are just ending. In a few short years Nevada's allocation from the Colorado River will be fully utilized and additional ground water, over and above existing permitted rights, from the Las Vegas Valley basin is not available under current Nevada water law. A major water resources project, involving importing ground water from basins located in eastern and southern Nevada, has begun but awaits the dawn of the twenty first century to become operational. These basins have an estimated perennial yield of about 660 million cubic meters with about 40 percent already allocated, leaving 400 million cubic meters of potentially available water. Thus the purchasing of some portion of these existing water rights becomes a very important part of the project. A massive amount of legal, technical and environmental work must be done prior to developing the first cubic meter of this vast water supply. Constraints on development are focused by the emotional upwelling of residents in the targeted ground-water basins.

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