More water is on its way

Restaurant meals, clothing and automobiles are about to become a bit more expensive to help the Las Vegas Valley quench its thirst.

Come April 1, the sales tax in Clark County will increase by a quarter-cent to 7.25 percent, money that will help deliver almost twice as much water to the valley and almost double the treated waste water going to Lake Mead.

That the valley will need more water over the next quarter-century in response to rapid population growth is a given. Less certain is whether the Southern Nevada Water Authority's strategy to make that happen is sound.

Despite skepticism from some conservationists, officials with the water authority are optimistic about keeping up with the valley's population, which currently shows a net increase of 5,250 residents a month.

Deputy General Manager Richard Wimmer and Resources Director Kay Brothers believe the $2.02 billion project of pipes, pumps and treatment plants will meet demand at least through 2025.

The hiring of engineers and project management teams started in 1993, and construction began two years later. It will continue well into the next decade.

Although the work would have continued even if the tax increase had been rejected, the water authority now will have another source of revenue so that it doesn't have to rely only on hookup fees and rate increases.

By 2002, the authority plans to begin operating a second intake "straw" to suck water out of Lake Mead near the pipe that takes in the water now used by the valley.

The water will be piped through a tunnel in the River Mountains that separate the lake from the valley and directed through a second purification plant also under construction.

Pumping stations will help move the water through 87 miles of large pipes that will circle the valley. The new distribution lines will supplement the existing 75-mile system.

Plans are to make the system big enough by 2025 to handle 900 million gallons a day, almost double the current capacity of 480 million gallons.

"The bottom line is that the plan is flexible," Wimmer said. "No one is smart enough to predict growth 30 years out. When you're predicting growth a year out, you're doing a good job. Five years out you're doing a good job if you're in the ballpark. Ten, 20, 30 years out is guesswork.

"In defense of people who underestimated our growth, they didn't do a bad job until 10 to 15 years ago. No one estimated this degree of expansion for this period of time. What we have is a phased plan, and the plan says that for this many people this is what we need. If we have more people, we'll accelerate the plan."

Like most long-range strategies, the authority plan is loaded with assumptions about future water supplies as well as growth patterns. One assumption is that the 1.2 million population the authority now serves will mushroom to 2.2 million residents by 2025.

The authority, formed in 1991, counts in its service area the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City, as well as the Las Vegas Valley and Big Bend water districts and Clark County Sanitation District.

"I realize there are a lot of assumptions, but I'm very confident in them," Brothers said. "Our population projections have been right on for the past three years."

Skeptics such as retired UNLV biology professor Larry Paulson and executive director Rick Nielsen of watchdog group Citizen Alert wonder whether the valley will be able to get enough additional water to make the project feasible.

"We do not have a firm contract or commitment to divert more water from the Colorado River system," Paulson said. "It's a real crapshoot, a high-stakes crapshoot with competition from California and other states. I'd say we have an uphill fight to secure enough water to wet the pipes in that project."

Nielsen agreed.

"The big question with the treatment and transmission system is are we going to get the water to use the system?" Nielsen said. "We've got a Cadillac system, but we may not have the gas to get the car out of the garage."

The valley's existing water delivery system dates back to 1971. By 1995 growth was such that demand was close to the system's capacity of 400 million gallons a day. That capacity has since been increased to 480 million gallons a day, but that was only the first leg of a phased expansion that will eventually grow to the 900 million-gallon system.

Work to increase that capacity has included excavation of a four-mile tunnel through the River Mountains that will bring water from the lake to the valley.

Also completed were a 6.6-mile west valley pipeline extending from Oakey Boulevard to Cheyenne Avenue, and portions of the south valley pipeline through Henderson. Individual water districts within the valley will be able to take water from these large underground pipes.

Work is continuing this year on the south valley pipeline. An east valley pipeline will be added in 2000. By 2002 the second lake intake pipe and water treatment plant will be working, as will a new raw water pumping facility, the Boulder City pipeline and portions of the north valley pipeline.

About half the money for the project will be spent on pipes and pumping stations that will help the water flow uphill from the lake to the valley. Most of the remaining costs will be for water-treatment upgrades and for the lake's second intake valve. The treatment improvements will include the use of an ozone process designed to more effectively kill bacteria and other organisms than the current chlorination system.

"We've obviously oversized pieces of this," Wimmer said. "The balance is not to spend too much money on things that may not happen but don't set yourself up so you can't respond when something does happen. With these expensive projects you don't want to build new facilities until you need them."

One of the biggest controversies was how to pay for all this work. At the urging of the resort industry, organized labor and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, voters last November gave support to a quarter-cent sales tax increase by a nearly three-to-one margin. On the strength of that advisory ballot measure, the Clark County Commission a month later voted to institute the tax increase.

The tax increase will expire in 2025 or when $2.3 billion is raised, whichever comes first. The tax is expected to raise an estimated $1.6 billion from local residents and $700 million from tourists. The current plan is to use about $1.37 billion of the tax revenue to help bring in more water and the balance to treat more waste water. The tax revenue will pay for only a portion of both the water and waste water projects.

The cost of the water project is somewhat misleading because the $2.02 billion figure doesn't include the interest on construction bond debt that the water authority will incur. The total cost will actually be an estimated $4.9 billion.

The $4.9 billion will be raised from a number of sources. Regional connection charges for new construction will supply 57 percent, or about $2.8 billion; the sales tax increase will provide 28 percent, or $1.37 billion; water rates will account for 10 percent, or $490 million; and a reliability surcharge attached to the water rates will cover 5 percent, or $245 million.

Had the tax increase failed, connection charges would have had to cover some 79 percent of the costs, leading to concerns from water officials that hookup fees would have skyrocketed by thousands of dollars.

Local businessmen who helped the authority with the financing plan included Circus Circus Enterprises President Glenn Schaeffer, Mirage Resorts chief financial officer Dan Lee and Steve Comer, managing partner of Arthur Andersen.

What Wimmer likes about the sales tax is that it gives the water authority a more balanced stream of revenue sources instead of the authority having to rely primarily on hookup fees and rate increases.

He said connection fees, now $3,400, will go up only about 3 percent annually instead of 7 percent because of the tax increase. "Instead of $25,000 to $30,000 hookup fees, you'll see fees of $8,000 to $9,000 in 2025," he said.

But some local senior citizens' groups and politicians opposed the tax increase, arguing that it would be regressive and therefore hurt the poor. One opponent, Assemblyman Harry Mortenson, D-Las Vegas, said he still thinks the tax would come back to haunt the county.

Mortenson said he wouldn't be surprised if law-enforcement agencies and transportation officials also seek tax increases.

"I do believe every entity will try to get their fair share of the sales tax," he said. "We have a lot of infrastructure shortfalls."

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