Friday, May 20, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.
A $650 million "third straw" to ensure Las Vegas' continued use of Lake Mead water got the go-ahead Thursday from the board of the region's wholesale water agency.
The board approved the project with a 5-0 vote after Pat Mulroy, Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager, told the board members that the threat of a longer drought could cripple the agency's ability to bring enough clean water to the city.
The agency is in a race against time and nature, officials said.
"We need to start work now in order to have a new intake up and running by 2011," said Marc Jensen, Water Authority engineering director.
Construction on the 2.5-mile line could be complete by then, officials said. The project would largely be funded by more than doubling the fees developers pay when connecting new homes to the existing water systems.
The project would bring relatively clean water from deep in the lake past the existing intakes and to the Alfred Merritt Smith Water Treatment Plant near the shores of Lake Mead, according to the agency.
While last winter and this spring have brought above-average precipitation throughout the basin of the Colorado River, which feeds Lake Mead, the fact that Mead's upstream reservoir, Lake Powell, is two-thirds empty means that the water level behind Hoover Dam will continue to fall. Overall, the entire river system is more than half empty.
While the federal government, which oversees water deliveries to downstream users, has authorized a release of 8.23 million acre-feet this year from Powell, the demand on the resource from Mead is more than 9.5 million acre-feet. The 9.5 million acre-feet includes the 300,000 acre-feet that provides nearly all of Southern Nevada's water supply.
The deficit will come out of Lake Mead.
"While the drought may have eased a little bit, it is still not over as Lake Mead will continue to decline," said Kay Brothers, Water Authority deputy general manager.
If the drought revives over the next several years, the water level in the lake could fall below 1,050 feet above sea level and knock out the original, older intake.
The second intake is 50 feet lower than the first, but if the first intake is dry, the second would likely also be affected, Jensen said.
The water level of the lake is now at 1,143 feet above sea level. Federal officials believe the level will continue falling at least past 1,125 feet through the end of the year.
"At this point (at the 1,050-foot level), the lake essentially is just a wide spot on the river," Jensen warned the Water Authority board.
Worse for the authority, a third of the flow uphill to Las Vegas would be lost. The flow from Lake Mead to the urban area would fall from 900,000 gallons a minute to 600,000 gallons a minute, Jensen said.
Even absent the possibility of water loss, water quality issues demand action, agency officials said. The problem is that during warm months contaminants concentrate in the top 50 feet of of the lake. The third, deeper intake would provide sure access to higher quality water below the 900-foot level.
The Water Authority and its consultants have looked at several options for the third intake. The option approved is the one that makes sense financially, Jensen said.
The one downside is that it includes more underwater construction, he said, although one benefit of the drought is that the work will be done in shallower water than it once would have required.
Richard Wimmer, deputy general manager, said the increase in connection charges, a move that has to be approved by regional water distributors including the Las Vegas Valley Water District and Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City, would fund most of the new intake.
Along with the increase in connection fees, a commodity charge for 1,000 gallons of water would go from 5 cents to 10 cents. Cary Casey, finance director, said the total would equal about 75 cents a month for a typical family.
The third intake will be more expensive than the second intake, which opened just three years ago at a cost of about $80 million. Jensen said the cost of the second intake did not include the price for building a new pumping installation, and only had to go 1,600 feet.
The new intake includes a new pumping station, and the pipeline would be almost 10 times longer, he said.
"This one is more expensive because we're going much deeper in the lake, and the intake tunnel itself is much longer," Jensen said.
Monica Caruso, spokeswoman for the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association, said her organization is aware of the possibility of a hike in the connection fees. Las Vegas home prices, already increasing at some of the fastest rates in the country, would reflect the increases, she said.
She said the Water Authority has presented its case for increased connection fees to the homebuilders, and that the two entities work well together. Developers and builders "have to do what is needed to keep up with infrastructure demands."
"We are always concerned about some new governmental fee or requirement and that's definitely going to factor into the price of a new home," Caruso said. "Housing has become unaffordable for the average citizen living in Las Vegas."
But development has and will continue to pay for needed new infrastructure, she said.
The third intake is only the latest in a series of huge engineering and construction projects slated for development by the Water Authority in the next decade. The agency, facing not just the drought but the promise of increased demand as the population continues to increase in Clark County, has plans to divert two Nevada rivers to Las Vegas' needs and bring groundwater from Nevada's rural counties to the urban area.
The cost for the other projects were not included in the $2.75 billion capital improvements budget amendment approved by the board Thursday.
The cost for the river diversion and ground water projects could be more than $3 billion. An advisory committee is now working on drafting recommendations on how to pay for the work and on which development options to focus.
"The two most compelling issues that will be steering the Water Authority over the ensuing years will be the ongoing impacts of the drought and the work to develop our in-state resources," Mulroy said.
She said following the board meeting that the drought has forced the agency to look for new solutions to engineering challenges.
"Had the drought not come we never would have had the conversation about the third intake," Mulroy said. She added that water quality and supply to existing customers is the agency's top obligation.
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