KVIG Informative

Seven local water agencies dissolved their separate authority over the Las Vegas Valley’s water supply in 1991 so Nevada could negotiate the Colorado River with one voice. That voice spent 2026 fighting Washington over how much water it still gets.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority became a political subdivision of the State of Nevada on July 25, 1991, created by a cooperative agreement among seven local entities, according to the Southern Nevada Water Authority Act, which the Nevada Legislature approved on July 16, 1997, and which codified the authority’s legal basis under Nevada Revised Statutes sections 277.080 through 277.180.

The founding members were the Big Bend Water District, Boulder City, the Clark County Water Reclamation District, the city of Henderson, the city of Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Valley Water District and the city of North Las Vegas, according to the authority’s published history. The seven agencies said they formed the authority to address water issues on a regional basis rather than agency by agency, the same history states.

Patricia Mulroy had already become general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District in 1989 when she helped build the new regional authority, according to UNLV’s Lee Business School, which credits her as a principal architect of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s creation. She went on to run the authority until John Entsminger succeeded her as general manager in January 2014, according to the authority’s own history.

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The 1997 act gave the authority’s Board of Directors the power to set fees on groundwater users in the Las Vegas Valley Groundwater Basin, ranging from $13 to $30 per acre-foot for non-domestic wells, to fund a groundwater management program required under the law, according to the text of the statute. That structure consolidated water policy for the valley under one board instead of seven.

The unified board also gave Nevada a single negotiator on the Colorado River. On Aug. 21, 2026, the Bureau of Reclamation issued a Record of Decision adopting a Decision Framework for river operations from 2027 through 2036, along with a separate Operating Plan covering 2027 and 2028, according to the bureau.

The decision replaced three sets of rules set to expire Dec. 31, 2026: the 2007 Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations, the 2019 Drought Contingency Plans, and international agreements with Mexico under the 1944 Water Treaty, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. The bureau said the seven basin states considered six alternative frameworks during the review but did not reach consensus on long-term operations before the decision was finalized.

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Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and Entsminger, the water authority’s general manager, responded to the decision the same day it was released. Lombardo said Nevada’s own drought response remains a model for river management, but said the federal plan provides little certainty for Nevada and the rest of the Lower Basin, according to a statement released by the governor’s office.

Lombardo said in the statement that Nevada receives 1.8% of the river’s allocation and raised concern that the federal government is positioned to shortchange Nevada in years three through 10 of the new framework before requiring equal conservation from the Upper Basin states. Entsminger said in the same statement that Southern Nevada has already mandated water conservation and efficiency measures and that the region’s conservation record is unmatched among the river’s users.

Entsminger said a seven-state consensus remains Nevada’s preference, but said Nevada will act to protect its water supply if federal operations do not require proportional reductions from all seven states, according to the statement.

Thirty-five years after seven agencies gave up separate control of the valley’s water to build one negotiating voice, that voice spent 2026 objecting to a decade of Colorado River rules it did not fully choose. The framework issued in August runs through 2036. Whether the board built in 1991 gets more from the next round than it got from this one will not be settled by a press statement — it will be settled the next time Lake Mead’s elevation forces Washington to revisit a deal Nevada’s own governor already says shorts his state.