This is an excerpt from the radio show Our Metropolis, a half-hour issues and affairs program that airs Tuesdays at 6 p.m. on KUNV 91.5-FM and is hosted by the Greenspun Media Group’s John Katsilometes. Tune in next week to hear the rest of this interview with Southern Nevada Water Authority Public Information Officer Nicole Lise (for information, go to snwa.com):
We’ve had a very heavy winter snowfall this year in Colorado, which feeds the Colorado River and eventually runs into Lake Mead for use for residents in Southern Nevada. How encouraged should we be by that?
This year has been a great year, so far. We’re pleased to note that we’ve had about 117 percent of the normal snowfall there, but people should keep in mind that what we should do is wait for April and May to see if it’s really going to affect us down here
[in Southern Nevada]. What sometimes happens is we might have a very early spring or a warm spring, and that water might evaporate before it comes down from snow, so we might lose a good portion of that. In fact, in order to make our way back from the drought we have had, we would have to have a couple of years like this, at the very least. … A good guesstimate would be maybe a good five, six years of wet winters to say we’re turning the corner.
The Water Authority’s 2008 Landscape Awards are this month. What are those to recognize, exactly?
The purpose is to recognize professionals and homeowners who have beautiful, water-smart landscapes. It has to be water-smart. Sometimes we see applications and it’s just a lawn. That’s not water-smart. Actually, having water-smart landscapes per square foot, you can save 55 gallons of water a year. Water-smart landscaping is not just rocks, not just cactus. It’s lush. It’s green. Trees, bushes, flowers, almost anything but grass can be part of a water-smart landscape. When emptying your pool, use your sewer port, don’t let it drain down. That’s very wasteful, because we can use that water again—all water outside is lost. … We also pay $1.50 per square foot of lawn removed in the water-smart landscapes program, which is in its 10th year. We’re encouraging people, still, to take us up on this. Right now 101 million square feet of turf has been removed from Southern Nevada in this program. … The first thing you do is call us, at 258-SAVE, so you can be walked through the process.
Because the Colorado River has become an unreliable water source, there have been other methods proposed to obtain water, one being the proposed pipeline that would run from rural northeastern Nevada down to us here in the Las Vegas area. Is that pipeline the answer?
That’s among the projects we are looking at to provide water to our residents, and we have to look at everything. Desalination is another method we’re looking at. The first and the easiest way is conservation, because we can do that today, and it really doesn’t cost anything to conserve. You can’t do this without conservation. It has to be part of the puzzle, for residents and businesses as well. People look at the Strip, the Bellagio fountains and all of those rooms, and think the Strip doesn’t do its part, but only 6 percent of our total water use comes from the Strip—including the rooms. The residential homes and multifamily homes, apartment and condo buildings use the majority of water here.