VVWD Approves Water Source Protection Plan

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The Virgin Valley Water District board of directors voted to accept and adopt a formal program developed to protect the sources of drinking water for the Virgin Valley communities from potential pollutants and other hazards.

This new Source Water Protection Program was created over the past 17 months through a collaboration between the VVWD staff, City of Mesquite officials and other state agencies.

In November of 2021, the VVWD board directed the district staff to develop the plan in coordination with consultant Resource Concepts, Inc.
“Since that time we put together a stakeholder group that included multiple departments in the City of Mesquite and also th Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, Nevada Rural Water and the Bureau of Safe Drinking Water,” said VVWD Hydrologist Aaron Bunker. “We have come up with this as a final draft of the plan.”

In a presentation of the plan, VVWD Water Conservation Specialist Natalie Anderson explained that the process was a voluntary program that is recommended by the state for water purveyors. The state helps provide funding and assistance for communities to develop plans to protect drinking water, Anderson added.

Anderson said that source water is considered to be water in lakes, streams, rivers, springs and groundwater. “It is really any water that could become our drinking water,” she said. “Of course, we want to protect all of these sources. But since our source of water in the lower Virgin River valley is currently all groundwater, that is where we focused most of our efforts.”

Anderson listed the goals of the study. The first of these was to identify the possible risks to drinking water sources so that they could be included in the planning framework. The second goal was to ensure that clean, safe drinking water is available for the future generations. The third goal was to bring source water protection into the local planning and zoning documents so that community goals would be aligned in the protection efforts. And the fourth goal is to educate the community about the plan and how it is being carried out.

The plan identifies several management strategies to accomplish these goals.
The first strategy was the public education and outreach aspect to the plan. This would create strategies to involved the public in the protection of the resource.
“Education is the best way to get people to go along with something like this,” Anderson said. “Rather than forcing them and mandating them, we just want to educate them. If we do that, most people recognize that it is an issue.”

Another strategy was to coordinate planning in various city departments and agencies. The protection plan would be added to the district’s master plan, as well as the master plan of the City of Mesquite.

A third strategy was to collaborate with local and regional entities to ensure that water sources are kept unpolluted. These entities include City departments, the Virgin River Coalition, Nevada Rural Water, Virgin Valley Disposal and the BLM.

The fourth strategy was to work in collaboration with these partners to ensure that future well sites would be protected from any contaminants.
“We just want to work with these partners to make sure that our future well sites are protected from contaminants and any future development,” Anderson said.

Anderson also demonstrated some additional resources available to the public to exhibit the goals and strategies of the plan. An informational slide show is available at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2b1ff6bb9a724e998ef7fe6b08b05ca1. A much more technical GIS map showing locations of drinking water sources and the various protection zones around them is also available.

“Anything in those protection areas we would want to protect,” Anderson said of the designated zones. “We would want to make sure that any development going in those areas, we are aware of that and any potential contaminants are controlled.”

VVWD Board members were pleased with the results of the planning effort.
“I am really impressed by the amount of work that this group put into categorizing and looking at the potential contaminants; how much is in the area and how much is not in the area, thankfully,” said VVWD Board Member Gary Elgort. “There was a lot of work done here and I congratulate people here on staff and all the other people involved. It was a huge undertaking.”

The plan document will also be brought up on the City Council agenda for its April 25 meeting to consider for adoption as well.

Elgort made a motion to accept and adopt the final draft. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote of the board.