Wastewater plan clogged

North Las Vegas' new $240 million wastewater treatment facility is supposed to open in a few months. But the city has yet to solve a pesky, fundamental problem: where to flush its treated sewage.

County officials still must be persuaded to allow the city to discharge its effluent into an open, county-owned flood control channel.

"I have constituents who go into that channel on bicycles, on foot," Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins said. "It's a dry channel built for flood control, not to have flows in it all the time."

Collins and Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani, whose districts include parts of the channel, have fought the city's plan to discharge about 25 million gallons of effluent a day from the new facility into the Sloan Channel, where it would flow several miles into the Las Vegas Wash, then downstream to Lake Mead.

Without the channel, North Las Vegas' wastewater would have no place to go. And as the plant's slated May opening nears, city officials are growing impatient with the opposition.

"We'll continue for a very short time trying to work with the county, but we're really to the point where we're going to move forward and take care of the needs of our constituents," Mayor Shari Buck said. County officials "would have to try to stop us" from using the channel, she said.

City wanted control over rates

North Las Vegas, which contracts with Las Vegas and Clark County for its wastewater services, decided to look into building its own plant about seven years ago after Las Vegas raised its rates by 40 percent, said David Bereskin, utilities director for North Las Vegas.

The plant is being built outside the city on land leased from the U.S. Air Force at Carey Avenue, south of Nellis Air Force Base.

The ability to control your own wastewater rates is "like the difference between renting and owning," Bereskin said.

The city had planned to discharge effluent from its new plant via an $860 million regional pipeline, which would have carried treated wastewater from each of the valley's sewage plants to a spot at the bottom of Lake Mead. But the pipeline project was put on hold because declining growth and advances in sewage treatment had reduced the need for it.

CommissionerS doubt need for plant

The city now is trying to secure an agreement with Clark County officials to use the concrete-lined flood channel.

"Proper planning was not done on the front end," Giunchigliani said, adding that she doesn't think the city should ever have built the plant.

"It's frustrating," she said. "They wasted time and taxpayer dollars."

Collins said, "Nobody outside the city was recommending" building the plant.

"I think they have been very unwise and unfair to their constituents," he said. "They could have worked in a regional way, partnering with the Las Vegas Valley as a whole."

But Giunchigliani recently showed signs of softening toward the city's plan to use the channel, hinting she might support the usage if certain conditions are met.

The conditions include notifying more residents who live in commission districts along the channel about the plan and adding fencing to keep people out of the channel.

North Las Vegas would have to come to an agreement with Las Vegas officials over an interceptor that would allow for the diversion of sewage to the larger city's wastewater facility if North Las Vegas temporarily has to shut down its plant for maintenance.

"I was originally not going to support this in any way, shape or form," Giunchigliani said. "But we are trying to be fair and realistic about it."

The County Commission earlier this month decided to delay a vote to allow North Las Vegas to use the channel and on an agreement concerning the county's maintenance of the channel.

Collins and Giunchigliani said they wanted to wait until the city reaches an agreement with Las Vegas over the interceptor.

State has given permission

Meanwhile, North Las Vegas is still banking on a May opening for its wastewater treatment plant.

"It's going to be worked out," Buck said. "We have everything we need to discharge in the channel."

The city has received authorization to discharge into the channel from the state's Division of Environmental Protection.

"We already have permission from the state," the mayor said. "We have permission from the right people."

But the state's permission "doesn't supersede local authority" over use of the Sloan Channel for discharge, said Vinson Guthreau, a spokesman for the Division of Environmental Protection.

"All it does is regulate the quality of water once it's discharged into the channel," he said. "We will be interested to see how the county and city work this out."

Mary Beth Scow, the third commissioner whose district includes a portion of the channel, said she is on the fence about the city's plan.

North Las Vegas taxpayers have spent millions of dollars on the plant, she said, and having no place to discharge "would make that investment worthless."

On the other hand, "do we let the effluent run through this open channel in neighborhoods where you've got kids on bicycles?" she said.

Officials defend Treated wastewater

North Las Vegas officials have defended the idea, saying the treated wastewater will be cleaner than storm water and other runoff that already flows through the channel.

Releasing effluent into the channel is no different than sending it into the Las Vegas Wash, which the valley's other wastewater treatment facilities already do, Bereskin said.

In addition to getting approval from the commission to use Sloan Channel, North Las Vegas officials must work out an agreement with the county concerning the channel's long-term maintenance.

North Las Vegas' City Council this month authorized paying the county $50,000 annually for that maintenance.

The Clark County Regional Flood Control District has said the Sloan Channel should have more than enough capacity to handle North Las Vegas's treated wastewater, even in a downpour.

The valley's daily wastewater load of about 200 million gallons gets treated to near-drinking standards before being released into the Las Vegas Wash to flow downstream to Lake Mead.

Contact reporter Lynnette Curtis at lcurtis@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0285.