Nevada Residents Concerned About Water as Levels Drop

Nevada voters revealed that they were highly concerned about water access in their state, according to a recent Rasmussen Reports poll.

Nevada is the driest state in America, and concern has spiked regarding water access in the last few years given how Lake Mead reached concerningly low water levels in the summer of 2022.

The lake has since started to recover, but years-long drought and overuse has depleted the Colorado River and local reservoirs of substantial amounts of water. In addition to climate change and drought, Nevada has a rapidly growing population that continues to pull more water from the state's reserves, and voters revealed their concerns in the poll.

Rasmussen polled 869 likely voters from April 2 to 12. Of the respondents, 426 were men and 443 were women. They spanned various ages and ethnicities. Poll questions revealed that a startling number of voters were very concerned about Nevada's water situation.

When asked if they were concerned about Nevada's government being able to provide water to the state's growing population, 48 percent of polltakers responded that they were "very concerned," and 33 percent responded "somewhat concerned". Only 11 percent responded "not very concerned," with 4 percent responding "not at all concerned."

Similarly, when asked if they supported the state's growing population drawing more heavily on Nevada's aquifers, 64 percent of polltakers expressed concern that the aquifers were already being over-pumped.

Southern Nevada draws 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River. However, other parts of the state use groundwater collected by aquifers. Like the depleting Colorado River—which lost 10 trillion gallons of water from 2000 to 2021—Nevada's groundwater also is declining.

In some cases, climate change is wreaking havoc on the state's water supply, such as with the Colorado River.

"While we knew warming was having an impact on the Colorado Basin's water availability, we were surprised to find how sensitive the basin is to warming compared to other major basins across the western U.S., and how high this sensitivity is in the relatively small area of the basin's crucial snowpack regions," Benjamin Bass, a hydrologic modeler at the University of California-Los Angeles and lead author of the study that revealed the river's loss, said in a press release.

"The fact that warming removed as much water from the basin as the size of Lake Mead itself during the recent megadrought is a wakeup call to the climate change impacts we are living today."

But in other cases, a fast-growing population is at fault for the depletion. The Rasmussen poll touted Nevada as having "the No. 1 fastest population growth since the 1980s."

The state's government is taking steps to address the issue. In January, the Nevada Supreme Court approved a decision that allowed the state to limit groundwater pumping using current data, Nevada Current reported. Despite the action, state leaders and residents are still concerned.

Newsweek has reached out to state engineer Adam Sullivan—the state's top water regulator—by email form for comment.