LAS VEGAS (AP) After a three-year battle to keep their underground job site from flooding, a construction crew at Lake Mead is ready to let the water win.
Workers will shut off pumps keeping the water out and allow it to fill a cavern they have carefully excavated from the rock more than 500 ft. beneath the shore.
The move will mark the latest milestone for the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s low-lake-level pumping station, a $650 million safety net for a region of 2.2 million residents and more than 40 million tourists that draws 90 percent of its drinking water from the Colorado River reservoir behind Hoover Dam.
The pumping station, on track for completion in early 2020, will let Las Vegas keep drawing water even if the drought-stricken lake shrinks another 200 ft. to "dead pool," the point at which Hoover Dam can no longer release water downstream.
"This project is drought-driven," Erika Moonin, project manager for the Las Vegas-based authority, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal during a recent final media tour of the underground pump station forebay.
Once those pumps are off, the space should flood within three or four days.
"There aren’t very many projects like this in the world," said Jordan Hoover, project manager for Montana-based Barnard Construction Co., general contractor for the pump station.
The completed facility will be able to draw up to 900 million gal.
"In combination of depth and flow, they are the largest in the world," Moonin said.
It takes four to five truckloads to deliver a single pump.