Interview Transcript
Emily Braswell
Q: What kind of things does the public want?
A: The public is concerned about things like preserving their
neighborhood character, making sure that their water quality remains good
and quantity remains good too, making sure that we are not stopping growth
or changing growth, but that we are actually managing and we are beginning
to synchronize all these processes. What's happened in this valley for
many years is there was enough resources, everybody was doing great. We've
just in the last ten years started bumping up against each other in terms
of using resources and it's starting to reach a point where we really
do have to plan together, it's no longer a matter of everybody having
enough. We still have enough but we are looking now over the next 20 years
and starting to bump up against some of those capacity issues in terms
of water, waste water, and transportation, and we are trying to get everyone
on the same page. That's what the original plan was created to do 12 years
ago. We are not there yet but we are still trying to get there.
Q: How limiting a factor is water?
A: Land, water and waste water are probably the things that dictate
more about planning than anything else. Obviously, people have to have
water to drink, you have to have land to live on. The way our system works,
people own land and then they develop it. It's not [like] some older cultures,
hunter-gatherer cultures, where individuals did not own land so it wasn't
an issue. Our culture has always been a landowner motto, so you've got
to have land to develop, you've got to have water, and you've got to have
waste water because otherwise you end up fouling up your own nest as it
were and so those things are critical. Then of course, you've got to be
able to move people around. Now, people are remarkably innovative and
creative about how to do that and remarkably tolerant no matter how much
complaining you hear about traffic congestion. People still keep going
to work even if it takes longer, people still keep going to the grocery
store, they still keep going to the shopping malls, they still keep taking
their kids to school. That is also one of the limiting factors -- you've
got to have jobs, people will have to be able to work. So in my mind and
what we hear from folks is that you've got to have land available. We
still do have land available at least beyond the next 20 years for development
for the population that is currently forecast. Now once you get out 20
years, you are starting to look at land becoming a more scarce commodity
because we do live in mountains and there is only so much land that you
can actually develop. You can build on a 30% slope, but it's more difficult
and more expensive and most people cannot afford to build a home on a
30% slope. It's just too expensive because you've got to haul in things,
you've got to build roads, you've got to put in your own sewer and water
and it's very expensive to do that kind of pumping at that level. There
are also some environmental concerns in terms of sedimentation, erosion,
that kind of thing. Well, you want to concentrate more people simply because
of building infrastructure, the further out you have to take water, the
more expensive it gets. Now that being said, there is only so much Truckee
River water and, according to what we are hearing from water management
and the water study that has just been done on water rights, the next
20 years will push that to the limit. There are parts of the community
where in the current draft regional plan, the water management folks are
concerned that we may not have water to serve them from the Truckee River.
Now the groundwater study is not done yet and there is always a question
of importation. Water can be imported and it's not that you can't get
water, it's just a matter of how much it's going to cost and where you
get it. South Truckee Meadows and southwest particularly, but further
south even, and the North Valleys -- we already know we have constraints
in terms of water and in North Valleys and Spanish Springs, they've got
waste water issues because of groundwater contamination that, depending
on who you talk to, either does or doesn't exist but the fact that we
are even talking about it tells me it certainly is an issue we need to
address. I don't think anyone wants to be fouling their water source with
their waste water. I am pretty sure I don't and I am guessing most people
don't. So land, water and waste water I think are the most key issues.
We are not out of the capacity for those yet but we are reaching a point
where 20 years from now, we may well be, and possibly in some folks mind,
water may come sooner than that. Water issues, water capacity, we may
hit the top, the wall on that sooner.
Q: How defining is the water issue -- do you see moratoriums in the
future?
A: I think what you see is that people can't develop if they don't
have water and that's already in state law and what you see is people
not even being able to use their current water rights, because there is
a difference -- you hear water people talking about water rights versus
wet water -- you may have rights for water but depending on the drought
situation, you may not actually have wet water to go with those rights
because water rights means that you have that rights to pull water out
of the river or to pull water out of the groundwater but if water isn't
there it doesn't matter how much water rights you have because it's just
not there.
Q: So, how do you balance that?
A: That's part of synchronizing the planning pieces. In a lot
of ways, we are just now as a community getting sophisticated, we are
just now having those studies done to tell us what the real capacity is
because we haven't been up against those caps before, we haven't been
up the wall, Well, we call it coming up the wall when there is just not
any more available. We are not there yet, but we are looking at over the
next 20 years beginning to hit some of those key points, and we are trying
to plot out when we think that's likely to happen and what will be the
series of events that will happen before then. That's where we are right
now. It's a very timely discussion we are having and planning for it and
to synchronize. The Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency was created
to be the place where that coordination happens. Again, we haven't always
been able to do as good a job as we might have been able to do simply
because the information hasn't existed, but it's starting to be there
and we have to do a 5-year cycle of updates, water is on a 3-year cycle,
transportation is on a 3-year cycle. For the first time now we are looking
at synchronizing those cycles and we've never done that before so there
is a lot happening in this area right now simply because it is going to
become an issue. It's always been an issue, and it's going to be a bigger
issue over the next 20 years.
Q: How big of a commodity or how expensive of a commodity do you think water is going to become in all of this?
A: That's the law of supply and demand, and again, the further
you have to ship water, the more it costs. The further outside the region
you have to go to get water, the more it costs. So those things are all
part of what will be happening and we haven't really done economic analysis
yet to see what happens because we are just now reaching the bottom of
where we are beginning to measure what the capacities are. That's just
happening right now.
Q: So you are saying we won't physically run out of water, or that we can import it?
A: Those are always possibilities. Who do we buy it from? Are
we willing as a community to do that or is growth limited by that? Ultimately
if water is not available, growth has to be limited because you don't
want people dying of thirst.
Q: So, what happens in this area? Does the city begin to die if
we don't continue to grow? We're growing at an incredible rate.
A: Well, one to three percent. Certain areas are growing very
quickly. There is a debate among urban economists about whether you have
to keep adding population in order to stay healthy. Typically, in planning
circles, a 1% growth rate is about what you expect if you are not looking
at any people moving in or out, you are just looking at people being born
and dying, you generally stay at 1% ahead of that curve. Now, with the
baby boom that's coming, that may change because your birth rates are
changing and your demographics are changing but essentially 1% means more
people are being born than are dying. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I think it is generally considered to be a pretty good thing. 1%-2% of
in-migration is probably not unreasonable. Planners generally figure 1%-3%
growth rate is healthy. The question then becomes, How do you do more
conservation, how do you use the land and the resources you have more
effectively and efficiently? That's what we are talking about in the new
regional plan -- let's use what we've got, let's absolutely squeeze every
drop of utility out of what we've got and then the lower priority is to
add additional growth outside of those areas.
Q: So, that is why you concentrate people in one area?
A: It's not just one area. What we are proposing in the regional
plan right now is actually this. This area outlined here in sort of an
olive line is what we are calling the Truckee Meadows services area. That
area is that which we as planners -- the local government planners, the
regional planners -- have come together and said, this area already has
development approved in it at a fairly urban or sub-urban level, 1-3 units
per acre or so, and in this area we think that we can house a hundred
and ten or so thousand people, we can house and have employment for the
people we think we are going to have in the next 20 years. This is the
area that we think we are likely to grow into. There are certain areas
that we think are more appropriate for putting more dense development
in and we are not talking high rises, we're talking maybe in some of these
areas, you may have 3 -4 story buildings, maybe some different kinds of
housing if people are willing to consider them. If this is passed, then
folks will have to look at this and the local governments will have to
put a priority on where they spend their infrastructure dollars. These
quarters, the Virginia Street Quarter and the Fourth Street, Victorian
-Prader Way area are already intensifying at some level and they have
additional capacity available. Then these circles are regional or downtown
centers -- the downtown centers are Reno and Sparks. The regional centers
are things like the Stead airport. We don't have many airports in this
region so that's kind of a regional asset. So there is a reason to densify
to some extent in that area keeping in mind that there are neighborhoods
there that you have to be very careful about and very concerned about.
In the local government master plan, that has to be addressed, how do
you deal with the compatibility of the existing neighborhoods, how do
you deal with the compatibility of what's already happening. Spanish Springs,
North Valley, South Meadows are still in the service area, they still
can grow -- this is just the priority for putting public infrastructure
dollars [into them]. Local governments have to provide the incentives
for developing within these areas and so that's all part of what has to
happen next once this plan is passed. The local governments have to go
back and look at their master plans and say how do we write in policies
and plans that support this pattern that we've all agreed we think is
good? This plan has not been adopted yet, this is just a draft right now
and we will go out to another round of public hearings in April and we
expect adoption probably in May. If outlying areas want more development
and infrastructure and want the plan revised? Then this [current plan]
isn't adopted and whatever they [eventually] adopt is what everybody does.
Then after whatever is adopted -- something like this or we do away with
center quarters, we do away with densifying, say everybody just keeps
doing what they're doing -- which is always a possibility -- the Regional
Water Management Plan actually addresses the water issues specifically.
We don't address specific water issues, we just address what we think
is likely. We know that the consensus forecast will have this many people,
this is the amount of land we think we'll need, we think these are the
places we can densify and the most efficient way to grow. Now local governments,
water folks, transportation folks -- you have to change your plans to
match this so that the resources match the vision. If you come back to
us and say we can do this and this and this and this, but oops, there
is not enough water down here for this to densify, then that means we
have to go back and maybe look at this has to change. We go in and we
say this can't really densify because there is no water or it's going
to cost you more to bring it in but maybe you can densify out in this
area because there is more water available. Those are some of the adjustments
we think will happen in what we call the conformance process, which is
the 18 months to 24 months following the adoption of a plan. Obviously
this involves people's property. Once we adopt this plan the local governments
have to have a chance to go in and say what does this really mean in terms
of resources. As I said, it is a two-way process. We have to have an annual
reporting process, we have to ask every year -- Are we doing what we said
we were going to do? Is it working? Is it accomplishing what we said it
would? -- because there are always unintended consequences.
Q: What do you see as the vision for here in Reno as water becomes more and more scarce?
A: As water becomes more and more scarce, because it will become
economically more effective to build where water resources already are,
you will see people doing this naturally whether it gets mandated in a
regional plan this year or not. You will eventually see this pattern because
this is economically what makes sense. Now, I think that in time, you
may actually see some satellite areas like Cold Springs and Warm Springs
which are actually delineated here, there may be others, and as we find
where water is available there may be other satellite areas that appear
because that's where the resources are and those become part of the plan.
Planning is a living process. People think it's dry and boring but it
depends on who owns the land. It sometimes depends on when one generation
passes the baton off, when one generation with a certain vision dies and
their land is divided up amongst their children who may have different
visions -- that can change the way planning is done. So there are a lot
of things and it's always changing which is why we have an annual reporting
requirement as part of what we do. We've always got to be saying, "This
is what we said at this point in time that we thought was the right thing
to do. We've gotten some more information from our resource folks that
says that's not the right thing to do, [so] this year we have to make
some changes." Every year it may change a little. Over a 5-10 year
period, it may change even a great deal depending on drought conditions,
depending on what water is available and how much it costs. Some of it
has to do with what happens in northern California because that is the
most likely place we will be able to get water.
Q: In general, you don't see us limiting growth that much?
A: I think that the economics of it -- the market and the economics
of the resources, what water is available -- will ultimately control growth
if you will. People won't necessarily make the choices that control growth.
It's where water is available that growth will happen because you can
build, and you can even sell things to people, but if there is no water
available they are not going to stay there very long. Piping it in is
more expensive. It doesn't mean it can't be done but that has not been
the choice made by folks in this valley previously. It hasn't had to be.
When an importation project came up a number of years ago, the Honey Lake
importation project, that received a lot of conflict and was not viewed
positively and it actually sort of faded away. It doesn't mean that it
may not come back as water becomes more scarce. Why did it fade away?
I think because of the opposition of folks in the North Valleys and folks
in the area where water would have to be brought through, and people didn't
feel that that was appropriate. The County Commission got a lot of opposition
and made a decision to not go in that direction.
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