BOARD00535

• Board Meeting Date: 5/22/2000
• Description: Colorado River Basin Issues - Colorado River ‎(Mainstem)‎ Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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COVER STORY W ATE R

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As if spitting in critics' eyes, Las Vegas Valley water czar
Patricia Mulroy recently approved a huge change
order to speed construction of a new water lreattnent
plant in the nation's most arid and fast-growing
metropolis. "We saw ourselves really running into a
time crunch," she says. "OUf lawyers said we'd get screamed at
no matter what we did."
Critics only muttered, knowing that Mulroy, as general man-
ager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, enjoys public
suppon for inspiring, managing and accelerating its $2-billion
capital-improvement plan. Now 60% complete, the work
extends 50 miles from Lake Mead through Las Vegas. And as
Mulroy oversees expenditures that peaked at $1 million per
day last summer-and still run $700,000 daily-she wins praise
for keeping the plan within budget and on schedule without
sacrificing construction quality. "She has significantly fewer
critics than most public figures here," says Michael We is-
senstein, a reporter who covers SNWA for the city's largest news-
papeL "The water authority is acknowledged to be well man-
aged, and she's generally praised as an efficient manager."
Even some of Mulroy's loudest critics see noble motives.
e local chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors
had blasted her $31-million change order as a "dangerous
precedent" lacking "taxpayer safeguards." But Executive Direc-
tor Dallas Coonrod admits: "I think she is attempting to do the
right thing...what she believes is in the best interests of her con-
stituents."

. ~ But a few oth~;.~ew Mulroy as too .close'tothe local gam-
ing and construction communities. They nole that she once
worked as a junior analyst for then-Clark County Manager
Rich<.\rd Bunker. now the governor-appointed chairman of the
Colorado River Commission and past president and current
consultant to the gaming industry's Nevada Resort Associa-
tion. "She's pretty much doing what she's been told by the peo-
ple who control this economy," says L Kenneth Mahal, 79,
retired president and CEO of Ellerbe Architects and Engineers,
a fim1 that merged to fonn an industry leader, Ellerbe Becket.
Mahal now heads the local Nevada Seniors Coalition and crit-
icizes Mulroy's "make-work" project that doubles the county's
lake-intake capacity in excess of available water.
MULTIPLICITY Maha!'s coalition opposed the X~ sales tax
increase that 72% of county voters approved anyway in 1998
for water and wastewater system upgrades. The tax helps fund
a multiplicity of water improvements begun in 1995 for com-
pletion by 2017. The projects include a second 600-million-gal-
lons-per-rlay intake, as well as related components just com-
pleted on April 23 for $80 million. Nearby at the lakeside
Alfred Merritt Smith Water Facility-an existing treatment
plant expanded from 400 mgd to 600 mgd in 1997-work con-
tinues today on a $6].million addition of ozone units.
Beyond the plant loom the roughly 1,900-ft-high River
MOUIltains, through which crews bored a second 4-mile water
tunnel in ] 995. On the other side of the mountains in the Las
Vegas Valley, work also continues at the new 300..mgd River

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62 ENR/ APRtL 24, 2000