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.