Elgort Appointed To VVWD Board

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The Virgin Valley Water District (VVWD) Board of Directors has appointed a new member to fill a vacancy created by the recent resignation of Mesquite board member John Burrows. Gary Elgort was appointed to the seat with a unanimous vote by the board at its May 17 meeting. Elgort was seated on the board for the first time during a meeting held last week on Tuesday, Jun. 7.

During last week’s meeting, Burrows was present to be recognized for his years of service on the board. Ranking board member Rich Bowler praised Burrows for this service.

“John was a grade-A board member,” Bowler said. “He always knew what was on the agenda and spoke his mind intelligently about issues. He was a great asset to this board. Gary has big shoes to fill, now.”

In early April, Burrows announced his resignation effective April 15. Burrows sold his home and planned to relocate from the Mesquite community, making him ineligible to serve on the board.

According to the Nevada Revised Statutes, such a vacancy is filled by appointment of the remaining board members. Normally, in such circumstances, the board directs VVWD staff to advertise for replacement candidates to be considered in the appointment.

However, this is an election year and Burrows seat was on the ballot in November. As it happens only one person, Mr. Elgort, had filed to run for the position. That would have made Elgort the de facto winner of the election to be seated early next year.

Considering this, the board appointed Elgort to fill the position last month. Elgort will serve out the remainder of Burrows’ term through the rest of 2022. Then in January of 2023, Elgort will begin a four year “elected” term on the Board.

Elgort is no stranger to the work of the VVWD board. He is one of the only members of the public to regularly attend the board meetings.
“In a lot of ways, I feel like I can hit the ground running,” Elgort said in an interview with The Progress last week. “Mainly because I have been coming to these meetings ever since 2012 when I moved here full time.”

Elgort’s career seems well suited for service on the VVWD board. He came from Long Island, New York where he spent many years working for Con Edison, one of the country’s largest investor-owned utilities.

The company provides electricity, gas and steam service to New York City and its surrounding areas.
Elgort retired as a senior engineer in the steam distribution portion of the company. Steam service is used in larger eastern cities primarily for heating systems. But it also is used in heat exchangers, evaporative coolers for air conditioning, pistons to drive elevators and other equipment, humidification systems, sterilization equipment in hospitals and more, Elgort said.

“In older cities, back when people were burning coal in their homes for heat, there was a desire to not have a coal burning boiler in every home because it is dirty and smelly and causes health problems,” Elgort said. “So they created large district heating plants where giant central boilers could produce steam and deliver it by pipe to buildings and homes. That is still in place today.”

Elgort said that much of what he worked on in New York has some correlation to what the VVWD does in Mesquite – only at a much larger scale.
“The VVWD budget is between $8 and $9 million per year,” Elgort said. “My company’s budget was between $15 and $16 billion. But as a utility, the district still has to perform the same functions that my company did. It has a board of directors. It has management. It needs repair people and engineers and billing people and more. It has to supply an essential product. The district has to do all the same things as a giant company does. Only at VVWD they do it with far less resources.”

One of the key factors in Elgort’s decision to retire in Mesquite was its access to water resources. As he and his wife researched places to live in the southwestern U.S. they considered Las Vegas.
“But we looked into the water supply and realized that Las Vegas is using Lake Mead which is getting lower and lower,” Elgort said. “We decided we didn’t think we wanted to live there. Then we looked at Virgin Valley and saw that they have an independent acquifer where they are using less than half the water they are allowed to. That seemed like a smarter choice.”

Even so, Elgort believes it important that Mesquite take a wise and sustainable approach to future growth.
“I worry a little about our rate of expansion,” Elgort said. “Not so much at where we are now because I think we are still good at the present. But I keep hearing we need to grow, we need to have more. I just don’t know how real that is. I don’t know how sustainable and well-founded it is. I think we need to look at our future growth plans very carefully.”

Elgort said that any utility should strive to produce and deliver its product “safely, reliably, economically and sustainably.”

In the area of safety, Elgort said that the product must meet all health and safety standards both in the industry and from the government to protect the customers. In addition, its operations must be carried out in a way that keeps employees safe, he said.

On the subject of reliability Elgort said, “The product is a necessity to customers and without it they might suffer economic and physical damage; even possibly to the point of death.”

In considering the economic side of the business, Elgort believes that the utility should protect customers from rising costs “as much as reasonably achievable.” He admits that this requires “planning to meet changing needs, proper allocation of costs to entities creating those costs and protection of those with limited resources.”

Finally, the district should operate sustainably, Elgort said. “Without continued access to its product, both the utility and its customers will cease to have success,” he said.