‘It’s excessive’: Homeowners push back on water district’s new fee

The latest water bill came as a shock to Yvette Williams.

Williams, who has lived in her Spring Valley home for more than two decades, had worked to reduce her water use in recent months. But her June water bill still came in at over $800.

“It was double what it was last month, and the last two months are triple what my regular monthly bill is normally,” Williams told the water district’s board of directors during a public meeting Tuesday.

More than half of that bill, Williams said, came from the district’s new excessive use charge, which went into effect in January in an effort to target the Las Vegas Valley’s biggest water users.

Williams was one of nearly a dozen residents who voiced their displeasure with the district’s new fee. Most of those who spoke argued that it unfairly targets those with larger lots, which they said inevitably require more water than smaller lots in order to maintain mature landscaping and older shade trees.

The district’s new fee structure sets monthly water use thresholds based on the season and assesses a $9 charge for every 1,000 gallons used over that limit.

Through the first six months since it went into effect, nearly 60,000 single-family homes in Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County have been hit with the charge for going over the monthly thresholds. The vast majority of the the charges have ranged from $9 to $99, but many residents have seen the fee add hundreds, and some have seen it add thousands, to their monthly bills.

“We are being targeted, we feel, where our water bills are more than our mortgage payments. It’s excessive,” Lisa Skurow told the board. “We ask for you to take a step back and take us into consideration.”

John Entsminger, the Las Vegas Valley Water District’s general manager, told the board that the new charge has led to a sharp spike in compliance with the district’s water rates. The majority of those who have received an excessive use fee — about 64 percent — have only received it once or twice through the first six months of the year.

“Most of our customers adapt pretty fast,” Entsminger said.

The new fee has generated more than $12 million in revenue for the water district, money it says will go toward continued conservation efforts.

Entsminger said the fee also is expected to help Southern Nevada conserve roughly 8,200 acre-feet of water by the end of the year. Nevada’s share of the Colorado River, which provides about 90 percent of the water in the Las Vegas Valley, is 275,000 acre-feet this year.

He said the fee was specifically designed to target the top 10 percent of water users in the district’s jurisdiction, a group that uses more than the bottom 60 percent of water users.

Entsminger also pushed back on the notion that half-acre and larger lots must use more water, noting that more than 50 percent of those who have received an excessive use fee are on less than a quarter-acre lot.

For many people, the excessive use fees are being driven by either undetected leaks or over-watering their grass, he said.

“A lot of it is simply how they are electing to operate their water systems,” Entsminger said.

But Williams and others pushing back against the new fee say there needs to be a more equitable rate put in place, one they say that does not punish people just for living on larger lots.

“What we’re asking for is a compromise,” Williams told the Las Vegas Review-Journal after the meeting. “All we’re saying is there should be some kind of an adjustment based on your lot size.”

Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.