Southern Nevada Water Authority

Meeting Southern Nevada’s Water Needs

Water quality laboratory

Since 1993, Parsons has provided program and construction management services to the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA)—the agency responsible for addressing Southern Nevada’s water needs—on its major capital program. Our very first assignment was to develop a phased plan so new facilities would come into service just before they were needed. Key features of the capital improvement program include:

• 327 miles of pipeline
• 13 pumping stations
• 16 reservoirs and forebays
• 2 large new intakes in Lake Mead
• 6 large hard rock tunnels – 4 drill and blast and 2 TBM up to 15 Bar pressure
• 4 concrete lined access shafts as deep as 600 feet
• 56 blind bore well shafts up to 91-inch diameter
• A new ozone/direct filtration plant
• The addition of ozone treatment to the existing water treatment plant
• Turnouts (distribution points) to regional water retailers

To manage the requirements of such a large and changing program, we developed a unique project control system that linked to the overall project schedule to track spending on every contract. This system also provided transparency for SNWA to monitor how its ratepayers’ money was spent as construction proceeds. Our other innovations and accomplishments on this program include:

Lake Mead Intake No. 3

• A programmatic environmental impact statement that covered the entire program, allowing projects to be built without further individual environmental studies
• A detailed analysis that divided contracts into similar types of work and size. This has resulted in excellent prices
• Design suggestions that resulted in similar structures and equipment that saved more than $29 million in construction costs
• Value engineering on three of the major facilities — the two treatment plants and the intake in Lake Mead—resulting in estimated savings of $35 million

We recently provided planning, project development, design management, and construction management for SNWA’s new Intake No. 3—a deep water intake that will provide continued access to water from Lake Mead as a historic drought and declining lake levels threaten the operation of the other two intakes.

We currently provide program and construction management services for the Intake No. 3 Low Lake Level Pumping Station (L3PS), which will deliver water from the recently completed intake to SNWA’s two water treatment facilities. The project includes the new pumping station, 144 inch-diameter aqueducts to connect to existing facilities, and 69-kv electrical service to the pumping station. L3PS will have a total pumping capacity of 900 million gallons per day.

As SNWA continues to provide comprehensive water management for the Southern Nevada region, we provide a wide range of water resource engineering and construction services to support their success and to meet the region’s ever-growing water needs.

Featured Sep 2010/Updated Aug 2017