The Nevada Irrigation District Board of Directors at their meeting today will be talking about a response to the lack of rainfall so far this winter.  NID General Manager Ron Nelson says a first step would be to consider a voluntary 10 percent reduction in water use.

“At the board meeting we are looking for a voluntary 10 percent reduction in consumption this season.  We believe, given what we knew when we cued this up for the board meeting,  that by reducing our demands  by 10 percent  we’ll be able to go into the next storage year with the right amount of water to get us started for the following year.”

Nelson says the  voluntary conservation measure would be asked of domestic and agriculture water users across the board.   If further water content surveys show no new accumulation of snow pack manadatory conservation of 25 percent could be considered.  Nelson says this years rainfall accumulation is close to the numbers we saw  in 1976-77.  He says having learned a lesson from those two water years NID has this year kept more water in storage than they normally would have.