Water authority hires firm to design intake

Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2005 | 9:41 a.m.

MWH, a Colorado-based global consulting firm, announced today that the Southern Nevada Water Authority has hired the company to work with other partners to design a new water supply intake in Lake Mead.

The water authority, the water wholesaler for urban communities throughout Clark County, gets 90 percent of its water from Lake Mead. The agency wants a new intake, to be its "third straw," to go deeper into the lake and provide critical drought and water quality protections. The cost of the project has been estimated at $650 million.

Lake Mead's water level has fallen significantly over the past five years as a result of a severe drought throughout portions of the western United States.

J.C. Davis, a water authority spokesman, said MWH was hired for the design portion of the project, which will be a small part of the overall effort. The water authority board approved the contract in May, he added.

The first phase of the design, geotechnical investigation, is to cost $5 million, with the cost of future phases not yet determined under MWH's larger contract with the authority.

"If Lake Mead continues to fall, it could threaten our capacity to supply water because of the depth of the original intake, which was built in the 1970s," Davis said. "This protects the community from severe drought."

Project design should take two years and construction would be complete in 2011.

The new intake would replace the 600-million-gallon-per-day capacity older, existing intake should Lake Mead's water surface drop below an elevation of 1,050 feet above sea level. The deeper intake also would bring higher quality water from the deeper levels of the lake.

The intake project includes an intake shaft approximately three miles from the Lake Mead shoreline connecting to a tunnel under the lake bottom and to an aboveground pumping station. Water will be pumped to an existing SNWA treatment facility.

"After almost a year of planning and analysis, we are looking forward to designing Intake No. 3," said James Lindell, MWH senior vice president and intake system project manager.