By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
At a meeting last week, the Moapa Valley Water District (MVWD) Board of Trustees voted to accept two different bids from contractors to do repair work on pumping infrastructure and to complete a paving project.
The first item was to accept a bid in the amount of $47,525, from water well drilling company Layne, for repair work on the district’s Arrow Canyon 1 well equipment. The company had previously completed a video log of the well site equipment and had found significant scaling damage and corrosion in several key components.
In the meeting, MVWD General Manager Joe Davis showed photographs of what was found by Layne in the video log. The photos revealed badly deteriorated pump bowls and considerable scaling of the low-carbon wire-wrapped well screen at the site.
“I don’t think that we would have made it through the summer with the way they were looking,” Davis said of the equipment.
Davis said that the well site had been worked on previously back in 1999 and again in 2005. But video logs had not been taken to monitor corrosion of the parts.
“All they did was drop in another pump and motor and kept on going,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, these are the problems you run into when you don’t get your maintenance done.”
Layne recommended replacing the pump at Arrow Canyon 1 rather than trying to rebuild the badly damaged components, Davis said. In addition, the company recommended scrubbing the well screening with a nylon brush to remove the scaling that is plugging it up. This work was the reason for the high cost of the bid, Davis added.
“We don’t really have much choice at this point,” Davis said. “We pretty much have to do the repairs.”
Arrow Canyon I is a vital part of the MVWD water portfolio. It has the ability to pump 3,300 gallons of water per minute. This output makes it the real workhorse of the district during the summer months when demand for water is high among MVWD customers.
“During those two-and-a-half months of summer, if Arrow Canyon didn’t run, we don’t really have the resources to back it up,” Davis explained. “With current demand, and the storage that we have, if we run everything else that we have, we can kind of make it stretch and meet the demand. But if we had any kind of growth, those maximum demand times; they would be a real problem without Arrow Canyon.”
Davis said that there is still more permitted capacity at the Arrow Canyon site. So the district could drill another well there for backup, in case Arrow Canyon 1 ever went down.
“At some point, I think that we need to drill another hole at Arrow Canyon,” Davis said. “Best case, you’d get another well like Arrow Canyon 1.”
“When you say ‘at some point,’ are you talking 10-20 years,” asked board member Lindsey Dalley.
“No. I’m talking like 2 years,” Davis said. “I think that we really need to do some planning with respect to where do we go next on this.”
Part of that planning should involve consideration about what materials to use in the new well site, Davis said.
“When the (Arrow Canyon 1) well was drilled in 1992, they used a regular carbon steel screen and not stainless steel,” Davis said. “Stainless steel is extremely expensive. But with this material we have, it corrodes really bad with our water. So looking in the future when we design another well, we’d probably need stainless steel rather than carbon.”
Board members agreed that further discussion on another well at Arrow Canyon was needed. Dalley made the motion to accept the bid for the repair work. It was approved with a unanimous vote.
The other bid approved by the board was for asphalt repairs along State Highway 168 after a recent main line improvement which was done by the district between the Moapa Post Office and Lawson Drive.
The project had involved a two foot wide trench to be opened along the length of the highwayabout 20 feet along the north side of the road. The only asphalt that was affected by the project was where crews had to trench across three entrances into a parking area of a small apartment complex.
“We figured it would be just a regular project where we would go in and asphalt the four foot patch and be good,” Davis said. “But NDOT wanted us to redo the whole apron (into the apartment complex). And they wanted us to put them in at 4 inches thick, which is pretty much full highway grade.”
Davis said that, because of the additional requirements, this project was the highest cost that the district has ever had to pay for a comparable project. The bid submitted by J&J Asphalt totalled $28,959.
“When we re-did the pipes along the main street in Overton with those 16 patches that we had to do, we didn’t pay this much,” Davis said. “So it is a big cost. And the fact that they are making us go four inches on the apron is amazing.”
Trustee Jon Blackwell made the motion to accept the bid. It was approved with a unanimous vote.
During public comment period, Logandale resident Bill Mildice brought up a concern about a perceived inequity in water rates.
The issue dated back to 2006 when the MVWD Board approved a rate increase to pay for the new arsenic treatment facilities being required by federal regulation. The rate increase brought the base rate for water service up to around $30 per month.
But there were about 200 meters, at that time, that were installed on empty vacant lots, not in operation. No water had ever run through these meters and they were locked down from being used, according to MVWD staff. Most of these were meters that had been purchased and banked under a past policy provision. Many were instances where the owners had been required by MVWD policy to install the banked meters onto a parcel.
The board at that time chose to grandfather the meters in at a lower base rate of around $10 per month.
Mildice stated that the grandfathering clause should be given an expiration date and not allow customers to hold these lower cost meters in perpetuity.
“What I am saying is to put a five year limit on the grandfather clause,” Mildice said. “Because these could go on and on forever. It is never ending and it has got to stop somewhere.”
Board member Randy Tobler said that removing a grandfather clause is a more complex issue than that.
“Each entity has a decision to make, whether to grandfather things in or not,” Tobler said. “That decision has been made in this case. The deal was cut. I don’t think it is the right thing to turn back and say we are not going to honor the grandfather clause.”
Dalley asked if the $10 per month rate still pays the district’s cost for administering the meters. Davis responded that, if a leak ever developed in a meter, the rate would not cover the costs. But the rate did pay for customary administrative costs of maintaining the meters, he said.
“Then I fail to see how this is harming the district,” Dalley said. “How is us maintaining the integrity of the past board’s decision harming us in the future?”
District legal counsel, Byron Mills, explained that as the meters changed ownership, and were put into use, their status would change to the current rates. Originally there had been 189 meters in this grandfathered status. To date it is only around 100 meters.
“If there is a change in ownership or the water gets turned on at the parcel, then they get the new rates,” Mills said. “They can’t go back from there. So there is a mechanism in place to move all of these over to standard rates.”
MVWD Board Chairman Ken Staton advised the staff to make sure that the policy is being adhered to when a change of ownership occurred on these meters. He said that the board would continue to look into the matter and bring it up on a future agenda if there was further action required.
