Las Vegas' Pollution Poses Problems For Mead, Downstream States

[hatrack]

"Las Vegas' relentless growth has raised concerns that the city's expansion will send more pollutants into Lake Mead, hurting water quality in the nation's biggest reservoir and the source of drinking supplies for millions in Southern California and the Southwest. With each new subdivision in the southern Nevada desert, more wastewater and urban runoff drains into Mead, a sparkling blue national recreation area but also the receptacle for all of metropolitan Las Vegas' treated sewage.

A wastewater coalition is proposing a solution: a massive pipeline that would take most of the effluent from a wash that now empties into a shallow bay and instead dump it directly into the cold depths of the lake closer to Hoover Dam. There, in theory, it would undergo more dilution and be less likely to feed surface algal blooms. But some experts fear the pipeline project could simply export the pollution threat out of Mead to the lower Colorado River, where Southern California and Arizona draw water. "It's not a good situation for those downstream," said Alexander J. Horne, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus in environmental engineering and part of a team that reviewed computer modeling of the proposed pipeline project.

He and others argue that moving the wastewater outfall several miles south, closer to the dam, will eliminate natural scrubbing that now occurs in the wash and the lake. That could make it more likely that algae-breeding nutrients such as phosphorous will migrate out of Mead and reach the lower Colorado. Douglas W. Karafa, program administrator for the Las Vegas Valley wastewater coalition that is overseeing the pipeline project, said that while phosphorous levels might rise slightly, they would remain well within water quality standards. "Saying there is a little more phosphorous going out of Hoover Dam doesn't necessarily relate to anything that is going to happen environmentally," Karafa said.

The ever-increasing volume of effluent draining out of the Las Vegas Valley makes it imperative, he said, that the outfall be moved from Las Vegas Wash, which carries a steady stream of treated sewage into Mead from the region's three water reclamation plants."

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mead19jun19,1,48208.story?coll=la-headlines-california

[tk2kewl]

1. Here... let me show you how this is done...

"Las Vegas' Pollution Expansion Poses Problems Beneficial For Mead, Downstream States"