We answered a similar question in 2008, but it's even more relevant today. So here it is again, slightly updated.
A $750,000 report, funded by the Southern Nevada Water Authority and researched and written by an impartial panel of experts, was completed and submitted in late March 2008. It studied a dozen proposals for "squeezing every drop from the drought-stricken Colorado River [by] augmenting the river flow or providing substitute water sources."
The least expensive and, perhaps, most practical option is to seed clouds to precipitate rain and snow in the headwaters of the Colorado River system. The report found that seeding clouds could produce up to 1.4 million acre-feet of water at a cost of $20-$30 per acre foot. (An acre-foot, or just under 326,000 gallons, is the amount of water required to cover one acre in one foot of water. The Las Vegas water agency says that one acre-foot is enough water for two houses for one year, or roughly 13,500 gallons a month.)
Another idea is to build desalinization plants along the coast of California and Mexico (both get a share of Colorado water impounded by Lake Mead). The report estimates that up to 100,000 acre-feet per year could be saved at a cost of $1,100 to $1,800 per acre foot.
One of the more radical ideas includes building major pipelines, aboveground from British Columbia along the US 93 corridor or undersea from the Columbia River watershed.
Perhaps the most outrageous proposal is harvesting icebergs from the icefields of Alaska and northern Canada, then transporting the water in huge oil-type tankers or even towing it in massive water bladders.
These alternatives, at a cost of between $4,000 and $5,000 an acre-foot, were only touched on in the report; the panel deemed them too vast and complicated to study further.
So no, towing icebergs to southern Nevada isn’t quite a hoax, but neither is it an alternative that water experts are currently considering seriously.
Talks involving the affected states -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming -- and Mexico to discuss the report’s conclusions are expected to begin before the end of the year. The stakes are quite high. For example, when the original Colorado River Compact was negotiated in the 1920s to divvy up Colorado River water after Hoover Dam was completed (and ratified in December 1928), Las Vegas had a population of roughly 5,000 and received two percent of the available water, around 750,000 acre-feet. Today, of course, southern Nevada has more than two million people and draws 90% of its water from Lake Mead. Nevada is in line to receive the first 75,000 acre-feet of water created by the augmentation of the Colorado River.
