U.S. Water News Online
LAS VEGAS -- Drought has Southern Nevada's regional water authority scouting for new supplies and considering a $1 billion-plus pipeline that would be the area's largest public works project since the Hoover Dam.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority is looking to the rugged desert landscape north of Las Vegas, with officials predicting more than a million people might one day be served by water from the Muddy and Virgin rivers and the mountains and valleys of southeast Nevada.
Tapping that supply would require environmental approvals, cooperation with the affected counties and the go-ahead from the Nevada state engineer, who is responsible for ensuring new wells do not threaten existing groundwater supplies.
It might also require a pipeline from the Virgin River, a massive project the water authority began studying last summer.
``Because of the drought, we are accelerating, big time, the evaluation of our options,'' said Kay Brothers, water authority deputy general manager. ``We're looking at these things. The environmental permitting of this is going to be a huge issue.''
The first relatively small step is under way. The water authority has drilled a test well in Coyote Springs, site of a proposed community on the Clark-Lincoln County line, to comply with an order from State Engineer Hugh Ricci.
The test pumping is expected to produce about 10,000 acre feet of water a year -- enough for a similar number of families, or about 50,000 people.
If the test well shows water can be pumped from the ground for at least two years without harming the environment or existing wells in the region, then Ricci could allow the new pumps to become permanent.
Until then, the 10,000 acre feet will go to the Moapa Valley Water District system. Drilling the test wells and constructing the short pipeline from Coyote Springs to the Moapa Valley Water District system will cost an estimated $33 million, Brothers said.
That project should go to bid in May. Brothers said the water authority hopes to be able to pipe about 36,000 acre feet of water a year to Las Vegas by about 2011.
The region now consumes about 300,000 acre feet of water a year, almost all of it from Lake Mead, the reservoir formed by Hoover Dam.
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