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Pat Mulroy: Secrets to Success on the Colorado River
The water intakes in Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam.
P
at Mulroy is a legendary figure on the Colorado River. The former general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD) and of the Southern Nevada Water Agency (SNWA), she also served as the lead negotiator for the State of Nevada on the Colorado River. Today, she runs her own consulting firm and is a senior fellow at the law school of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In this interview, Ms. Mulroy tells Municipal Water Leader about her decades of experience and accomplishments and discusses the challenges that remain to be solved in the Colorado basin. Municipal Water Leader: Tell us about your background and your experience in Nevada water.
8 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021
Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your experience addressing drought on the Colorado River. Pat Mulroy: During those years, water became my passion. I became even more active in the field as the reality of climate change began to settle in in southern Nevada and around the West, and an already dry area became even drier. It forced us to make some significant changes, mostly in adjusting our customers’ attitudes about how much water they needed and could use. In southern Nevada, as is the case in virtually every western state, most water is used outside for landscaping, parks, and golf courses. The drought set in in 2000. It then took a deep dive in 2002, when there was only 25 percent of the normal runoff in the upper basin. The four upper basin states are the municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.
Pat Mulroy: I was born in Frankfurt in what was then known as West Germany. My father was a civilian in the U.S. Air Force. In 1974, I went to Las Vegas, where I completed my bachelor’s degree at the University of Las Vegas and got my master’s degree. I then went to Stanford University to pursue doctoral studies. After that, I came back to Las Vegas and started working for Clark County. I worked in the manager’s office and with the board and got heavily involved in the legislature, doing intergovernmental work for the county. After that, I went over to the Justice Court, where I created the first Justice Court administrator position. A few years later, in 1985, I was offered and accepted the job of deputy general manager of the LVVWD. When my boss, the general manager, left in 1989, the board made me the first female general manager of the district. I held that position until 2014.
In 1991, The LVVWD and the other jurisdictions in Southern Nevada created a regional organization called the SNWA, which is similar to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWDSC). The board of the SNWA asked me if I would head the authority as well, so I held that position and reported to the SNWA board from 1992 to 2014. During that period, I ended up becoming the lead negotiator for the State of Nevada on the Colorado River. I was a participant and active negotiator in some of the most historic agreements that had happened on the river since the signing of the Colorado River Compact in 1922, and I also worked on several minutes to the Mexican treaty.
