Clark County Commissioners, sitting as the board of directors for the Las Vegas Valley Water District, will decide Tuesday morning whether your water rates should go up … again. Las Vegas still enjoys some of the cheapest water rates in the West, which is pretty stupid in light of the terrible water emergency we supposedly have at present.

Conservationists and others have long advocated a more realistic pricing structure to encourage people to conserve more water, but the price structure to be considered by the Water District board will essentially punish those who’ve done the most to conserve while giving a comparative break to the biggest water guzzlers, those fat cats who’ve created tropical rainforests in their backyards and who use as much water as 100 regular homes.

Okay, so you’re asking, what’s the big surprise? Isn’t that the way things work here?

I wonder what will happen Tuesday morning at the big board meeting. Why not play along at home? Pick one of the following options:

a) Commissioners will pepper Water District boss Pat Mulroy with tough questions about her profligate spending habits, including the $4 million recently paid to a rancher to buy his silence regarding the water, the hundreds of millions spent to create the Springs Preserve (including generous, long-term contracts for the likes of millionaire chef Wolfgang Puck to run a money-losing restaurant), the tens of millions spent to acquire sheep and cattle ranches in White Pine County, ranches which continue to lose tens of thousands of dollars every month, the millions per year spent on outside P.R. contracts, the millions per year spent on outside lawyers, the generous salaries paid to water district loyalists, and on and on.

or…

b) They will ask zero questions about Mulroy’s spending and will rubber-stamp the hike in water rates for every homeowner in town.

Hm. Tough call.

On a somewhat related note, a friend recently sent me an article from the Nevada Observer, published back in 2005. The Observer, a twice-monthly online news magazine, wrote that it had obtained reliable cost estimates for the pending water grab and had been told by SNWA officials that the project would cost more than $7 billion, not including interest, that $2 billion had already been spent on it, and that the total cost could easily top $13 billion.

Contrast these numbers with the ridiculous figure of $3.5 billion still trotted out by SNWA spokespersons and it becomes abundantly clear why water honchos need to build up their bank account by slowly squeezing regular customers through not one, not two, but three planned rate hikes over the next two years.

I’m sure county commissioners will be happy to question Mulroy about all of this as well. Go ahead. Hold your breath.