Water authority manager says Colorado River out of easy solutions

John Entsminger walks a good enactment arsenic Southern Nevada’s apical h2o official.

On 1 side, helium has to explicate the seriousness of a shrinking Colorado River to clime alteration skeptics and radical who are contented with not instantly handling the West’s h2o woes.

On the other, helium has to quell concerns of situation connected a stream that supplies h2o to 40 cardinal radical successful the U.S. and Mexico.

“That’s a delicate balance,” helium said.

Entsminger, who became wide manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority successful 2014, has the work of starring the bureau that distributes the area’s stock of the West’s astir precious resource.

The concern is serious, helium said, but the tools beryllium to determination forward, and Southern Nevada is well-positioned to debar the worst effects of a two-decade drought and overuse of the river.

Career connected the river

Entsminger grew up successful a household that spent clip successful the outdoors sportfishing the tributaries of the stream successful Colorado.

“In a way, I loved the stream without ever knowing I would really enactment connected the issues affecting the river,” helium said.

The summertime earlier instrumentality school, Entsminger work a publication connected Western h2o instrumentality that revealed the imaginable for a vocation successful answering the h2o proviso question.

He began his vocation astatine the Southern Nevada Water Authority successful 1999 aft attending instrumentality schoolhouse astatine the University of Colorado, Boulder. At the time, helium thought it was a bully accidental to commencement gathering a résumé.

He started arsenic a unit lawyer dealing with unfastened gathering law, nationalist records and small-scale lawsuits. In 2002, helium was tapped to enactment connected Colorado River negotiations.

Two years later, helium joined the negotiating squad for a acceptable of absorption guidelines that govern however h2o usage is chopped on the river.

“So that was my archetypal existent vulnerability to moving the beforehand lines of the Colorado River,” helium said.

He has since led Nevada successful negotiations connected agreements with Mexico and helped get a acceptable of guidelines called the Drought Contingency Plan that sought to slash h2o usage and negociate reservoir levels successful the Colorado River strategy crossed the decorativeness enactment successful 2019.

If the agreements implicit the past mates of decades hadn’t travel to fruition, Lake Mead would beryllium 50 feet little than it is today.

Respected leader, negotiator

Entsminger has built a estimation arsenic a beardown advocator for the needs of Southern Nevada who besides tries to enactment with others.

“John, I believe, is 1 of the driving forces successful collaborative outcomes among the basin states, with the national authorities and with Mexico,” said Tom Buschatzke, manager of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

When negotiations for what would go the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan languished, Entsminger was a staunch protagonist who publically pressed to guarantee it was finalized.

He’s a deft diplomat down the scenes, Buschatzke said, spending clip chatting one-on-one oregon successful tiny groups with different officials erstwhile not astatine the negotiating table.

Jeffrey Kightlinger, erstwhile wide manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said Entsminger is fair, calm and solution-oriented.

“He’s an honorable broker,” Kightlinger said. “He’s not trying to leverage up to get thing other for Nevada. He’s precise wide what his goals are for Nevada.”

Kightlinger said Nevada has an important enactment presumption successful the little basin due to the fact that it tin mediate betwixt 2 states — California and Arizona — that person often been astatine odds.

“And John has filled that relation precise well, becoming benignant of a person and a dependable and a trusted voice” that different states don’t consciousness threatened by, helium said.

But Entsminger’s bureau hasn’t been without its critics. One of the astir vocal has been Kyle Roerink, enforcement manager of the Great Basin Water Network.

Roerink was portion of a wide conjugation that opposed a now-shelved h2o authorization program to tube groundwater from agrarian Nevada into Las Vegas. He’s besides criticized Entsminger’s bureau for moving ranching operations successful the eastbound portion of the state, ranches that were purchased for entree to their h2o rights.

Despite their disagreements, Roerink said Entsminger is simply a antheral of integrity and 1 of the apical authorities leaders and thinkers connected the Colorado River.

“He’s coming astatine it with a level of honesty, wherever a batch of h2o buffaloes implicit the years haven’t gone there,” Roerink said.

How we got here

How Lake Mead got to its lowest levels successful past — capable to trigger a h2o shortage — isn’t a mystery. Part of it is basal math.

Historically, the little basin has utilized much h2o than has been released to Lake Mead by the precocious basin, mostly due to the fact that determination is nary statement betwixt the little basin states connected however to chopped allocations to relationship for evaporation.

Couple that with decades of unfavorable hydrology, and Lake Mead begins to decline.

But Southern Nevada has lived wrong its means successful caller decades, utilizing little than its ineligible entitlement of h2o each twelvemonth since 2002, Entsminger said.

Entsminger said helium wishes h2o usage had been brought into equilibrium with the river’s flows sooner, but he’s portion of a procreation of h2o managers that has addressed the deficit.

He said agreements that person been signed since 2007 question to make an equilibrium. Lower basin states past week signed a caller woody with the national authorities that volition conserve h2o beyond those existing agreements to support Lake Mead from crashing to captious levels.

Southern Nevada ‘immunized’ from crisis

Entsminger doesn’t deliberation the Colorado River is successful a crisis, but it is retired of casual solutions.

If the stream experiences 2 much years of hydrology similar what it conscionable experienced, it could go a question of however overmuch h2o the national authorities volition beryllium capable to nonstop downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, helium said.

But adjacent successful that case, Entsminger doesn’t spot a situation connected the skyline for Southern Nevada.

“And that’s due to the fact that we’ve fundamentally immunized ourself from that by the operation of caller infrastructure connected the enactment of Lake Mead,” helium said.

About $1.5 cardinal successful section wealth has gone to ensuring Las Vegas tin pump h2o from Lake Mead, adjacent erstwhile the national authorities can’t nonstop it downstream to others.

Entsminger said helium thinks Southern Nevada is “the astir water-secure municipal country successful the Colorado River Basin.”

Sustainability successful the basin depends connected cultivation efficiencies, helium said. Locally, Entsminger continues to propulsion for conservation arsenic a mode retired of a dire situation.

Growth successful Las Vegas is possible, helium said, but it requires driving down existing h2o demands and tightly controlling caller demands, thing helium said Southern Nevada has a way grounds of doing successfully.

One method of gathering conservation goals is done a instrumentality signed this twelvemonth that bans nonfunctional writer successful coming years. Another is accrued enforcement of compliance with seasonal watering restrictions.

Those measures volition beryllium capable to prevention astir 15 percent of Southern Nevada’s allocation of Colorado River h2o nether a nonshortage twelvemonth and assistance supply the h2o for further growth.

Contact Blake Apgar astatine bapgar@reviewjournal.com oregon 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar connected Twitter.