Award Date

1-1-2003

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

First Committee Member

Helen Neill

Number of Pages

64

Abstract

According to the Southern Nevada Water Authority (2002), increasing demands for water in southern Nevada will require the importation of additional water resources. The purpose of this thesis was to examine one possible imported resource: an interstate seawater desalination cooperative between entities in California and Nevada. This cooperative would provide a permanent transfer of Colorado River water from California to southern Nevada, in trade for a capital contribution toward California coastal seawater desalination. This study uses a benefit-cost approach as outlined in Dively and Zerbe (1994). Costs of both entities in Nevada and California were calculated and technical feasibility detailed. Results indicate that seawater desalination is more expensive than existing water sources. However, when compared with other alternative sources, seawater desalination appears competitive and may be a preferred alternative for southern Nevada.

Keywords

Analysis; Benefit; California; Cost; Desalination; Interstate; Nevada; Plant; Seawater; Shared

Controlled Subject

Economics; Civil engineering

File Format

pdf

File Size

1361.92 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Permissions

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have the full text removed from Digital Scholarship@UNLV, please submit a request to digitalscholarship@unlv.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Download


COinS