Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Golf course runoff cause for concern

For miles the shrubby greasewood of the Eldorado Valley runs brown and parched, but down the hill south of U.S. 93 and the man-made 400-foot waterfall at Park Place Entertainment's Cascata golf course, the ubiquitous desert plant grows thick and green, pungent like after rain.

The plume of vibrant green is new. And with the Southern Nevada Water Authority considering restrictions on water use due to drought conditions not seen since the 1950s, Boulder City residents say the water source feeding the fledgling wetland of salt cedar, cattail, grasses and dragonflies should be turned off.

"We haven't had rain in three years and all of a sudden we have a lush green streak running through the desert below Cascata? We're in the middle of a drought," said resident Linda Schrick, who said the area started growing after the golf course was built in the late 1990s. "It annoys me."

But residents are worried about more than water runoff coming down from the private, gated golf course built for casino high-rollers. Some fear the greenery that stretches two miles southeast of the 93/95 interchange could eventually be declared wetlands if the runoff persists.

If that happens, Boulder City could be responsible for maintaining the habitat into the future because Park Place leases the golf course land from the city.

After a visit to the site Thursday, an official from the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection says he'll direct Park Place to find the source and volume of the water and stop it. Although he says that could be hard to do, and Boulder City could end up with a wetland.

Park Place, which acknowledges it is the source of the runoff, has been trying to stop the leak at its course north of the interchange but so far has only been able to limit it.

It is unclear whether the source is a 400-foot-tall man-made waterfall at the course or whether it's the regular watering that seeps into the earth, goes under the highway and then feeds the desert.

Boulder City resident Mike Skrosky, an avid mountain bike rider and telecommunications systems analyst, e-mailed Park Place officials two weeks ago, asking them to turn off the waterfall until they identify the source. Park Place already turns off its signature cascade each night and then restarts it shortly before early tee time.

"It would take away the luster of the whole place," Skrosky said, "But what's more important? That luster, or all the desert creatures that are being attracted to the place; the safety of the highway or what Boulder City might end up being liable to fix?"

While an imposition of state or federal law to keep the water flowing may sound unlikely, Boulder City Manager John Sullard said that the state already set precedent in 1999 for a similar situation.

In August 1999, when the city was negotiating with a sand and gravel operation to sell its treated wastewater, state environmental officials approved the deal, but required the city to continue discharging close to 30 percent of its wastewater into open desert, Sullard said.

That wetland area, south of the Boulder City Airport, supports roughly 3 1/2 miles of animal and plant habitat that has grown up around disposal ditches over 20 to 30 years of daily discharges. Each day, the city releases about 275,000 gallons of the 1 million gallons of treated wastewater into the ditches. Over a year then, the area feeds off of 100 million gallons. If sold at current rates, it would be worth about $110,000.

How much water is greening the desert below Park Place's Cascata golf course remains unclear, and company spokeswoman Debbie Munch on Tuesday declined to provide an estimate. But she said her company has known of the runoff problem since shortly after purchasing the 18-hole course for $62 million two years ago. MGM Grand, the original owner, began watering for the course in December 1998.

"Park Place is working with a team of hydraulic engineers and other professionals to identify and repair leakage from some of the water features -- ponds and spillways -- at Cascata," Munch said, in a written statement prepared for the Sun.

"To date, we've made repairs that have eliminated approximately 30 percent of the identified leakage, and we are taking steps to further reduce water disbursement into the surrounding terrain."

The leakage has persisted, Munch wrote, despite the use of a pump system that collects and sends runoff back to the peak of the 400-foot waterfall. The man-made waterfall cascades out of the very real River Mountains, joins with several man-made rivers. About 8,000 gallons of water a minute then courses through a glassed, central atrium in the clubhouse.

According to city records, Cascata is on pace to use 417 million gallons of potable water this year, a 23-percent increase from the 360 million gallons used last year.

Through October, the course has used 357 million gallons. The bill so far is about $561,000.

The runoff appears to run intermittently from the golf course, traveling below the surface and underneath the U.S. 93 highway before surfacing just southeast of the U.S. 93/95 interchange. From there, it feeds a swath of thriving vegetation stretching about 1,000 feet along the roadway before gradually funneling into a green ribbon that threads south for more than two miles along the east side of U.S. 95.

The dry stream bed itself starts as a deep, moist ditch packed tight with 10-foot-tall salt cedars, some with two-inch trunks, along with other water-hungry grasses that tower overhead. Within a half mile, the greenery narrows to a row of thriving bushes on either side of a foot-wide bed crusted white with calcified minerals.

A second smaller stream system last week was emptying from a small culvert underneath a U.S. 93 on-ramp, running at a slight trickle for less than 100 feet along northbound U.S. 95. Dragonflies were buzzing the shallow inch-deep pools and calcified stream bed, which was about 8 feet wide at the mouth of the culvert.

"We definitely think that the area needs to be dealt with," said Leo Drozdoff, state bureau chief of water pollution control. "Once Park Place makes the various changes they're contemplating to reduce or eliminate flows, then they'll have to figure out if they have a long-term need for water disposal."

If significant runoff persists, Park Place could potentially pipe runoff across U.S. 95 to a sand and gravel pit there. Or, Drozdoff said, "They may have to see whether they want to work with Boulder City to do some sort of wetlands park."

At this point though, Drozdoff said the greening has not developed enough for the area to be considered a wetland eligible for protection under U.S. Army Corps of Engineers guidelines.

One of the best local examples of a man-made protected wetland, said Drozdoff, is the Las Vegas Wash. Before the 1950s, Drozdoff said, the wash was dry for most of the year. But with development of the valley and runoff from lawns, the wash has become "more of a consistent, permanent stream," he said.

"At this stage, nobody would quibble with the idea that the Las Vegas Wash is a jurisdictional wetland," Drozdoff said.

Drozdoff, based in Carson City, inspected the new growth area Thursday while in Las Vegas on other business.

Many Boulder City officials said they were unaware either of complaints or of the greening of the desert below the Cascata golf course, but said they planned to speak with Park Place officials.

"Obviously we don't want people wasting water," City Manager Sullard said. "But the whole idea of the higher rate for big commercial users (is that) there's an economic incentive for them to save water."

Councilman Joe Hardy said much the same thing, saying he had "full confidence" that Park Place would plug holes once they were found to preserve shareholder profits.

But in the meantime, Hardy said, "The temptation would be to put in a swimming pool to catch all that water. Or if they want to keep wasting it, they should tell us, and then we'll build a pipe and sell it to someone else."

Munch declined to predict when her company might complete repair of the Cascata watering system.

"Park Place is committed to doing its best to conserve water resources and we will continue to work hard to ensure that we use water responsibly at Cascata," she said.

Barbara Raulston, a wildlife biologist and Boulder City resident, questioned whether a drum-tight water system would do more than slow the creation of a wetland ecosystem in the desert south of Cascata. Much of the runoff, Raulston said, is probably due to underground seepage that results when turf is watered, especially during the hot months and when the course is over-seeded with winter rye in the fall.

"If they're able to plug up 100 percent of the leaks, that might help. But if part of the runoff is from irrigating the grass, there might be nothing they can do -- except if they keep cutting back until they get that balance between healthy grass and irrigating the desert," she said. "But then you have to ask, 'How much do they really care?' "

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