Water rates may increase for big users - News

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Nov. 21, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Water rates may increase for big users

Authority hopes to curb usage

By HENRY BREAN
REVIEW-JOURNAL

In case you forgot about the drought, a pointed reminder from the Las Vegas Valley Water District could show up in your mailbox sometime next spring. You will find it on your water bill, just to the right of the words "Amount Due."

To drive home the importance of conservation, the state's largest water utility is considering a rate hike skewed toward those who use the most water.

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Dick Wimmer, deputy general manager for the district, said the goal is to "send a pretty pointed pricing message to those residential customers who use large amounts of water."

The incremental increase now being discussed would average out to about 23 percent, though high-volume water users could see their bills go up by more than 30 percent while low-volume users see an increase "in the high teens," Wimmer said.

Details of the rate hike are still being discussed. Any increase will be subject to a public hearing and a vote by the Clark County Commission, which serves as the district's board of directors.

Residential customers make up about 90 percent of the water district's accounts in Las Vegas and parts of unincorporated Clark County. Roughly two-thirds of all the water the district delivers gets used outdoors to irrigate landscaping.

Commissioners took the first step toward higher water bills on Tuesday when they voted to accept the recommendations of a citizens advisory committee convened in August to examine the district's rates.

Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani summed up the recommendations in nine words: "Those who use it more pay for it more."

With the committee's recommendations as a framework, district officials plan to develop a specific rate-hike proposal for the board to consider sometime in December or January.

The soonest that higher rates might begin to show up on local water bills is April, Wimmer said.

The district also is considering a flat, 50 percent increase in its monthly service charge. For most residential customers, that would mean an increase from $4.04 to $6.06 a month.

In 1987, before the district implemented its current four-tier system of charging higher rates to those who use the most water, the service charge for most customers was $8.54 a month.

Pricing water so people use less of it is one way the district hopes to meet its goal of reducing per-capita consumption from 264 gallons a day to 250 gallons a day by 2010.

As recently as 1998, per capita use stood at 320 gallons a day.

Wimmer said the 14-member advisory committee sought a way to meet the conservation goal while avoiding unnecessary "rate shock" or unfairly impacting low-income residents and those who use a minimal amount of water.

The valley's other water utilities are likely to adopt higher rates of their own, Wimmer said, because they have agreed to meet the same conservation goal the district has.

The committee recommended raising the rates and service charges gradually over time. It will be up to commissioners to decide how gradual the increases should be.

Giunchigliani made her preference known on Tuesday. "We have a crisis now. Quicker is better than later," she said.

About 90 percent of the valley's water supply comes from a single source: the Colorado River by way of Lake Mead.

Seven years of record drought have depleted the river and dropped the reservoir to its lowest level since 1965.

Eventually, Lake Mead could sink low enough to shut down one of two intake pipes that supply water to the valley.

"If the drought persists and we lose our upper intake, we're going to have to take some extraordinary measures to meet peak demand during the summer," Wimmer said.

To that end, the district may experiment with an additional, summer-time charge on its two highest water-use tiers, but not before summer 2009.

The seasonal rate would be designed to lower the peak demand for water during the hottest part of the year, Wimmer said.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0350.

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Please enter your name Name: Please enter your email Email: Please enter a comment COMMENTS : (word count limit is 300) You have reached the maximum number of words allowed Current Word Count: Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background. Vegas Vic wrote on November 22, 2007 03:25 AM: What I find idiotic is that no one at the goon squad of the SNWA mentions anything about the other states using water from Lake Mead. Drive through southern California sometime. How many homes, there, do you see converting their lawns to xeriscape? Zero! None! Zilch! Everyone seems to think that Las Vegas is the only place using Lake Mead's water and if we conserve until we're using less than 100 gallons a day, the decrease in water level will slow or stop. Until the other states using Lake Mead water enact drastic water regulations, anything the SNWA says is the southern output of a north-facing bull. tm wrote on November 21, 2007 04:11 PM: Why dont the water district say lets stop building?Somebody in water distr ict must be getting kick backs from the builders tm Kel wrote on November 21, 2007 03:10 PM: This water conservation nonsense would be a lot more convincing if I didn't have to watch one construction site after another dump millions of gallons of water (cumulative) on the ground for the purpose of dust control and street washing. It's not uncommon for a single jobsite to use 100,000 gallons of water or more per WEEK to lay water down on the desert floor to control dust or wash the streets. That's close to half a million gallons per month or more for a lot of these jobsites. Multiply that by the couple hundred jobsites that are going on at any given time in this valley. Why are the jobsites doing this? Well partly it's because the county is ordering them to do so, lest the mighty hand of Clark County will hand out citations for not controlling jobsite dust (and they're pretty anxious to hand them out too). This is the same county that wants to blame Joe Homeowner for watering his shrubs & grass as being the primary culprit for the water running out. Yeah right! There's more water wasted by a single jobsite in a single month (BY COUNTY ORDER) for dust abatement than by any average homeowner in 3 or 4 years time. Every time you read one of these stupid articles, it's the homeowner that's forced to conserve or pay while the developers & the county themselves get a free pass. Once again we are being fed a bunch of hypocritcal nonsense by a county government that wears two faces. The freakin' lake is drying up and the county is still forcing hundreds of jobsites to lay down water in the desert. Go figure! paula wrote on November 21, 2007 01:15 PM: This PUBLIC entity needs an honest outside firm to audit their kingdom. It doesn't pass the touch, smell, feel test! Hydrated wrote on November 21, 2007 10:45 AM: Who says the mafia doesn't run Vegas anymore????? jokesters wrote on November 21, 2007 08:38 AM: http://www.h2ouniversity.org/html/K2_deputy_drip.html jokesters wrote on November 21, 2007 08:36 AM: I had the water patrol come to my house 8:30 am one Sunday morning, Mother's Day 2004, asking if I was draining my pool. I said I don't have a pool. He said I must be using my sprinklers my side windows had calcium build up on them. I said no I wasn't the calcium build up was from the neighbor who was watering with his sprinklers and one of his sprinklers was broken and it was shooting my house. He told me I had 3 days to fix it. Buy the way am still laughing over who designed there mascott, Deputy Drip-airheads. Jeff L wrote on November 21, 2007 08:00 AM: If the low end users, those who less than the prescribed 250 gallons per day, should not see a 19% increase in rates! They are already doing that which the County intends to achieve with a new rate structure. What is the incentive to decrease their usage when they are going to get "hit" with an increase anyway? Is there a rate decrease for those that use only 200 gallons a day? You know, a carrot and stick approach versus stick only? ths wrote on November 21, 2007 06:35 AM: I hope that they put that increase charges back into conservation plans. Our HOA has the responsability by contract with the city to maintain a 7 acre park with a soccer field. We are already converting 10 of thousands of sq ft to xeriscaping and plan on continuing and looking at the other parks as well. I think the water authority for large water users that must support the sports fields should look at giving rebates for artificial grass conversion as the soccer field we are unable to convert to anything else, but be responsable as individual homeowners for the water bill for a public use.