Federal handoff of valley’s water delivery system runs into roadblock

Tuesday, Oct. 12, 1999 | 10:51 a.m.

A proposal to transfer ownership of the Southern Nevada Water Authority delivery system from federal hands into local control has run into environmental concerns in the House, and a new bill is in the works.

Congress is considering transferring control of the original system built to deliver water from Lake Mead to the Las Vegas Valley from the federal Bureau of Reclamation to the local water authority. A bill offered by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has passed the Senate.

But last week opposition by the Clinton administration and the National Park Service over protecting federal concerns in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area stopped the bill in the House Committee on Resources.

The current House bill proposed by Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., transfers all of the land and the water project into local ownership, similar to the Senate's legislation. That includes an area between Saddle Island and the shores of Lake Mead, part of the national recreation area.

The water authority taps into Lake Mead from the east side of Saddle Island and then sends water to a pumping plant on shore about 1,400 feet away.

During Senate hearings in September, the Bureau of Reclamation testified that no national park land or other federal land should be transferred to the water authority.

The current bill does not require an environmental assessment, something the federal agencies and the Clinton administration insist is necessary.

Gibbons said he is working on a new version of the House bill based on the environmental concerns and liability issues.

The water authority has agreed to resolve the concerns of the park service, reclamation bureau and the Bureau of Land Management.

When Congress authorized the $199 million Robert Griffith Water Project in 1965 to bring drinking water to a thirsty Las Vegas, the Bureau of Reclamation built and operated the pumps and reservoirs supplying the entire Las Vegas Valley.

The bureau holds title to more than 600 water projects such as Southern Nevada's in the West. While about 400 of those projects have been transferred to local control, legislation is required for the transfer of each project.

When Southern Nevada's delivery system was built, fewer than 500,000 people lived in the area. The county's population is now more than twice that.

Initially the bureau paid about 85 percent of the system's annual cost. Nevada provided the rest of the funding.

In 1991 the state created the Southern Nevada Water Authority to manage increasing water demands from the growing region. The authority has since spent about $2 billion to improve the valley's water system and add a second delivery pipeline.

The bureau still pays about 14 percent a year of the remaining $169.2 million bill for the system, which supplies more than 85 percent of the valley's water.

Water Authority Deputy General Manager David Donnelly said when the system expansion is complete about 2017, only 6 percent of the project's costs will have been financed by the federal government.