New Lake Mead water pumps to get $10M test drive

Just how large and expensive is the Southern Nevada Water Authority's next construction project at Lake Mead? The test drive alone is priced at almost $10 million.

Water authority board members signed off on a slate of items Thursday to support construction of a new deep-water pumping station at the lake, including $9.75 million to buy and test three specially designed pumps from three different manufacturers.

General manager John Entsminger said the authority essentially will be paying several million dollars each for three extra pumps it will never use to move water to the Las Vegas Valley, but the investment should save the agency money in the long run and help ensure the reliability of what will become a critical piece of infrastructure for the community.

When finished in about five years, the $650 million pumping station will work in conjunction with a new intake pipe now nearing completion, allowing the authority to keep drawing enough water for the entire community even if Lake Mead plummets another 210 feet to a once-unthinkable low at which Hoover Dam can no longer release water downstream.

"It will take 34 pumps to make this station work. We want to give these pumps a very good test drive," Entsminger said.

Marc Jensen, director of engineering for the authority, said each pump must move 30 million gallons per day and lift that water as much as 500 feet straight up.

The problem is no one has ever built a pump quite like that.

That's why the authority decided to enter into contracts with three manufacturers — one in Texas, one in Japan and one in Spain — to design and build prototypes for testing. The winner gets a the roughly $100 million order for all the pumps the station will need.

Jensen said it will take about 15 months for the companies to engineer and manufacture their test pumps.

By then, work should be well underway on the station itself, which involves excavating a network of 34 underground shafts, each 500 feet long, and connecting them to the valley's existing water system.

Montana-based Barnard Construction Company will build the low-lake-level pumping station — L3PS for short — under a $210 million contract awarded by the authority board on Thursday.

Underground construction is to be finished in 2018. The pumps, surface facilities and discharge pipelines will be added under separate contracts.

In separate but related votes, the board also approved a $26 million contract with Parsons Water & Infrastructure to serve as management consultants on the pump station through 2020, and $3.8 million to buy the project what the authority described as a "standard builder's risk and terrorism" insurance policy.

To pay for all of this, the board voted to begin the process of selling $520 million in bonds.

Entsminger said the bonds would likely hit the market in April or May, pending approval by the Las Vegas Valley Water District board and the state's Debt Management Commission.

Valley water users will help pay back that bond debt through a new "drought protection charge" that will begin showing up on bills in January. That charge will increase in both 2017 and 2018, when it will top out at about $5 per month for most residential customers.

The fixed charge will be substantially higher for commercial customers and others with larger service lines.

Completion of the low-water pumping station will wrap up a 12-year, $1.5 billion building binge at Lake Mead's Saddle Island.

An Italian-owned contractor is putting the finishing touches on the authority's new $817 million water intake pipe, which stretches three miles out to one of the deepest spots in the shrinking reservoir.

The intake is now being filled with water for the first time. It is expected to go online in October.

Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Find him on Twitter: @RefriedBrean