Getting to bottom of well problem

Friday, Oct. 22, 1999 | 10:55 a.m.

Robert Tretiak, vice president of the Nevada Well Owners Association, said the current struggle his organization is having with the state is reminiscent of the Old West saying, "Whiskey is for drinking, but water is for fighting."

Tretiak made that observation Thursday at the Sawyer State Office Building before he addressed the legislative subcommittee on domestic and municipal water wells.

It was the first meeting of the five-member panel that is charged with addressing the plight of owners of the estimated 5,000 Southern Nevada rural residential wells that will have to be capped when municipal water is available. The hookup costs will be $20,000 a home.

The subcommittee also has the task of finding ways to preserve the water table in the valley, which has been on the decline because of wells that date back to the turn of the century.

Owners of homes with wells must cap them and hook up to city water lines when the lines come within 180 feet of their property.

The Nevada Legislature, at this year's session, passed legislation which will require the Las Vegas Valley Water District to pay up to 85 percent of the five-figure connection fees when city water hookups become necessary.

Outside the hearing, Julie Wilcox Slay, director of management services for the Water District, said she believes her agency can have the formula for issuing those grants in place "by the end of the year."

Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Dean Rhoads, R-Elko, on Thursday appointed an 11-member advisory committee to review well laws passed at this year's Legislature and develop "credible statistics" on the number of wells and permits issued statewide.

Those appointed to the advisory committee include former longtime Clark County Commissioner Jay Bingham and Nevada State Engineer Mike Turnipseed, who briefed the subcommittee on the history of wells in Nevada.

Turnipseed told the panel that revokable permits have long been issued to developers who apparently did not inform the buyers of their rural Southern Nevada homes that the permits were not permanent.

Turnipseed told the subcommittee that subsequent paperwork from the state was sent to the developers, a number of whom in all likelihood threw it away instead of forwarding it to the people who bought their homes.

Tretiak said that put homeowners in a bind because they bought their homes believing their wells were "a property right" that could not be taken from them.

"We were shocked to find out they were revokable," he told the committee.

The Legislature this year placed a five-year moratorium on the revocation of well permits. However, that does not necessarily put all permit-holders in the clear.

Those whose wells are failing are in a quandary because their applications to dig deeper in all likelihood will be denied if city water lines have reached their property.

Turnipseed told the committee he recently issued 50 cancellations of old permit applications where developers did not follow through on the paperwork. However, in cases where the wells were built, the home owners can reapply to complete the paperwork and pay outstanding fees.

Turnipseed also told the committee that since 1971, the year the state engineer's office began revoking the permits of wells after city water reached those homes, 109,000 acre-feet of ground water has been saved.

In Las Vegas there are less than 100 applications for new domestic wells per year. In rural communities such as Pahrump, about 800 such applications are approved annually, Turnipseed said.

Tretiak says too much blame is being placed on residential well owners for the drop in the water table. He said well owners are among the most conservative water users.

"Six percent of the population has domestic wells that use 18,000 acre-feet per year -- less than 0.5 percent of total state (ground and river) water," Tretiak said, quoting the Nevada State Water Plan, which estimates that by 2020 domestic wells will pump 28,000 acre-feet per year.

In Clark County, Tretiak, again quoting from the state water plan, said a resident with a well uses an average of 192 gallons per day while an individual who gets his water from the Colorado River uses an average of 213 gallons per day.

"Well owners are not the problem," he said.

Turnipseed, however, said local wells -- commercial and residential -- pump 73,000 acre-feet of water per year while just 40,000 acre-feet is recharged annually through a water district program. At that rate, the water table can only continue to drop.

The subcommittee will meet next on Jan. 28.