For city’s finances, treated water an asset

By Jean Reid Norman

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Boulder City is the only municipality in the Las Vegas area that simply dumps its treated wastewater in the desert rather than selling it or returning it to Lake Mead.

Sending treated effluent into the lake gives the Southern Nevada Water Authority credit toward its annual allotment of Colorado River water.

Boulder City, however, does not have the option of returning its wastewater to the lake because it would cost too much to build a mountain-traversing pipeline to get it there, City Manager Vicki Mayes has said. The Las Vegas Valley has the advantage of using natural washes to send its treated effluent to the lake.

Boulder City does sell a fraction of its daily effluent flow to a quarry for gravel washing and dust control. It is now moving toward recycling much more of its wastewater. The City Council this week directed city staff to begin the planning needed to eventually sell more wastewater for industrial use to a second gravel producer and a future solar power generator or other plant in the Eldorado Valley.

It is expected to cost $8.7 million to build pipelines from the wastewater treatment plant to the industrial sites in the Eldorado Valley and to increase the quality of the wastewater so it is suitable for industrial use. With the revenue from selling the water, the city could recoup that cost in 14 to 23 years, an engineering consultant told the city.

But even with the new system, not all of the wastewater would be sold, given the current industrial demand. Industrial reuse would take about 40 percent of the current effluent supply, the consultant’s report says.

Treating the water to the higher level required for irrigation use and delivering it to the city’s two municipal golf courses would cost $12.8 million and would not supply enough water to irrigate the courses nine months of the year, the consultant said.

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Boulder City Councilman Duncan McCoy should have been allowed to vote in July on a bailout of the Boulder Dam Hotel, the Nevada Commission on Ethics has ruled.

The commission on a 7-1 vote agreed with McCoy that his past position as a board member of the Boulder City Museum and Historical Association, which owns the hotel, and his recent contribution of $1,000 to save the hotel, which was in danger of closing, were not reason enough for him to abstain.

A majority of the ethics commission members present also expressed the belief that McCoy was not even obligated under the law to disclose anything regarding his past relationship with the association, City Attorney Dave Olsen told City Council members. Olsen had advised McCoy to abstain after his disclosure.

“The ruling in essence means that your community service affiliation before you get elected should not have an effect on whether or not you can participate in certain kinds of issues in front of your public body,” McCoy said.

The commission determined McCoy had no conflict because the museum was not a member of McCoy’s household, related to McCoy, an employer of either McCoy or a member of his family, a business partner or in any other commitment or relationship that violated the ethics law, Olsen said.

“Clearly, the trend in Nevada is toward having elected officials participate in the discussion and vote as representatives of their constituents,” Olsen wrote in the e-mail. The commission said that in potential conflicts of interest, the state’s ethics law “should be applied with an eye toward encouraging members of the public body to participate in discussion and vote on issues,” Olsen wrote to council members.