Flip a switch, lights go on. Set the thermostat, natural gas flows. Water flows from faucets. Nevada is a desert, so water conservation is natural. But the capacity to supply utilities statewide depends on conservation of natural resources and increased production of utilities businesses and residents depend on.
Utilities companies work behind the scenes, making investments in infrastructure and expanding their capacity to meet the needs of growing business and residential populations.
Dams, Reservoirs, Aquifers – Water In The Desert
Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD) is the largest water utility in Nevada, serving around 450,000 residential and business customers in Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County. It manages more than 7,000 miles of underground pipelines, 84 reservoir basins and tanks with combined storage of 1 billion gallons, 55 pumping stations, and more than 80 groundwater wells. It shares staffing resources with Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), the wholesale water provider.
LVVWD’s biggest infrastructure investment in the near future depends on the definition of future, but during the next 10 years it’s Horizon Lateral.
“The Horizon Lateral is the new major lateral that takes [water] all the way from our treatment plant at Lake Mead across the southern portion of the valley all the way to the I-15 corridor,” said John Entsminger, general manager, LVVWD. “The number one reason we need that is for redundancy, but it also helps open up additional areas of development in West Henderson, and then down the I-15 corridor.”
The number two project is LVVWD investments in Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Pure Water Project, probably in excess of a billion dollar investment to bring new water supply into the Valley.
The project is a large-scale water recycling effort led by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which functions like SNWA. Currently wastewater in Los Angeles metro is treated and discharged into the Pacific.
Once developed, Pure Water will treat wastewater to a higher standard than the current. Treated water will be injected into the local aquifer where it can be recovered and reused. SNWA is partnering on the project and in return will receive a share of that water in the form of receiving more Colorado River water, accessed from its existing infrastructure at Lake Mead. The project likely won’t be running until the 2030s, but it’s paving the way for clean water and facilitating economic development in the Valley.
LVVWD is in the process of running water to and receiving wastewater to be treated from Apex Industrial Park in Garnet Valley. “One of the most important aspects of this project is that the water and wastewater infrastructure is being constructed in tandem,” said Entsminger. “This will help ensure that all wastewater generated at Apex is safely recovered, highly treated, and returned to Lake Mead.” A gallon in allows a gallon out; it’s essentially a closed loop. Garnet Valley is a major investment. LVVWD’s board approved a $3.2 billion capital plan for it.
So does Southern Nevada have the capacity to support current and future growth? That depends on what’s meant by capacity. LVVWD’s annual 50-year plan presented last year didn’t show a scenario where the region would run out of water in the next 50 years, provided conservation goals are met. “If the community meets the conservation goals, then we’ll have enough waster to support growth and economic development and economic diversification for at least the next five decades,” said Entsminger. “If we fall behind in our conservation goals, then we would have to have a different conversation.”
In Northern Nevada, Truckee Meadows Water Authority (TMWA) faces the same conversations. TMWA produces the Water Resource Plan every five years, using information from their internal economist and from Washoe County Consensus Forecast used for regional planning uses. The most recent 20-year forecast indicates TMWA has a robust water supply.
“We look at the forecast for the next 20 years to see the population we can expect, then look at our existing usage rates for how much water people use on an annual basis, and that gives us the number of acre feet we know we’re going to have to supply in the future,” said John Zimmerman, general manager, TMWA.
Northern Nevada’s robust water supply is based on rights to the Truckee River from two major historic agreements. The Truckee River Operating Agreement signed by the state of California, state of Nevada, Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, US Department of the Interior, and TMWA, which governs the reservoirs.
The other agreement, the Orr Ditch Decree from 1944, established the total number of water rights on the Truckee. “We’re fortunate the court did not grant more water rights on paper than there was wet water in the system,” said Zimmerman. “That makes it a bit more resilient than the Colorado. It’s a smaller system, and that helps, too.”
TMWA’s biggest infrastructure project concerns recapturing wastewater. The Advanced Purified Water project, or the American Flat project, is a partnership with City of Reno to build a water reclamation facility near Lemmon Valley. “We’re looking at a way to handle the treated effluent,” said Zimmerman.
The $200 million project is expensive for the amount of water the region will be getting, but it will be the first of its kind in Nevada. It’s not necessary to supply water in the next five to 10 years, but despite Northern Nevada water resources looking good for the next 20 years, circumstances can always change.
The end product from the project will be water that exceeds current drinking water standards. “It’s called indirect potable use because we don’t send it right into our distribution system,” said Zimmerman. First, it will irrigate agriculture as its safety is tested, then injected into the aquifer. The idea is to use it for drought storage, water ready to be chlorinated and sent into the distribution system.
Northern Nevada also gets water from snowpack. In the winter of 2025-26, by February, snowpack was only 57 percent of an average year, but a few good snowstorms could build it to 100 percent, Zimmerman said. “We had a few good years recently as far as snow pack, and the upstream reservoirs are in pretty good health. Tahoe may get close to filling this year, depending on what the rest of the water season does.”
Truckee River agreements don’t allow any party to store water in the federal reservoirs until April, partly because the reservoirs then have room to store more water as a flood control method, and partly so there’s room to store snowmelt if a warm spring makes the melt-off come faster than usual.
Northern Nevada water demand is expected to grow at 1.8 percent annually for the next 20 years. To meet that demand, developers in Northern Nevada are required to dedicate necessary water rights to TMWA with an additional 11 percent for drought reserves.
Consumer patterns have changed over the years to become more conservation-minded. When the 2015 drought hit, residents were asked to reduce water use by 10 percent; they responded by reducing by 9 to 16 percent, and keeping use down.
Light It Up—Poles, Wires, Power
In Southern Nevada, in Pahrump and surrounding territory, Valley Electric functions as a cooperative serving its customers, who are also its owners.
“Electric co-op and an IOU (investor-owned utility) are very similar in functions in that we do poles, wires, provide energy services to our customers, or members, depending on the business model,” said Robby Hamlin, CEO, Valley Electric Association. (VEA) “The difference is in the governance and ownership.”
Co-op ownership is by the members. IOU ownership is by shareholders and investors who get a rate of return. With the co-op, their margin or profit goes directly back into the system and back to the members because they’re the owners.
“From the governance side of it, within a co-op members elect the board of directors who in turn hire the CEO—me,” said Hamlin.
The board also determines rates and financials. The only place VEA is governed by the Public Utilities Commission is setting boundaries for the utility’s service territory. Rates, terms of service, and everything else is done locally by the board of directors.
VEA’s subsidiary Valley Communications Association (VCA) is currently three years into their biggest project, Fiber-to-the-Home. “Around 2014 or 15, when Valley Communications started, they began providing wireless solutions in the Pahrump area,” said Hamlin. Rural internet in the area wasn’t very good, and VCA embarked on a wireless broadband that reached the end of its life in 2022. Faced with exiting completely, upgrading the existing system, or converting to fiber, VEA borrowed the money, making the project $45 to $50 million all private investment in Pahrump.
Today the backbone is 100 percent deployed and about half of VEA’s customers converted to fiber. “Hopefully by the end of the third quarter of this year those last conversions will be done,” said Hamlin. At the same time VEA is doing conversions they’re installing new customers.
Statewide, NV Energy is continuing construction activity on Greenlink West, a major transmission project set to transform Nevada’s electrical landscape. The utility is erecting transmission towers and preparing to string wires.
“Transmission projects are often referred to as ‘energy highways’ because they enable the transfer of electricity across long distances. The completion of Greenlink West and Greenlink North, along with the existing One Nevada Line, creates a triangle of transmission in the state, ensuring we can meet the needs of our customers. Greenlink Nevada results in modernization of the grid, improves reliability for customers and positions NV Energy to meet Nevada’s energy needs,” said Brandon Barkhuff, president and CEO, NV Energy.
Another project paving the way for the electrical future is Sierra Solar, a battery and energy storage project located about 30 miles from Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (TRIC), designed to produce more than 1.2 million megawatt-hours of power annually.
(Now You’re Cooking With) Gas
The growth at TRIC is also driving Southwest Gas to new projects, including the Great Basin Transmission Company, a $1.7 billion investment of 200 miles of pipeline running from the Idaho/Nevada border across Northern Nevada to the California border. The three-year project won’t roll out incrementally, but is targeted to go into service in November of 2028.
“The current system is about 900 miles long across that region and they flow about 250,000-dekatherms a day on the system. The interest they’ve received is actually nearly four times that, like 800,000-dekatherms a day,” said Justin Brown, president, Southwest Gas.
In 2025, Southwest’s five-year plan included an estimated spend of $880 million over a five year period. The utility would invest $4.3 billion across Nevada with the Great Basin project included in that, Brown said. Meeting capacity needs for organic growth in other markets like Mesquite continues to facilitate economic development in those areas and is helpful in bringing in new development increasing tax base, and providing jobs.
The Price is Right
Pricing for water in Southern Nevada during the current economic landscape is pretty flat, said Entsminger. Board-approved increases basically just keep track with the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Which matters because the components of the utility—steel, concrete, salaries for engineers—is the base CPI. “We’ve been able to manage our budget within those previously approved increases,” said Entsminger. When compared to 63 Western cities, LVVWD is right at the 50th percentile – not high, not low, pretty much affordable.
TMWA’s system is one of the most complicated in the West based on topography alone. There are multiple treatment plants, 86 ground water wells, aquifer storage and recovery where TMWA takes treaded surface water when it’s plentiful and injects it into the aquifer for future use. TMWA works to keep aquifers as healthy as possible while maintaining infrastructure and keeping rates low.
Two of the biggest costs in treating water and pumping it through the system is electric power and chemical costs. TMWA responds by trying to fill tanks during times when NV Energy’s prices are lower and optimizing chemicals for treatment without affecting quality.
Electric utilities costs include both infrastructure and energy. Like other utilities, VEA faces higher metal, wire, fuel, and labor prices as they buy wire, poles, transformers, connectors, and vehicles. There’s been some flattening of increases to one, two or three percent that might be expected, not the 15 to 20 percent they’ve been seeing.
Costs for customers is lower than average in the US. As of November 2025, federal data shows NV Energy’s average retail price was 25 percent lower than the national average and 63 percent lower than California’s, said Barkhuff
The price is right, but does the region have capacity to support ongoing growth?
“Generally, yes,” said Hamlin. Capacity includes poles, wires, transmission lines feeding into the area. That side of the question is a definite yes.
The harder question is the energy itself, because VEA doesn’t own any generation, they buy all their energy and turn it around and resell it. There are long-term contracts for hydro power from Hoover Dam, from the Colorado River Commission, and some bought on the open market. “Those are done [a] year ahead, month ahead, day ahead, depending on what the needs are at the time,” said Hamlin.
As the push to renewable/solar energy continues and battery storage solutions make it possible, at the same time gas-fired plants are being retired. So while currently there’s enough capacity to support growth, as new data centers go online there’s the question of keeping up with demand, said Hamlin. VEA continues to review resource plans and load forecasts to ensure they’re matched favorably with predicted growth.
NV Energy is addressing growing energy demands by requiring data centers and their developers to sign contractual obligations ensuring growth pays its own way, protecting existing customers from costs associated with large-demand projects, according to Barkhuff.
Utilities don’t work alone in providing resources. End-users play a part, reducing use, conserving resources, and understanding processes.
“I always want to thank the community for being so proactive,” said Entsminger. “Southern Nevada has literally led the world in urban water conservation, and that’s allowed us to have the diverse productive economy that we enjoy here. I hope everyone continues to do their part [as] we will continue to lead the way.”
