A significant deadline looms in negotiations over Colorado River water rights, plus... (Joe Bennett) And there were dead sheep at that water development because the guzzler was dry.

I hate saying that on camera, but I don't want to see that again.

-Extreme drought means extreme measures to save the state's animal.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon, joining you from Hemenway Park in Boulder City.

And a big reason people come here is to see desert big hornsheep.

They are the state's animal, but drought is forcing the relocation of some sheep out of state.

That story is ahead, but we begin with drought's impact on Lake Mead behind me.

This is where Southern Nevada gets about 90% of its water.

Not only have water levels been dwindling in the last two decades, but Nevada is also at risk of losing how much water it can take from the lake.

For the latest on those issues, we sat down with Colby Pellegrino, Deputy General Manager of Resources at the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

What is the status of Lake Mead right now?

How full is it?

(Colby Pellegrino) So Lake Mead, as we sit today, is about 1/3 full.

We've seen the lake sort of drop pretty steadily through this century.

You know, this drought started in the year 2000, but we've sort of bumped around this 30, 33% full for the last couple of years.

-And for some more context, you told me that you started in this job 22 years ago.

How full was it then?

-We were about 80% full then.

-And as a Las Vegas native also, when you were born, how full was it?

-When I was born, there was water going over the spillways at Hoover Dam.

The last '83 and '84 were the last years we sent water over the spillways.

-Do you ever stop and reflect on that?

-Absolutely.

A lot has changed and certainly gotten drier on the Colorado River since then.

-The snow pack and the Rocky Mountains, the melted snow eventually is going to end up in Lake Mead.

Is that making much of a difference this year?

-So this year we've seen what we've seen a lot of other years, is we actually have average precipitation and snow pack, but it's resulting in a pretty low runoff, 71% of average runoff, compared to about average snow pack, which is because it's hotter and drier.

So we're losing more of our snow pack to evaporation and to plants and the natural system before it actually makes it into the reservoirs.

So we expect to see more of that as the climate continues to warm.

-Scientists continue to say it's climate change as well as overuse of the Colorado River.

You've got seven states that are relying on the Colorado River, which feeds Lake Mead.

Nevada is one of those states, and right now negotiations are underway to determine how to continue divvying that water up.

How would you describe how negotiations are going?

-I would say this round of negotiations is particularly challenging.

So the Colorado River is really kind of a hallmark for what interstate river cooperation and even between two countries, we have a great relationship with Mexico, should look like.

But now, as we're sort of being continually asked to use less and less, the bigger those cuts get, the more painful they are to the local economies, the water users, the states that rely upon that for their economic output.

So I don't think anybody disagrees on the magnitude of the problem.

There's a lot of disagreement about who's responsible for making the cuts necessary to deal with it.

-40 million people rely on the Colorado River.

These negotiations have been going on for how many years now?

-Oh, you know, I don't know that negotiations ever really stop.

Our last set of policy went into effect in 2007, major policy like this, and then it was amended three or four times since then, with additional actions.

I would say pre-COVID, we were beginning to talk about how we should start these negotiations, what they should look like, what things we wanted to accomplish.

So, you know, five years?

When we did our 2007 Interim Guidelines, they took about five years to be negotiated.

-And so the current guidelines are set to expire at the end of 2026.

Where are you in the negotiation process?

How would you describe where you are?

-You know, all seven states are engaged.

I think, again, all seven states agree on the magnitude of the problem, but we've yet to agree on how those reductions get divided up.

But I think everybody's still working together, and there's a whole lot of people on this river that agree the best path forward is for us to agree together than to fight it out in court.

-Will you elaborate on that?

There is a deadline in May coming up that deals with the agreement on all sides from all seven states.

What is involved in that deadline, and what does it look like if there is not this joint agreement?

-That's a great question.

What we're doing right now in terms of the public negotiating process and the May deadline, the federal government has to engage in what's called the National Environmental Policy Act process, which produces an environmental impact statement, which is a description of what the federal government is looking to do and how it's going to impact people, the environment, our economies.

So it's a really public facing way to make sure that people understand what is happening with these big federal regulations going into place.

The May deadline is really when the Bureau of Reclamation needs to stop accepting ideas and start drafting that document in order for us to have something implementable by 2026.

So it's not the last chance that we have to agree, but it's the last chance that we get to fully describe something that the seven states would be willing to work on together, to flush out, before that 2026 deadline.

-What are the consequences if you don't?

-I think the consequences are incredibly high if, ultimately, the seven states don't agree.

It would almost certainly result in litigation, and that litigation creates a ton of uncertainty for all of the water users on the Colorado River, the 40 million people that rely on it, 5 million acres of farm land.

There's just a ton of uncertainty that hangs out there.

As a water manager, particularly of such a dry city like the Las Vegas area, I would like to know how much reduction we're taking.

Even if it's not everything I want, it's significantly better than the uncertainty left with litigation.

Nevada is one of the three states in the Lower Basin, and then you have four states in the Upper Basin.

And according to The Colorado Sun, there was a water conference in March.

The executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission said that, "Without this joint agreement, the federal government's approach will lead to significant cuts in the Lower Basin states."

Do you agree with that?

-I agree that the federal government's role in the Colorado River really lies within the Lower Basin.

So for this action that the federal government can take, the Bureau of Reclamation serves as the water master within the Lower Basin.

That's where they get to come in and, if the states don't agree, they can say, these are the cuts that are being made.

This is who's taking them.

-And why?

Why are they in charge of the Lower Basin?

-So if we go way back in time, the compact, the Colorado River Compact, which everybody talks about, is actually a really short document.

And what it did was say the Upper Basin gets 7.5 million acre feet of water, the Lower Basin gets 7.5 million acre feet of water in their tributaries, they split the obligation to Mexico if things get dry, and that's it.

So then all the laws that came after that divided up the water between the states.

In the Lower Basin we couldn't agree, so we went to court for a very extended period of time, I believe 50 years in the Supreme Court, which again is why we don't want to end up in litigation now.

And the result of that litigation was that the Bureau of Reclamation serves as the water master in the Lower Basin, and it gave them the responsibility to apportion water in times of shortage.

So if there's not enough water in the system, the Bureau of Reclamation gets to say there's not enough, and this is how much we're going to take.

-And the federal government right now has five different proposals of what to do.

Now, those were created under the Biden administration.

Prior to him leaving office, the Bureau of Reclamation kind of expanded on what each proposal entails, but is that what the federal government will go with now that there is a new President?

-I think that you'll see something that's substantially similar.

Obviously, the Lower Basin states submitted a letter saying, we'd still like our alternative looked at.

The seven states are still working together to try and come up with something, but those five alternatives, because of this National Environmental Policy Act, are really meant to describe the range of activities that could occur for dealing with this problem.

So if we want to try and make a real world example, if the federal government was doing the National Environmental Policy Act on a water heater leak in your house, one of the things they have to look at is no action.

That's we're just going to let this thing leak, and we're going to talk about that, then we're going to talk about the cheapest way we can replace it, then we're going to talk about the most expensive way we can replace it, and then we're going to talk about what other things might exist that you could use instead of a water heater to make your water hot.

So that's what this five-- that's why there are five alternatives.

It's meant to describe, really, the range of things that could occur from a reasonable set of bookends.

So I don't know that the federal government will really see a huge change in those alternatives, but I imagine as the states get to work together and as we get to know this administration's team, we'll see some tweaks.

-How has the Trump administration impacted these negotiations, if at all?

-You know, the change in administration is something that always impacts negotiations in particular, because key people change.

And even just a major Presidential election usually results in a pause, even if it's the same administration, because the cabinet usually changes.

So key people and key positions end up vacated, and there's always sort of a lull.

So that's sort of expected.

We've tried to even time out in the past the expiration of these agreements so we avoid that, and it's never really worked, because they happen so frequently.

But we haven't experienced any major changes other than that normal delay that we would see in a transition.

We're excited to get some of the officials seated so that we can roll up our sleeves and get to work.

The transition team has been great.

They're water professionals, and we're kind of looking forward to the business attitude, the "get down to business" attitude that they bring.

-You don't even have a commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation right now?

-Correct.

-So then the May deadline, the likelihood of you reaching that is?

-I think that the May deadline is really about the seven states.

If we have something, we can stand up together.

Which the federal government always has participated in those conversations, but not really led them.

So I don't know that the transition affects us that much in that regard.

But because of the need to have something in place for operations in 2026, the Reclamation staff has to keep working on this document regardless, and that's why the May deadline still matters.

-I wonder how much of a role funding will play, because under this administration, there have been funding cuts, funding freezes.

And is that a motivation for states to perhaps conserve more water and use less water, say, we'll take less water if we get this amount of money in return?

-Absolutely.

Funding always plays a role.

And really, you know, we talked about the reservoir kind of being stable.

That's because the Lower Basin's use is historically lower than it ever has been as the result of federal funding and agreements amongst the Lower Basin states.

It's much easier to convince somebody to use less water if you're able to buffer some of the economic impact of that.

So we have seen large infusions of money from the federal government into conservation programs.

We also see municipalities like the Southern Nevada Water Authority, Metropolitan Water District, putting large amounts of money into their local conservation programs to reduce their use and create some of the water savings that we see in Lake Mead.

I think at the end of the day, everyone would rather be compensated than simply told they have to use less.

I don't know that that's realistic, but one of the things that I think could have a role in future operations is us coming up with a more durable funding source that is, you know, perhaps funded by the water users to do these types of programs, instead of relying so much on federal government infusions of money.

-You're talking about putting some sort of fee on water users?

-We've been talking about it for a while, and there are fees that exist today.

So for example, we have a salinity control program in the basin, which is paid for by power revenues from the hydropower generated from the major dams on the river.

So those things already exist.

There's actually water use fees that the bureau is allowed to charge today.

They're very, very low, but they go to pay for the staff that operate the facilities that we need to deliver water.

-When we talked about some of the funding, that was something that happened under the Biden administration for the tribes that utilize the Colorado River.

They were given money in exchange for using less water.

The Gila River Indian Community, in particular, when their funding was frozen because of the new administration, they said, Well, you know what?

We're going to take our water from Lake Mead.

What kind of impact does that have in the grand scheme of things?

-I'm not that familiar with the Gila River Indian Community's specific project, so I'm not going to comment specifically on theirs.

The Lower Basin, as a result of actions that the Secretary took under the Biden administration, instead of doing shortages, we ramped up conservation.

Lower Basin agreed to do 3 million acre feet of water in '24-- I'm sorry, '23, '24 and '25.

We're way ahead of schedule on that, with or without, you know, any one of these individual agreements, because we've got a really broad net of people contributing to the water savings that we're seeing right now in Lake Mead.

-And when you think about the water savings that are happening, what excites you the most from the Southern Nevada perspective?

I mean, this is an example of how water conservation can happen in other states, other parts of the world.

-You know, I think that "exciting" is an interesting word to describe it.

I think what gives me hope is that more and more people are understanding sort of the risks and tradeoffs in terms of, it's a balancing act.

How far do we want to let the reservoir go down versus how much do we want to give up water proactively to keep it up?

And I think, as we see, climate change impacts locally, but also internationally, and we hear about, you know, "day zero" in South Africa of having no water.

Those things really change people's mindset about how much they want to try and get ahead of having our reservoirs empty.

And I think as our collective awareness sort of rises, we see people being more and more interested.

And the more and more interest there is the more and more innovation comes, and it's sort of those innovative technologies, the transition to low water use crops, new irrigation technology, those are the things that are going to save this basin.

-Southern Nevada is known for its ability to recycle water and the amount of water that it does recycle.

There is an infrastructure project that will allow for that to happen out in North Las Vegas at the APEX, right?

-Correct.

-I believe construction starts on that in July?

-Yes.

-Okay.

So infrastructure for that, how are tariffs impacting that project already?

Are they going to impact that project?

-Absolutely.

Tariffs are going to have unknown impacts on all of our projects.

We buy and source projects from a large variety of sources, and how all of those tariffs stack up is not my area of expertise.

But you know, if we're getting a product or a piece of pipe or a valve from Canada, that may have one set of tariffs, but then if the materials used to create that are from China, then that has another set of tariffs.

So it's really a project-specific thing that I can't speak directly to.

But it's certainly something we're keeping our eye on.

-Something that's on your radar.

And then, lastly, as a native Las Vegan, when you approach people and you tell them what you do, what is their response?

-I-- It depends.

You know, there's people have really different connections to water and the community.

And I'll give you a great example: One of my old neighbors are long-time boaters, and so when we talk about conservation and like AB 356, the requirement for all the turf that's not being used for recreation to come out, they're like, That's fabulous!

It's going to help the lake, right?

And I get asked, you know, You're going to tell me when I should sell my boat, right?

But I think that the other thing you get is some people want to see a community that looks like the community that they came from.

Las Vegas is full of people that have moved here from other places.

We talked about the year I was born.

There were 300,000 people that lived here.

There's 2.3 million today.

So it's really easy to do the math.

How many of those people aren't used to growing and living in the desert?

And I think it just takes a while for us to compel them that you can still have a wonderful life.

We can still have lots of great recreational experiences, but do right by our water resource, because we're not living somewhere that gets 14 inches of rain.

We're living in the driest metropolitan city in the United States.

-We move now to how drought is endangering the state animal.

To be clear, drought is not a major threat to the desert bighorn sheep that gather here at Hemenway Park.

That's because they have more access to water, like the water content that's in the grass that they graze on.

But for bighorn sheep in multiple mountain ranges within just a couple of hours from here, the conditions are much different.

Take the Muddy Mountains at Valley of Fire State Park, for example.

That's where, because of drought, officials are planning to relocate the state animal out of state.

Mid-June is when the Nevada Department of Wildlife says it will start removing more than 100 desert bighorn sheep from the Muddy Mountains.

(Joe Bennett) Because if you remove sheep, then you got less mouths on landscape.

-It's a landscape that, prior to February 14, hadn't seen rain in eight months.

And when Nevada Week visited on February 28, it was to watch the state's Wildlife Department haul water to the sheep for an unprecedented third year out of the last four.

This water is taken out to what are called guzzlers.

They are man made water developments from which the sheep can drink, and the department says they're necessary, not only for hydration, but also to help these sheep digest the very dry vegetation that they have to eat from.

-So maybe the density of sheep that we had here from 2014-2019 when conditions were good, probably isn't sustainable anymore with these drying conditions.

And I'll tell you, the worst day of my career was when we were flying bighorn sheep surveys in 2020 and we flew over a guzzler in the West Muddies a few miles from here, and there were dead sheep at that water development because the guzzler was dry.

I hate saying that on camera, but I don't want to see that again.

(Patrick Cummings) It's a bad thing, in the sense that you don't have no other thing to resort to.

-Patrick Cummings is president of the Fraternity of the Desert Bighorn.

-Relocating animals, trapping them, removing them from, in this case, the Muddy Mountains here in Clark County is one way to lower the density.

It does a favor, not only for the animals that you're translocating, provided, of course, they can make the adjustment, they can manage the predator risk, because there are predators out there.

They are naive to a new environment that puts them at a disadvantage.

But removing animals also benefits the resident herd by lowering the density and the pressure on forage resources and water resources.

-Established in 1964 in Las Vegas, the nonprofit that Cummings leads helps pay for the water projects that keep the state animal alive.

Will sheep die from a lack of water in the Mojave Desert in the height of summer when vegetative conditions are so poor, when moisture is so low?

Yes.

They will die of terminal dehydration.

And then the question is, well, could they starve to death?

Could they enter into a state of irreversible malnourishment?

Yes, they can.

We're going to avoid that as best we can.

-Avoiding that is costly, as you can see from this presentation that the Nevada Department of Wildlife made in March.

-10 or $15,000 a day, this whole water haul effort might cost 500,000.

And then when you factor in moving sheep, where you got capture costs, you got GPS collar costs, you got sampling costs, you're looking at maybe another 400,000 if you move 150 sheep.

So when you throw in everything together, you might be talking about close to a million dollar project.

-Funding for the projects comes from donations, excise taxes on guns and ammunition, and hunting tags.

-The Heritage, we have two of those tags where they're sold at like banquets, like the Wild Sheep Foundation, and others, where they may raise $175,000 per tag.

And so I don't want to get too much in the weeds, because I don't want to seem like it's a story of the rich man hunting.

Yes, you and I probably can't afford that tag, but there are, like, other specialty tags, like our Silver State Tag, which it's a $20, essentially, raffle ticket, or our Dream Tag, where you can-- anybody could potentially win it.

-It's ironic winning a tag to hunt the same animal that several groups are trying to save, but it's also population control, which is what the Nevada Department of Wildlife will be doing when it begins moving up to 150 bighorn sheep from these mountains.

The Department says as many as 50 could go to Utah, and the rest will be released in parts of Nevada more suitable to their survival.

-Right now, these sheep have really small lambs, you know, so you don't really want to harass them with these little lambs.

And then also, when you're moving them to northern latitudes, this is the most important part, you don't want to throw a desert sheep into Northern Nevada right now or Central Nevada, because it'd be like throwing us into Canada right now.

You need to give them a chance to acclimate.

So we found-- but through drop netting, through captures, through everything, you move them in that June time frame, they acclimate well.

-If you're wondering why sheep from Valley of Fire can't be relocated here to Boulder City, the Nevada Department of Wildlife says that's because the sheep that are already here, the sheep that visit Hemenway Park, have pneumonia, and they would likely infect any new sheep.

To learn more about how you can help Nevada's desert bighorn sheep, go to our website vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek, and I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.

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