Does Lake Las Vegas have issues with receding water like Lake Mead?
In 1990, the process of filling Lake Las Vegas with treated wastewater, diverted from the Las Vegas Wash, began. It took three billion gallons to fill the lake, which is about 320 acres and reaches depths of up to 50 feet in some areas.
Meanwhile, two diversion pipes were installed to conduct water from the Wash to Lake Mead, bypassing Lake Las Vegas. The bypass system consists of two side-by-side 84-inch-diameter concrete pipes designed to pass flows from Las Vegas Wash into the lake. In other words, Lake Las Vegas isn't a beneficiary of runoff from the Las Vegas Valley.
The pipes are owned by the City of Henderson, but their upkeep is the responsibility of Lake Las Vegas, which led to some embarrassment in 2009 when they fell into “substantial disrepair” and had to be refurbished to the tune of $3 million. Had the two-mile-long pipes deteriorated any further, Lake Las Vegas would have leaked into them and drained like a bathtub. “This wasn’t a sky-is-falling type of warning. There was a real concern that the pipes could fail,” Kirk Brynjulson, vice president of land development at Lake Las Vegas, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time.
But the repairs were successful and as far as we know, there hasn't been a problem since.
Lake Las Vegas is privately owned, so it doesn't experience the same water-level fluctuations as nearby Lake Mead, which is affected by drought and water-usage policies. The lake is maintained through a closed system, meaning it doesn't naturally drain into other bodies of water, and it's regularly replenished with water from private sources, including wells and other water rights.
When Lake Las Vegas was developed in the 1990s, the developers secured water rights separate from municipal supplies. These rights allow the lake to draw water legally without impacting Las Vegas’ primary water sources. The lake is primarily filled and maintained by groundwater wells that are owned and managed by the Lake Las Vegas community and are pumped periodically to offset losses.
Evaporation is a major factor, given the desert climate, but the system is designed to replace lost water as needed. Some water may be lost due to seepage, but the lake’s liner helps minimize this issue.
There have been past discussions on improving efficiency and sustainability, such as using recycled or reclaimed water, but most of the replenishment still comes from groundwater sources.
