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Stewarts Point Residents Face A Long Dry Summer

Stewarts Point Residents Face A Long Dry Summer
By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
Published May 13, 2009

A few local residents with homes out at Stewarts Point on Lake Mead are quickly finding themselves high and dry. As the water levels at the Lake continue to drop, the pumping equipment that brings water to Stewarts Point homes has been left stuck in the mud. “We’ve moved our pump out there about as far as we can now,” said Stewarts Point homeowner Ralph Spencer. “But last week the water got so low that now we are just sucking air.”

Since January, water levels have

The water pump that providing water to the homeowners at Stewarts Point is seen here sticking out of the water. Last week water levels at Lake Mead dropped below the 1100 ft mark for the first time since April of 1957.
dropped twelve feet at Lake Mead. Last week, the water elevation dropped below 1100 feet. The last time it was below the 1100 mark was in April of 1965. According to Bureau or Reclamation reports, the water level is projected to continue dropping another eight feet through the month of July before it slowly begins its seasonal rise.

That leaves the folks spending the summer at Stewarts Point in a bit of a bind. There are only about 25 homeowners out there. They have places there because they are each grandfathered in to a long term lease on the land.

All of them are part time residents. Most are just seasonal vacationers. But a few reside there off and on for most of the year.

They pay about $200 per month to lease the land. But that is all they get. There are no services provided to them. There are no main water lines, for example, that service the area.

Stewart’s Point homeowners Ralph Spencer (left) and Phil Carson. 96 year old Carson has had a place at Stewarts Point since the mid 1950s and can remember the last time that the Lake was this low. Historically, the homeowners at Stewarts Point have filled large water trailers at a pump down by the water’s edge to service their homes. But at one time the water’s edge was just down at the end of the street. In recent years, though the pump has had to be moved out again and again to keep it in the water. Now it is out a couple of hundred yards from the fill-up station and working hard to pump water up a very steep incline.

Last week, Spencer was out in his pontoon boat trying to find a solution to the problem. “We only have enough cable to move the pump out another 100 feet or so,” Spencer said.

“That isn’t much with how fast the water is dropping. It will only give us a few more weeks really.”

While the water level is low, it is not the lowest it has ever been. And it isn’t expected to reach that point in the official projections; at least not this summer. July’s low is projected to reach an elevation of 1091 feet. But the all-time lowest levels were seen in the spring of 1956 when the water elevation reached 1083 feet.

Not many people are still around that can remember those days. But one Stewarts Point homeowner does. Phil Carson is 96 years old and has been staying at Stewarts Point since 1956. He has been living and fishing on Lake Mead since the mid 1940s. And he still goes out nearly everyday. Last week he was working with Spencer on the pump problem when he began to reminisce about the last time the water was this low.

Over the past year, the receding Lake has revealed the remnants of an old boat ramp now near the pumping equipment. The ramp was once in use in similar low levels. Amid the layers of silt and mud, the old black asphalt of the ramp juts out near the water’s edge. Below it are a layer of large rocks that have evidently been dumped to extend the ramp even further. Carson clearly remembers maintaining that ramp and launching his boat from it back in the mid 1950s. “Back then, we each had our own little pump that we’d bring down here,” Carson said. “We backed our water trailers down here and just threw the pump into the water, dropped the other end of the hose in the tank and filled up.”

“That might be one idea for our current problem,” observed Spencer.

Spencer emphasized that this issue is not by any means a major catastrophe. “We aren’t in any danger and we certainly aren’t asking anyone for handouts,” he said.

Most of those who will stay at Stewarts Point during the summer also own property in Overton. Thus, they have the ability to fill water tanks at their property in town and haul it out to Stewarts Point.

“We could spend the morning worrying about that pump and figuring whether it is worth it to move it,” Spencer said with a smile. “Or we could just forget the whole thing and go fishing.”

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