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OBITUARIES
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NO OBITUARY NOTICES
WERE PUBLISHED IN
THIS WEEK'S EDITION
OBITUARIES FROM THE
JULY 15TH ISSUE
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02-04-2010 SNWA Lake Mead Project Updated
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SNWA Lake Mead Project Updated
By Dave Maxwell
Development of an innovative project to take water from the bottom of Lake Mead, was the topic of presentation at the Lincoln County Water District meeting in Pioche January 21. Bruno Bowles of Southern Nevada Water's Ely office gave the Power Point presentation.
Briefly stated, what Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) is doing is constructing an underground water tunnel, Intake #3, underneath Lake Mead. Bowles said a 600-foot deep vertical shaft will be drilled into the mountain; the tunnel-boring machine will be lowered into the shaft and then dig a tunnel, 23-feet in diameter, under the lakebed that existed before Hoover Dam was built in the early 1930s.
"Right now," Bowles said, "Lake Mead is really the driving factor for a lot of the work that is going on. Level of the lake is fluctuating right now between 1096 and 1097, day by day. Generally, the recharge is a little more in the fall." Bureau of Reclamation figures show that in January of 2000, the lake level was about 1220 feet, but has dropped steadily ever since. However, Bowles said, forecasts call for the lake to receive a little more water in about a year.
Problems loom in the future for pumping water from out of Lake Mead in the fact that should the level drop below 1050, Intake Pump #1 will be above the water level. Intake Pump #2 will be nearly exposed if the lake level drops to 1000 feet, making it very difficult to draw any water out.
He said, "Right now we're kind of in a race against time. If we do get some relief and get some extra snow and releases into Lake Mead, our water situation will look pretty good. But some of the predictions as early as 2012 or 2013 are saying that the lake could hit 1050, and at that time we will loose intake #1 and Intake #3 may not be completed before that happens."
Because the Intake #3 tunnel goes underneath the lake for three miles, and then comes up, Bowles said the project is going to be "one of the biggest, sketchy, and dangerous tunneling projects that's been done in the United States. There are very, very large pressures under there."
SNWA approved the idea for the $817 million project in 2005, and completion is scheduled for 2013. When completed it would allow a water draw at a level of 860 feet.
One of the advantages to drawing water from the lake bottom, Bowles said, is that "the quality is likely to be better, since the water is colder."
On other subjects, such as water conservation, Bowles said SNWA has changed the conversation goal to 110 gallons per person per day by 2035 in residential areas in Las Vegas, and 199 gallons per day by 2035 involving all the various uses for water. He said ground water from the Las Vegas valley and from the Colorado River is being used at full consumption right now.
In addition, he said, SNWA has been paying an Arizona company to store Lake Mead water underground, along the All American canal on the Arizona-California border, "so we can have that in the future."
He said the water pipeline from White Pine and Lincoln Counties, expected to be in use by 2020, will help to increase water available for the valley, and by 2040, it is expected the water from the Snake Valley area (bordering Utah) will come on-line.
Bowles talked briefly about cloud seeding experiments that Desert Research Institute has been conducting since about 1985 in the Ruby Mountains and Tuscarora/Owyhee region, that have proved to been quite successful. The goal has been to create more snow in the mountains.
Based on an average, covering 10 years, 23,000 - 24,000 acre feet of additional water have been produced, "and some of the water does flow down into Lincoln County," he said.
Commissioner Tommy Rowe suggested such cloud seeding generators should be placed more in the mountains of the Colorado basin and the Wasatch Front, to get the snow there for spring run off to increase the flow to the Colorado River and Lake Mead. Lincoln County Water District General Manager Wade Poulsen noted the Snake Valley, among others, has been suggested as another area for more cloud seeding generators. He said Lincoln County is not a good site for the generators, "because most of the mountain tops are wilderness areas, and they are not allowed there."
Taking salt out of seawater has always been a very expensive process, but SNWA has been working on such a project for a number of years, Bowles said. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, and SNWA, will share the funding of a $13.6 million pilot project at the Yucca Desalting Plant near Yuma, Arizona. The Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) will fund a little over $9 million of the project, which is expected to be able to generate about 29,000 acre-feet of water annually. The three entities will also share the water produced, and put back into the Colorado River System, based on contributions. SNWA will receive about 3,100 acre-feet.
Bowles said the plant in Yuma was built about 1995, but never used. He said the plant will be reopened for some testing during 2010. Admittedly, he said, "They are not really sure there will be enough water produced to make it feasible."
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