City Council hear reports on VVWD water resource documents

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The Mesquite City Council heard a pair of reports given by officials at Virgin Valley Water District (VVWD) during a meeting held on Tuesday, April 24.

The first was a summary of the district’s recently completed Water Conservation Plan document presented by VVWD General Manager Kevin Brown.

The second presentation, given by VVWD Conservation Specialist Natalie Anderson, reported on a Source Water Protection Plan that the district had completed in cooperation with the City and other entities.

On each item, the Council took action to formally accept both presentations and to adopt the Source Water Protection Plan.

In his presentation on conservation, Brown emphasized that the Virgin Valley’s drinking water sources have been, and continue to be, reliable and ample to supply the community well into the community.

Brown explained that VVWD has over 12,000 acre feet per year (afy) of certificated groundwater rights to provide drinking water to the community. Currently the district is pumping about 7,000 afy from the aquifer.

An acre foot of water equals about 326,000 gallons, enough to supply roughly three average Virgin Valley homes with water for a year.

In addition, those groundwater rights are only about 52 percent of the overall VVWD portfolio of water. The district also owns surface water rights on the Virgin River as well as pioneer-era mountain spring rights in the Virgin Mountain range to the south of the community. Accessing any of these rights, however, would require significant public investment in treatment plants or acquiring federal rights of way, he said.

One point of special emphasis in the report was that the Virgin Valley communities are not dependent upon the Colorado River for their water supply.

“I know that there is a lot of news across the country about the Colorado River and the plans to limit the states’ water usage across the desert southwest,” Brown said. “So if there is one thing I want people to take away from this presentation it is that this does not affect our water supply. We have no water rights on the Colorado River or Lake Mead. We don’t depend on it for our water supply. Our water is underneath us in the aquifer and we pump it out of the ground. That is why we don’t need to do all the things that Las Vegas is doing to curtail water.”

Even so, Brown explained that the VVWD has been actively involved in conservation planning for the community.

Brown cited some trends showing that conservation was working well in the district. He showed graphs that indicated a healthy growth rate in Mesquite over the past 20 years. But during that time, water production growth had remained fairly stable.

“That means we have been doing a good job conserving water over the past decade or so without having to have a real stringent water conservation plan similar to what Las Vegas is doing and now where St. George is heading.”

The VVWD Water Conservation Plan sets a goal for the community to reach 85 gallons of water consumption per capita per day. This goal is on par with the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s goal, Brown said.

Currently the community is using 120 gallons per capita per day. “That is really good for the southwestern part of the U.S.,” Brown said. “But we feel our goal is attainable. We want to get there by 2035.”

Brown said that the district is trying to avoid taking draconian conservation measures by being proactive in its approach.
“Instead, we have a lot of voluntary conservation measures that are occurring right now including limited turf landscaping, voluntary turf removal, reductions in sprinkler timer settings and proactive education and training,” Brown said.

He also advised that local residents could call the VVWD office to receive consultation on how they could better conserve water in their households.

In addition, the district is currently installing advanced metering technology which is expected to help in conservation efforts. The district staff has installed close to 8,500 of these new meters out of the 10,200 accounts that are on the system, Brown said.

“These smart meters allow our ratepayers to log into a customer portal and almost get hourly reads on how much water they’re using,” Brown added. “They can also set up alarms to monitor their water usage.”

Brown said that the Conservation Plan includes contingency planning for extreme unexpected climate change conditions and long-ranging planning on when development must be slowed down or stopped if water resources should run low.

City council members expressed appreciation for the work that the district has done on water resource planning.
“My understanding is that, compared to St. George or Las Vegas, we are more solid than any of them in terms of water resources,” Councilman Brian Wursten said to Brown. “Is that your view?
“I believe that we are,” Brown responded.

In the second presentation, VVWD Conservation Specialist Natalie Anderson spoke about the newly completed Community Source Water Protection Plan that was being brought to the Council for approval.

She explained that the plan was developed over the past 17 months in a collaboration between the VVWD, City of Mesquite officials and other state agencies.
The planning process is a voluntary program recommended by the state for water purveyors, Anderson added. The state helps provide funding and assistance for communities to develop these plans to protect drinking water.

Source water is considered to be water in lakes, streams, rivers, springs and groundwater, Anderson said. But since groundwater is currently the sole source of drinking water for Virgin Valley, that is where the study focused most of its attention, she added.

Anderson listed the goals of the study. The first of these is to identify the possible risks to drinking water sources so that they could be included in the planning framework. The second goal is to ensure that clean, safe drinking water is available for the future generations. The third goal is 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.
“We believe that education is the best way to get people to do the right thing,” Anderson said.

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.

Anderson talked about resources that had been developed to inform the public about source water protection. 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 at the district website.

Ethan Mason of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) hailed the collaborative efforts involved in drafting the plan. “We are really impressed with the dedication and hard work from both the city partners and VVWD in putting forward this plan,” Mason said.
City planner Richard Secrist said that the planning process had been an eye opener and a valuable exercise for city staff.

“Because the city and the water district have been separate entities there hasn’t been a lot of coordination in this where there probably should have been,” Secrist said. “This plan has really pointed out that we need to work together. Our roles overlap in big ways and important ways. So we need to plan together to carry these things out.”