SALT LAKE CITY — Throughout the Southwest, states that have faced years of drought are addressing the possibility of a water crisis, and they are focusing their efforts on averting such a crisis.

Though reservoirs in the Southwest, like Utah's Lake Powell and Nevada's Lake Mead, benefitted from a wet 2011, this year has proven another dry year. The water of the Colorado River is stored in those two reservoirs, and roughly 30 million people across seven states are dependent upon that water.

In 1922, the reservoirs' water was divided up among seven states. For 100 years, the notion has prevailed that dams and reservoirs would save the Southwest from water shortages. But that view is being challenged as metropolises have sprouted in the land of sagebrush and cactus.

Pat Mulroy is one of the strongest, most outspoken voices about the river. She manages the Southern Nevada Water Authority, and believes that the river's water was over- appropriated 90 years ago.

Her belief is supported by a growing scientific consensus that the 20th Century was unusually wet in the Colorado basin, and that the new century may be closer to long- term normal.

Take, for example, a project at Lake Mead that Las Vegas is spending $800 million on to solve a problem that's not there yet. A shrinking Lake Mead has left Nevada expecting the lake to drop too low for the existing drinking-water intake to function. They are working to create a new intake 300 feet lower than the current one.

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Towing icebergs to California, diverting Mississippi River water to the Colorado Front Range or building massive plants to desalinize water from the Sea of Cortez are among the options to counter future water shortages in the two basins of the Colorado River.

"We can't afford to take any chances with the drinking water supply," said J.C. Davis, also of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. "…You know, we started a drought more than a decade ago and it's not showing any signs of letting up."

Lake Mead is not only a worry to Nevada, however.

"It's all releases from Lake Powell," Davis said "So the two are joined at the hip and as one goes, so goes the other."

And without the new intake project, Mulroy believes Lake Mead will drop too far to serve Las Vegas. "I think it's a matter of when, not if," she said. Even a wet year like last is not enough to sustain the water supply.

"After having experienced a very wet year last year, we're learning a very valuable lesson," Mulroy said. "One good year won't get us out of this protracted drought period."

If water shortages occur, Mulroy says Wasatch Front residents "are delusional" if they don't think they'll be affected. Other states could insist on cutbacks in what flows to Utah through the Central Utah Project.

Governor Gary Herbert thinks state-to-state conflict can be avoided, but he acknowledges there may be lower flows in the Colorado.

"It is one of my high priorities," Herbert said. "It's the only limiting factor to growth in Utah — water."

Conservationist Launce Rake argues that farms use wasteful irrigation methods and cities waste too much on lawns, and that the efforts should focus on conservation.

"So the question is, how are we using the water? That's the crisis," Rake said. "We don't have a water crisis. We have a water-use crisis."

Mulroy argues that while crucial, conservation is not enough to avert the crisis.

"There are limits to conservation," Mulroy said. "You can only conserve so much until you seriously affect your economic viability and your quality of life." The Bureau of Reclamation asked the public for long- range ideas and got many: desalination plants to take salt out of seawater and icebergs towed from polar regions to California.

Mulroy herself has pushed one of the most ambitious ideas, importing water from the Mississippi. There's an oversupply there, she believes, because it floods often. Pipelines and canals could carry water to the western Great Plains to replenish aquifers and reduce demand on the Colorado River, and "put the water to beneficial use."

The most astounding version of the plan, some would say the most far-fetched, is to bring Mississippi water to Utah's San Juan river, where it would flow down the canyons to Lake Powell.

Launce Rake called the idea "ridiculous" and said it's technically unfeasible and far too expensive; pipelines, canals and tunnels would stretch 1,000 miles to a San Juan tributary, the Navajo River.

"Let's get our house in order first," Rake said. "And let's think, ‘what's the easiest, cheapest source of water around?' And it's to save it in the first place."

Mulroy said a mosaic of strategies is needed, for conservation and increased supply.

"I think this is not a time to put up barriers and say, 'No,this is off the table.' Everything is on the table," Mulroy said.

The latest forecast shows for the end of the current water year that Lake Mead will be down a couple of feet from last year and Lake Powell will be about 27 feet lower than last year. Spring flows into Lake Powell will be about 33 percent — one-third — of the long-term average.

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