Officials say golf course leak contained

Dan Kulin

Thursday, June 19, 2003 | 9:49 a.m.

Water leaking from a private golf course for high-rollers in Boulder City has been reduced to a relative trickle and the course should no longer be watering the desert by the end of the year, company and state officials said Wednesday.

The Cascata Golf Course, which is owned by Park Place Entertainment, was leaking as much as 200 gallons of water per minute in October, said Leo Drozdoff, deputy administrator of the state Division of Environmental Protection.

The water greened a roughly two-mile stretch of desert, and had some locals worrying the vegetation could turn into a government-protected wetland.

But since then, Park Place has relined many of the man-made ponds and a creek running from the waterfall at Cascata. Also, new pumps have been installed at the course, company spokesman Robert Stewart said. He would not say how much the company spent to fix the leaks, or how much the leaks cost them in lost water.

Stewart said the larger concern for the company was to act as a responsible water user, especially during a time of extreme drought.

Now, the course leaks about 35 gallons a minute into the desert, Drozdoff said.

And Stewart said the once greening stretch is now brown and drying.

"I expect that in the next six months they will have dealt with all course leaks," Drozdoff said.

Drozdoff said he was never concerned the larger leak was going to turn part of the desert into wetlands, which he said take years to develop.

Park Place, which owns Bally's, the Flamingo, Paris Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Hilton and Caesars Palace, could have faced fines of up to $25,000 a day for unauthorized discharge of water into the desert, Drozdoff said.

But the company probably will not be fined because of its efforts to fix the leaks, he said.

Stewart said the leaks were already there when Park Place bought the golf course in October 2000 from MGM Grand for a reported $62 million. The course, which is on the western edge of Boulder City, opened for play in December 2000.

The state issued Park Place a special discharge permit for the Cascata leaks last year, and another special permit in June that will expire at the end of December, Drozdoff said.

"It's going fine," Drozdoff said. "It's an issue we all had to deal with and within six months it will all be squared away."