Transcript

Bill Sedivy/Kay Brothers: Talk of new dams but little talk of conservation

Bill Sedivy: I have a question for Kay. Here in the Treasure Valley, the Boise area, the demand for water is expected to double by 2020 and already the Idaho Department of Water Resources is talking about building new dams in the Boise Basin. But to date there has been very little talk about water conservation, which David mentioned as well. How big a role does water conservation play in the Las Vegas water planning effort?

Kay Brothers: It is extremely important. When I mentioned the water resource plan previously, when we look at demand forecast, we assume conservation implementation and our goal for conservation is: we would have achieved 25% with a baseline of 1990 by 2010, and so we are trying to put in programs to achieve that goal. We are now at about half of that. I think we are seeing the need for actually maybe a more lofty goal. We started a strategic planning process looking at conservation and more extreme measures to replace grass, to put in more desert landscaping because a majority of water, almost 60% of the water, is used outside, for landscape irrigation. So that's a huge number to look for conservation and it's becoming more and more important, especially even economically. It is the right thing to do, but economically, when you start looking at securing additional water resources, that is expensive also. So it is very important.

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