Gnats driving Sloan Channel residents buggy
Gnats already have started to emerge in the neighborhood along the Sloan Channel.
As spring turns into summer, the gnats will thicken, said Clarence Adams, who lives across the channel on the corner of North Sloan Lane and East Windy Seas Court.
When he opens the hood of his jeep, bugs hop out. Last summer, they covered the outside wall of his house facing the channel, and he sprayed it with Raid, to little avail.
Eventually, a pipeline will carry treated wastewater from the North Las Vegas treatment plant.
But for now, the wastewater attracts bugs as it openly flows in the county storm channel to the Las Vegas Wash, ending at Lake Mead.
County commissioners are expected today to approve the financing deal to help pay for the $15 million, five-mile pipeline.
The bugs aren’t going away anytime soon. Adams and his neighbors will have to put up with two more summers of insect swarms before the pipeline is finished in 2015.
By then, residents along the channel will have endured thickets of gnats and flies for four summers.
The pipeline is the result of an agreement between the city of North Las Vegas and Clark County.
The bug problems started in June 2011, when the city, the third-most populous in the state, began discharging treated wastewater from a new $300 million treatment plant into the county-owned Sloan Channel.
The city didn’t bother to get permission from the county before putting the treated effluent into the channel, which angered county officials.
The bugs thickened in the warm Southern Nevada weather with a constant supply of water flowing through the concrete-lined channel, which was originally intended to carry floodwaters to the Las Vegas Wash and Lake Mead. Meanwhile, the disagreement between the city and county continued unresolved for more than a year.
City and county officials went to court over their differences, eventually approving an agreement in Novembe for the construction of a five-mile pipeline along the Sloan Channel. The pipeline will carry the wastewater along the channel from the city’s treatment plant at Nellis Air Force Base to the Las Vegas Wash.
Under that agreement, the county will design and build the pipeline. The city will pay $8 million for the project. The county will finance the remaining $7 million, but the city must repay the county during the next decade.
From there, the county will oversee the design and construction of the pipeline, which will send 70 million gallons of water a day through a pipe about 54 inches in diameter.
“We wanted it put in a pipe,” Clark County Manager Don Burnette said of the effluent. “We didn’t want treated effluent floating down the Sloan Channel.”
North Las Vegas Mayor Shari Buck didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The design work is expected to be finished this September. From there, the county will advertise and bid the project, with construction starting in 2014 and finishing in mid-2015, county spokesman Erik Pappa said in an email.
The project’s time frame is tied to a variety of requirements, such as complying with legal requirements to advertise for bids, give companies time to submit proposals and evaluate the submissions fairly, he said.
Adams isn’t the only one with bug problems along Sloan Channel.
“We can’t even eat outside because of them,” said Thomas Palmer, who lives in the 1200 block of Sloan Lane. “It’s depressing because we like to barbecue out back.”
He and his adult daughter, Brenda Palmer, have bought an outdoor electric light to zap the gnats.
“If you open a door, you better get in fast,” Thomas Palmer said. “They’ll be all over the kitchen and everything.”
As for Adams, the 73-year-old retired auto body mechanic jokingly said he will probably be dead by the time the pipeline is finished.
He said Friday he was unaware that officials were planning to build the pipeline in a couple of years.
“I can’t say they’re not doing their jobs,” he said. “But we’ve still got bugs.”
Contact reporter Ben Botkin at bbotkin@reviewjournal
.com or 702-405-9781.
