Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Developers demand more input on project for wastewater

Two powerful organizations that represent Southern Nevada's residential and commercial developers are charging that the Clean Water Coalition has not done enough to inform the region about a $750 million plan to deliver treated wastewater to Lake Mead.

Officials with the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association and the Associated General Contractors said that the coalition is moving too fast without getting enough community or builder input about its project.

The coalition is made up of Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County. Much of the funding would come from fees for new residential and commercial construction.

"They've done an absolutely lousy job of outreach," said Irene Porter, executive director of the homebuilders association. After a meeting between the coalition and the homebuilders in April, the association submitted a list of questions.

The coalition, Porter said, "never got back to us."

Steve Holloway, chief executive officer of Associated General Contractors, a group representing more than 600 area developers and contractors, said his group has two basic problems with the plan:

"They haven't given the stakeholders enough time to discuss this before going forward, and they haven't done a good job in justifying this need in the first place."

Holloway said the coalition presented the project and the costs as a done deal in a July 18 meeting.

"I'm just now consolidating the feedback from the members who attended that meeting," he said. "All this is supposed to be a fait accompli before September."

Doug Karafa, coalition program administrator, said his group has been committed to a public discussion of the project for four years, and that both commercial and residential developers have participated in numerous discussions. Those included public meetings conducted last year as required by federal law.

The coalition's goal is to divert most of the area's treated effluent, which runs down the Las Vegas Wash and into Las Vegas Bay, through a new pipeline to Lake Mead.

Backers say that the increasing volume of sewage from the growing population of the urban area into drought-stricken Lake Mead necessitates the project.

The wash and bay are too small to handle the flows that the cities and county expect to generate in the decades to come, Karafa said.

"We can't do that and meet environmental standards," he said. "If we can't meet the standards, then eventually the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) comes down and says you can't grow anymore."

Although treated effluent would continue to flow into Lake Mead with the new system, Karafa said, the problem is that it now flows without any controls, and can lead to high levels of pollution in the wash, bay or nearby areas.

"What we're doing is essentially building a system that can manage the wastewater flows," he said. Project construction is to start in mid-2008 and be completed in 2012.

Karafa said the regional sewage-treatment agencies need to control water quality to ensure that the federal government continues to supply "return flow credits" to Southern Nevada. All of the county's urban areas depend on Lake Mead water, and the federal government allows Southern Nevada to take one gallon from the lake for every gallon returned as treated effluent water.

The cycle allows Southern Nevada to stretch its 300,000 acre-foot basic federal allocation from Lake Mead by about 70 percent to approximately 500,000 acre-feet annually.

The fees proposed by the coalition would go into effect Oct. 1 and would start at $800 more per new house, rising to $849 by Jan. 1, 2009; new hotels would pay $480 per room, rising to $509 by 2009.

Holloway noted that for a 4,000-room hotel, the cost comes to about $2 million - a significant amount even for large Strip projects.

Karafa said the costs would not, strictly speaking, be imposed by the Clean Water Coalition on residential and commercial customers.

"What we would be doing is assessing our member agencies," he said, and each would have to set up fees through their own processes. "It's really up to them how they implement those rates. "

But the coalition is well on its way to collecting the charges from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson, and the Clark County Water Reclamation District. North Las Vegas and Henderson approved agreements in June. Las Vegas approved the charges Wednesday, and the Clark County Commission is scheduled to consider it on Sept. 5.

While the municipalities have approved paying the fees, they have yet to pass on those fees to developers.

Holloway said builders and developers have supported charges such as sales tax increases in the past for large projects, including expansion of the regional water system. He said the Clean Water Coalition and the member agencies need to take a step back and discuss the issue with stakeholders before passing on those charges to developers.

"At this point, that's all we're asking them to do," he said.

Karafa, however, said delays in collecting funds for the project would delay the project itself.

Still, he said, the coalition is committed to working with the public, including developers.

"I'm definitely not saying they're wrong and there's probably more that we could have done," Karafa said. "We don't consider it done. As long as people are willing to listen to us, we're willing to come out and present to them what the project is about and why it is needed now We have several months to work with them and try to make this work."

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