Assembly bill offers help for well owners

Wednesday, April 14, 1999 | 10:33 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Well owners in the Las Vegas Valley would receive help in hooking up to municipal water under a bill approved Tuesday by the Assembly.

Assemblywoman Kathy Von Tobel, R-Las Vegas, said Assembly Bill 347 is the outcome of two years of discussion and debate among well owners on how best to manage ground water in the area.

The water table has dropped dramatically due to over-pumping. To remedy that, the Southern Nevada Water Authority is embarking on an effort to bring the water levels up.

The bill, Von Tobel said, allows the water authority to "perform permanent artificial recharge into the aquifer to benefit well users." And it would permit the authority to establish a low-interest payment program to help well owners pay for the cost of connecting to a municipal system.

Assemblyman Doug Bache, D-Las Vegas, said there has been considerable misinformation spread about the bill, which he said does not force anybody with a domestic well to tie into the municipal system. There are about 4,500 well users in the area.

The bill increases from $10 to $27 the annual fee a well owner must pay the water authority. That money would be used for buying equipment to pump some water back into the ground, particularly in the northwest part of the valley where the levels have dropped the most.

Those who have big wells, such as gaming resorts or developments, would pay $27 an acre foot to the water authority, up from the present $10.

The plan by the water authority is to spend about $1 million a year to put an additional 5,000 acre-feet into the ground.

The bill was opposed by the 1,200-member Nevada Well Association, which testified earlier this month that it costs anywhere from $15,000 to $55,000 to connect to a municipal system. They wanted an amendment to the bill to force the water authority to lower its rates.

The association did not protest the raise in the fees for individual wells, but it objected to the cost of connecting to the system. Water officials said a well owner, under the bill, could enter a deferred payment program to hook into the system, paying 4 to 5 percent interest.

Von Tobel said the hookup costs were never intended to be solved in this bill, which goes to the Senate.

She said the well owners wanted to place constraints in the bill on how and when the state engineer could require someone to hook up.

"This would have placed a $200 cap on the cost of connecting from a well to municipal water for any well owners regardless of which jurisdictions they may live in," Von Tobel said.

She said she is "very sympathetic" to the well owners and that she would continue to work with the water authority and others to try to reduce the cost of hookups.

She said she is optimistic the cost for hookups could be brought down to where they would be comparable to drilling a new well.

Bache and Von Tobel both noted there is nothing in the bill that makes it mandatory for someone to tie into a municipal system.

Assemblyman Harry Mortenson, D-Las Vegas, who complained during the hearing before the Assembly Government Affairs Committee about raising the annual fee, abstained from voting. Other than that, the bill passed unanimously.