Boulder City proudly proclaims itself as the home of Hoover Dam.
But for decades, despite its proximity to Lake Mead, it has only taken water from the reservoir without giving any back, lagging behind other Southern Nevada cities that now recycle nearly every drop used indoors.
That could change soon, officials say.
“We’ve all seen the lake; we’ve all seen how it’s dropped; and we’ve seen those bathtub rings,” said U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev. “It’s continuing to drop. With the drought and the heat, this will increasingly become a problem as we face the challenges of climate change. It’s not something that’s going away.”
Titus and city officials held a news conference this week to tout a new, $1 million grant from Congress as “a first step” to allowing Boulder City to build infrastructure to send water back to Lake Mead, which is projected to dip to record lows in 2027.
The reservoir provides the lion’s share of Southern Nevada’s water supply, and it fuels cities and agricultural regions in California and Arizona. All seven states that share the river have been wrapped up in an intense battle on how to divide shortages, with both a short-term and full 20-year deal still under consideration.
Little information has been available about the status of a feasibility study being conducted by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to help Boulder City tap into Nevada’s water recycling network. Water authority spokesman Bronson Mack told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in September 2024 that officials expected to complete the study and present options to the city by the summer of last year.
Now, Mack says the water authority isn’t ready to commit to any date.
“We are still in the feasibility and evaluation phase, and we don’t have any timelines yet,” Mack said. “The goal right now is to understand what’s possible and what makes the most sense before we start developing schedules. But I can safely say we are years out.”
Where does the water go now?
On any given day, the Boulder City wastewater treatment plant deals with anywhere between 1 million and 1.3 million gallons of wastewater, according to city officials.
Compared with Las Vegas Valley facilities, that’s just a fraction. The Clark County Reclamation District’s plant in eastern Las Vegas alone, for instance, recovers more than 110 million gallons of water a day.
It’s a key part of the region’s water plans, generating so-called “return flow credits” that allow Southern Nevada to pull out more water than its meager share established under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, signed when Las Vegas was a mere train stop rather than a full-fledged city.
Unlike other states in the Colorado River Basin that recycle as low as 1 percent of their water, Nevada returned 245,000 acre-feet, or 79.8 billion gallons, of water back to Lake Mead via recycling last year, Mack said. The state routinely returns about 55 percent of the water it takes out of the reservoir.
Currently, Mack said, a portion of Boulder City’s reclaimed water is used for dust control at solar facilities in the Eldorado Valley and a quarry. The rest of the water is left to evaporate in a pond.
Asked Tuesday about the holdup on the feasibility study, Boulder City Public Works Director Gary Poindexter said the city is eager to get started. Discharges into Lake Mead must meet federal water quality standards, and Poindexter said the planned upgrades to the plant are a good start.
“I took over the utility director position about two months ago,” Poindexter said. “Not to throw an excuse out, but there’s a lot of moving parts to it. It is something we’re waiting on before we can really tell what the end result is going to be.”
Options floated so far
Mack said engineers have identified three ways Boulder City could make use of its reclaimed wastewater, but those options haven’t been fully evaluated yet.
The city could build a pipeline directly to Lake Mead or use an injection well to pump it underground near the lake, he said. The third option is to create infrastructure to allow the water to be used for irrigation purposes within the city.
Asked about Laughlin, another Southern Nevada city along the Colorado River, Mack said the topography of the city allows for a “gravity-fed” system to easily return treated water back to the river. Boulder City presents different challenges.
It’s possible that more potential uses for Boulder City’s wastewater could emerge throughout the study process, Mack said.
The costs could vary, but significant funding — in the ballpark of tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars — would be required to see any of these projects through, Mack said.
“Our focus is really on understanding which of the options are technically feasible, environmentally responsible and can be operationally reliable over the long term,” Mack said. “It’s a long-lead effort to get this completed. We want to make sure, in concert with Boulder City, that we’re selecting a path that is well-vetted and thoughtfully planned.”
At Tuesday’s news conference, Titus said she thought Clark County had expressed interest in providing future funding. The county’s public information office didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding potential funding pools.
Boulder City Mayor Joe Hardy said he’s heartened by attempts to bring his city up to speed, including the new grant for the wastewater plant.
“Wastewater in today’s climate doesn’t sound right, so I would prefer to say just water, and then treat wastewater as a resource,” Hardy said. “This grant is going to help all of us in order to be able to save and consider what we can do with wastewater so that we actually don’t have to waste water.”
Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.
