Nitrate-laced wells will give way to city water

Thursday, Nov. 13, 1997 | 11:12 a.m.

HENDERSON -- The 30 homeowners in the Mayfield housing division who learned nitrate is posing a health threat in their wells have decided to work with the city and state in hooking up to municipal water.

The housing division, consisting of ranch estates near Eastern Avenue and Lake Mead Drive, has depended on well water supplied by the Mayfield Water Users Association.

When residents learned of the contamination last month, they wanted time to explore other options, such as drilling deeper wells. But at a meeting Wednesday night with state and county health officials, they learned that the only real option is to cooperate on getting hooked up to city water.

The city of Henderson and the state are willing to help fund the expensive switch to municipal water. Nitrate is dangerous because it robs blood cells of oxygen.

The homeowners draw water from wells on permits that the state can revoke, said Bob Coache of the Nevada Division of Water Resources. The wells were drilled after 1955 when the state allowed only temporary wells in the Las Vegas Valley.

Since 1992 Michael Turnip-seed, the state engineer, has not allowed any wells drilled or redrilled in the valley because the groundwater level is dangerously low. Every year wells draw 75,000 acre feet of water from the ground, yet rain and snowfall replace only 35,000 acre feet.

Coache said that the state plans to revoke an estimated 200 well permits to preserve the groundwater.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has pumped 106,000 acre feet of Colorado River water into the ground in the past three years in an effort to stop land collapse, but the underground supply continues to drop.

For Mayfield residents, Henderson officials will send a letter next week to the state to apply for a grant from a $40 million pool of money set aside by the Nevada Legislature.

Since 1991 the state has committed $20 million of the fund for small community well systems like Mayfield's to tie into municipal supplies, said Craig Steele of the Nevada Division of Water Planning.

Because nitrate is a health threat, the grant could pay as much as 85 percent of the residents' costs, Steele said.

In the worst case, the state would not grant any funding and Mayfield residents might get stuck paying $12,000 each to plug in to city water, said Wayne Robinson of the Henderson Public Works Department.

So the city will pursue a local improvement district so homeowners can receive tap water and pay the price over time, usually a 10-year loan at 6 percent interest, he said.

The improvement district is necessary because the state does not grant funding directly to water associations like Mayfield. The money will go to the city to pay for design and construction of a delivery system.

The state grant would not pay for meters, hydrants or pipes running from the street to the homes.

If the state and city plans work, however, homeowners may not have to pay any money immediately.

For the next three months, residents will be able to work out details with the state and the Henderson City Council.

If they had refused to hook up, the Health District would have had to turn the contaminated wells over to the state. The Mayfield Water Users Association then could have been fined $10,000 a day, under Nevada environmental laws.