A class-action lawsuit filed last week seeks to challenge a controversial water-use fee that the Las Vegas Valley Water District has said is an attempt to rein in the valley’s top water-wasters.
Attorneys argue that the district’s excessive use fees generated at least $96 million in agency revenue that should be returned to ratepayers. Tens of thousands of Las Vegas residents could join the lawsuit and potentially recover the penalty they paid for using too much water per the policy, according to a legal complaint.
“LVVWD took it upon itself to penalize Residents via the newly created EUC fines and has been aggressively using these fines to enrich itself while hurting all Las Vegans,” attorneys wrote in the complaint.
Fee collection began in 2023, inspiring the creation of the Water Fairness Coalition, a growing group of Las Vegas Valley residents who say forced conservation is unjust and decreasing their quality of life. Even Pat Mulroy, the first-ever general manager of the water district, has said she was forced to pay the fees and is vehemently against them.
In a statement, water district spokesman Bronson Mack said the agency sticks by the fee structure.
Officials have said the goal of the program is to help identify leaks and reduce community water usage as drought in the Colorado River Basin and the outlook of Lake Mead worsen every year. All of the funds collected were earmarked for further conservation in Southern Nevada, such as rebates for those who fix leaks on their property.
“The excessive use charge applies to a small percentage of the highest residential water users whose outdoor water use is significantly higher than community norms,” Mack said. “We remain committed to working with our customers to help them reduce water use through education, rebates, leak assistance, and other regional conservation programs.”
Parallel lawsuit continues
Attorneys say the excessive use fee structure is a new concept, one that hadn’t been piloted anywhere else in the country. One internal email included as an exhibit suggested the fees would bring “huge financial impacts.”
The use threshold for being charged a penalty varies by month, but it’s a $9 fee per 1,000 gallons used over that limit. It only applies to customers of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, which doesn’t serve North Las Vegas, Henderson or Boulder City.
This lawsuit against Southern Nevada water managers is the latest in a line of legal challenges brought forward by Summerlin attorney Sam Castor and his law firm Lex Tecnica.
Castor previously sued the water district over the $1,755 that the water district charged him in excessive use fees.
His firm is behind the lawsuit over the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s ban on decorative grass, too, alleging that mass grass removal throughout the Las Vegas Valley led to the death of some 100,000 trees — a number the water authority’s hired arborist has contested. Both lawsuits are still pending in federal court.
Much like his argument over the decorative grass ban, the complaint filed last week brings up a lack of an individual appeal process for residents and states that water managers do not have the authority to violate constitutional rights.
“The EUC fines, a classic form of mission drift, subvert LVVWD’s purpose: to supply water to many Las Vegas residents at reasonable rates,” the complaint says. “Instead of serving Las Vegas residents, LVVWD is harming them.”
The definition for the class proposed by Castor’s firm includes any customer charged an excessive use fee since the beginning of the program. As of Wednesday, the water district had not filed an official response to the complaint, according to the court docket.
Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.
