The 31 March 2008 Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on a study performed for the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) that identifed 12 alternatives to Colorado River water.
The accompanying map from the LVRJ article shows the various alternatives. Some are quite "exotic", such as diverting water from the Mississippi, Snake, or other rivers, towing icebergs or otherwise obtaining water from Alaska.
What, no water from Canada or the Great Lakes?
From the article by Henry Brean:
Bill Rinne, director of surface water resources for the SNWA, said he took two things away from the report: All options are still on the table, and none of them seem to provide the perfect solution.
"I don't see a real silver bullet," he said.
The $750,000 report, paid for by the Southern Nevada Water Authority and compiled by an outside panel of experts, was delivered to Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne last week.
Water managers in the seven Western states that share the Colorado will use the findings to help them decide which of the 12 options to pursue first and when.
Rinne said he expects those talks to begin before the end of the year.
The options range from a low of $20-$30 per acre-foot for cloud seeding to over $4,000 per acre-foot. The report said that cloud seeding could add up to 1.4 million acre-feet to the river.
The article continues:
Rinne said the problem with cloud seeding comes when you try to quantify exactly how much additional water the process may have produced.
"There is always a debate about that," he said.
The report concludes that a significant amount of water, perhaps as much as 150,000 acre-feet, could be saved by removing salt cedar groves along the banks of the river and its tributaries.
Left unchecked, the nonnative plant could spread from its current range of about 300,000 acres to 600,000 acres by 2020, siphoning as much as 1 million acre-feet more from the river in the process.
The study states that water from the Columbia River could be supplied via an undersea pipeline, or that icebergs or fresh water contained in "baggies" could be towed from Alaska. Rinne said that this passes the "straight-face test"
The report notes that Nevada has no large agricultural operations from which to transfer water rights to urban use, or an oceanfront for desalination plants. How about desalting saline or brackish ground water?
Rinne said the report is a "very good and important first step" in managing the Colorado's water amid climate change, drought, and population growth.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
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