Kurt Cobb: The show must go on

…So quickly is Lake Mead falling that an intake pipe which supplies 40 percent of Las Vegas’ water may emerge above the lake’s surface by 2012. The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) is working furiously to lay pipe for a new intake that will assure continued supplies should the lake fall below the current intake on schedule. The authority is a consortium of water districts that act together on water issues.

But the new intake may not be enough. A recent report from two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography calculates that there is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead will cease to supply water to the millions that rely on it by 2021. They calculate a 10 percent chance that this could occur by 2014 and a 50 percent chance that lake levels will drop below those necessary to generate electricity from Hoover Dam’s many generating turbines. Their study assumes no changes in water management. But they hope to prompt radical changes in that management with their conclusions.

The study’s authors indirectly point out that Hoover Dam and the communities that rely on the Colorado River for water have grown up in what might turn out to be a rather wet period in the western United States. They note that average Colorado River flows over the last 500 years are less than those over the last century or the last 50 years. If that is any indication, the West may now be experiencing the new normal.

Despite all this Patricia Mulroy, manager of the SNWA, insists that Las Vegas’ water troubles shouldn’t be cause for limiting growth. She told Bloomberg that she expects growth in Las Vegas to continue because many Americans prefer living in the Southwest over other locations in the United States.

Energy Bulletin