Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Danger of drying out again sparks water project

A new surcharge will appear on your bill next year to pay for pumping station

Third Straw Construction

Steve Marcus

A rig of explosives is lowered into Lake Mead during construction of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s third straw, May 10, 2011. The Vegas Tunnel Constructors crew was blasting a 60-foot shaft in the bottom of the lake for the straw’s intake structure.

In fall 2013, as a tunnel-boring machine drilled underneath Lake Mead’s floor toward a third intake straw, Southern Nevada Water Authority officials said they were confident the $815 million project would be the last needed to protect the valley’s water supply for the foreseeable future.

“Once we have our third intake in, then the issue solely becomes one of resources; it no longer becomes one of facilities,” then-SNWA general manager Pat Mulroy said. “It will be the last major facility we have to build in the lake.”

But just 18 months later, the water authority is starting work on a $650 million pumping station at Lake Mead. Last month, the Las Vegas Valley Water District approved a rate increase to help pay for construction that will cost the average resident an extra $2.41 a month in 2016 and an extra $4.81 a month by 2018. Similar increases are proposed for Henderson and North Las Vegas but have yet to be approved.

Officials always knew an additional pumping station, which pushes water from the lake to a water treatment plant, eventually would be needed. But they didn’t know it would be needed so soon.

Since Mulroy called the third intake “the last major facility” needed at Lake Mead, projections for the reservoir have grown more dire.

While the third intake is meant to protect the lake if its water level falls below 1,050 feet, officials now have turned their attention to a new threshold — 1,000 feet, the elevation at which existing pumping stations would go offline.

The lake, which supplies 90 percent of the valley’s water, was at 1,086 feet March 23.

That the elevation could dip to 1,000 feet so soon was unimaginable a decade ago. Now, it’s a very real possibility, and water officials are taking swift action to prevent a potential crisis.

There’s a 25 percent chance Lake Mead will drop below 1,000 feet by 2045, water officials say. But those numbers are based on historical conditions measured during the 20th century, which many experts consider to have been an abnormally wet 100 years.

A different model that factors in the possibility of “a new normal” brought on by climate change shows a 25 percent chance the reservoir will drop below 1,000 feet in the next 10 years. There’s a remote chance Lake Mead could hit that mark before this decade is over.

The decision to build a new, low-level pumping station came after a recommendation from an advisory panel convened by the water authority. Members spent two years studying scenarios and options.

Committee member John Restrepo, an economist, called the third pumping station an insurance policy for the future of the valley’s economy.

“The most critical piece of infrastructure for economic security is a secure water system,” Restrepo said.

Without a sustainable water supply, businesses won’t move to or expand in Las Vegas, Restrepo said. He described the pumping station as “a pretty small investment” to protect a regional economy with a $30 billion annual gross metropolitan product.

“We need to do something,” Restrepo said. “We need to control our destiny.”

Building the pumping station is expected to take five years, which is why the water authority is designing the project now. Construction will require several tricky feats of engineering, including drilling more than 30 well shafts into the ground around Lake Mead. Each 500-foot shaft will be fitted with a pump and motor that measure 50 feet long and 5 feet wide and pack 4,000 horsepower.

Once installed, they’ll keep water pumping out of the lake until it hits 875 feet, a point that would have drastic effects for local water users.

Water users will fund the project, paying for construction with a fixed surcharge that will be tacked onto their bills starting in 2016. Water rates have increased every year since 2010.

Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak, who voted in favor of the pumping station and rate increase, said the decision came sooner than he and other officials anticipated.

“I asked numerous times, ‘Is it right now that we have to do this?’ ” Sisolak said. “If you want to have it done in four or five years, you have to start now.”

Despite increased costs for ratepayers, Sisolak said he didn’t see any way around the need for new construction.

“This is something for the longer term sustainability of Clark County and the valley,” he said. “There’s no other way to do it. You need that insurance.”

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