Wednesday, April 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
Responding to the desire of the Howard Hughes Corp. to get on with its Summerlin South development, the County Commission has revoked an agreement with the city of Las Vegas to use an empty city sewer line.
Sitting as the Sanitation District Board of Trustees, the commission also set a public hearing for May 21 on new sewer rates proposed by Commissioner Paul Christensen that could benefit the Las Vegas Motor Speedway $1.2 million in hook-up fees.
The commission voted unanimously Tuesday to rescind the agreement approved two weeks ago that would have given the city almost $300,000 in Sanitation District fees to use an unused portion of the Desert Inn sewer line for the 6,138-acre development.
The City Council had held off on approving the agreement negotiated by Commissioner Erin Kenny and Councilman Arnie Adamsen after Mayor Jan Laverty Jones recommended offering Hughes half-rate sewer hookup fees that would have saved the company about $6 million.
"That's too bad," Commissioner Paul Christensen said. "So much for cooperation."
The county is expected to earn $18-24 million in sewer hook-up fees over the life of the Summerlin South project, which is planned for 18,000 homes, business centers, and three major hotel-casinos.
The Sanitation District asked the board to rescind the proposal after receiving a letter from Summerlin President Daniel Van Epp that the company was pulling out of the deal to hook up to the county's Twain Avenue line instead.
Hughes is obliged under a development agreement to hook up to the county's sewer and water lines.
But the city now has a $3 million sewer line built to handle the effluent from the Summerlin South, with $600,000 of oversized pipe invested in it and 1,300 feet of dry line.
The rescinded proposal would have required the county to pay for half the oversizing costs and for Summerlin to pay $97,000 for the unused line.
Christensen asked district staff to look into creating a new limited use category for large arenas that hold special events, to accommodate large sports and entertainment centers that have only a few full-scale events a year.
Christensen, who also is chairman of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, is a friend of Richie Clyne, president of the 107,000-seat Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which is under construction.
The proposed category would apply to auditoriums or stadiums that have a capacity of 40,000 or more and hold no more than 15 events a year, and would set rates based on actual flow measurements or a fraction of the normal cost per fixture.
Using actual wastewater measurements, Speedway proponents said the hookup fee would drop from $1.4 million to $200,000.
archive
