Tuesday, March 1, 2005 | 10:56 a.m.
Southern Nevada Water Authority staff members have put a price tag of $2 billion on the plan to extract and import water from underground sources in rural Lincoln and White Pine counties, according to documents released Monday.
The plan is to construct 461 miles of pipeline, 200 miles of power lines and four pumping stations to import water from such areas as Coyote Springs, Delamar, Dry Lake, Cave, Spring and Snake Valley.
The aim of the Lincoln and White Pine projects would be to pipe into the Las Vegas Valley an estimated 125,000 to 212,500 acre-feet of water annually. One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons of water.
The authority released the cost estimates for the water importation plan during Monday's meeting of the Integrated Water Planning Advisory Committee meeting.
The committee received the written information and had planned to discuss the cost estimates for the Lincoln and White Pine groundwater extraction effort at the meeting, but moved those planned talks back one month after discussions on other elements of the water authority's plans took more than four hours.
Afterward, a critic of the water authority questioned the estimated costs, saying this latest estimate is essentially the same as an estimate from more than a decade ago.
"There was an estimate done on this 15 years ago and it was $2 billion," said Mark Bird, a sociologist at the Community College of Southern Nevada and a former Bureau of Reclamation analyst. He added that the current costs must be higher to adjust for inflation.
Bird also said there needs to be some oversight of this project, either through the state Legislature or an independent group made up of UNLV or CCSN instructors.
"This is the biggest public works project in Nevada's history, and there is a need for an independent group," he said.
Water authority officials had previously declined to estimate the cost of development of the in-state groundwater resources from outlying areas.
A $1 billion cost for taking and treating Virgin River water from northeast Clark County has been public for years, however, and a $55 million cost estimate for developing wells in the Three Lakes area of northwest Clark County also have been public for about a year.
Water authority spokesman Vince Alberta said the final costs for groundwater development or the other projects could be very different. The committee itself could recommend significant changes to the plans developed by the water authority staff. The water authority board also could change to the staff's preliminary plans.
"There are a lot of variables," Alberta said. "It is a preliminary figure so you can begin comparing the costs of these projects.
"This is the beginning of the discussion, not the end of it," he added.
The water authority, the water wholesaler for all of urban Clark County, has planned for years to drill wells and bring water to metropolitan Las Vegas from the vast rural areas in central and northeast Nevada. The effort is part of a long-term plan to expand the water authority's portfolio of water resources. The agency now is dependent on the Colorado River for about 90 percent of its drinking water supply.
Six years of drought in the West and particularly the Rocky Mountains, the source of the Colorado River, have threatened that supply and prompted the water authority to accelerate its plans to develop other water sources. Water authority officials hope those efforts could double the amount of water now available for Southern Nevada, and support a similar increase in population.
The proposals to bring groundwater from rural Nevada to metropolitan Las Vegas and its suburbs have caused concern among environmentalists, some federal officials and ranchers in Lincoln and White Pine counties who fear that new wells would dry up existing wells and springs sustaining the huge open areas of the Great Basin.
However, the Lincoln County Commission has already signed off on a plan to divide up the county's water resources, with one-third of them going outright to the water authority and more water possible in the future. The water authority also has met with the White Pine County Commission and community leaders in the northern county in an effort to strike a similar deal.
Pat Mulroy, water authority general manager, was not available for immediate comment. She flew to Salt Lake City on Monday night for a meeting of the agencies representing the seven states of the Colorado River Basin today.
Alberta said discussion of the groundwater importation plans, as well as the plans to divert Three Lakes and Virgin River diversions, will continue next month at the committee's regular meeting.
"We had hoped to get to that discussion tonight," he said Monday.
Cary Casey, water authority finance director, said the system to import water importation mthe groundwater effort in Lincoln and White Pine counties would probably involve bonds that would be repaid over three decades or more, primarily from connection charges to new homes and a multitude of other sources. The exact formula would still have to be worked out once the details of how much and when the water would be available, he said.
He noted that the water authority's expansion effort that included a new, second "straw," or primary water line, from Lake Mead has largely been paid for. The agency could move on to a new round of capital projects "without a hiccup, or without much of a hiccup," Casey said.
Alberta said the $2 billion capital improvement program initiated in 1995 is about 90 percent completed.
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