It was supposed to be a routine meeting for the Southern Nevada Health District to discuss regulations surrounding septic tanks in Las Vegas. Instead, roughly 1,000 people showed up in protest. 

Videos of the meeting show angry residents questioning the health district about the proposals as officials tried to calm the crowd. Technology and space issues exacerbated the situation with lines of people waiting to speak at the Centennial Hills YMCA. 

“It was a meeting that had a lot of emotion. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Christian Salmon, a septic tank owner and a Las Vegas resident, said about the meeting last month. 

On account of the pushback, officials ended the meeting without a vote on the proposals. According to Jennifer Sizemore, a representative from the Southern Nevada Health District, the agency that oversees the regulations of septic tanks, a new meeting to discuss “withdrawing the proposed updates following public feedback” has been set for today, March 11. 

“Considering the fact that we wasted your time tonight, I apologize,” North Las Vegas Councilman Scott Black, chair of the health district’s board, told the crowd. 

Last year, Southern Nevada Health District had proposed that homeowners get a $226 septic tank permit every five years, instead of obtaining a one-time permit. Homes within 400 feet of a main sewer line would potentially also be compelled to switch to the municipal sewer line if they had to do major repairs or update their septic tanks. The agency had also proposed a 30-day notification after the sale of a property so that the authority could provide new owners with “educational materials” on septic systems. 

If homeowners failed to meet the proposed rules, the health district would have had the authority to deny their septic tank permits, leaving them to meet requirements or convert to the municipal sewer line. However, after pushback in October, the proposed five-year permitting system would only apply to new septic tanks. The vote today is to either dismiss the proposals completely or continue public outreach. 

The issue is touchy for some homeowners partially due to AB220, an expansive water conservation bill passed in 2023 that included subsidized incentives for converting septic tanks to the city’s main water line. Septic tanks are typically below ground containers that treat waste from a home or collection of homes that aren’t hooked up to municipal sewer systems. After the wastewater is treated and safe, it is dispersed into the ground. 

With an average of 4 inches of rain per year, experts say every drop of water counts — water from septic tanks can’t be treated and returned to Lake Mead and is therefore lost.

There are roughly 14,000 septic tanks in the region, 8,300 of which are connected to municipal water sources, not a private well system, according to the Southern Nevada Water Authority.  

The process to convert a septic tank to the main sewage line can be expensive, and falls mostly on the homeowner. Some residents said prices could be upwards of $500,000 to convert their tanks, though it can also be as low as $10,000. Though there are subsidies from the state, they only cover up to $40,000, or up to 85 percent of the total cost. 

Sajjad Ahmad, an environmental engineering professor at UNLV, said the financial burden of converting the tanks should not fall on residents. 

“I can understand the resistance,” said Ahmad, who said he sympathizes with homeowners. “Because the benefits will be distributed to society and everyone will be better off, agencies should come up with a way to fund those projects.” 

Wastewater, not wasted water

Officials and experts say that the water saved from the septic tanks can make a lot of difference over time. If all septic tank owners converted their tanks tomorrow, the city would save less than 1 percent of its total water usage, a number that adds up when spaced over a decade, according to Bronson Mack, a representative from the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the main agency that deals with water use in Southern Nevada. 

The water from septic tanks would be recycled, giving Nevada “return flow credits” that cannot be used by other basin states. With every gallon of water the state puts in, it is allowed to take another gallon out of Lake Mead, stretching the amount of water the state can use. 

In Las Vegas, all water used indoors makes its way into wastewater collections or the sanitary sewer system where it is treated to near drinking water standard and returned to Lake Mead, according to Mack. Outdoor water is trickier because it can’t be returned to Lake Mead. 

“The only way we consume water from the Colorado River is our outdoor irrigation, our trees, our plants, our landscaping, and our septic systems that aren’t able to return any of that indoor water use,” Mack said, who also mentioned evaporative cooling — such as swamp coolers — as a water drain. 

If all the homes in Las Vegas with septic tanks hooked up to municipal water converted to the main sewer line, that could mean an extra 2,000 acre-feet annually — an amount equivalent to how much 6,000 households use in a year. The number might seem low on top of on top of Nevada’s 300,000 acre-feet allotment but Ahmad said the region’s water supply is limited. 

“Water is a serious challenge, an existential challenge if you look at the longer time horizon,” Ahmad, an expert in water management, said in an interview. “Conservation buys us some time.” 

Originally, AB220 proposed a mandatory conversion program — residents had to convert their tanks by 2054 or face fines. However, the final form of the bill is a voluntary program and offers some financial assistance, according to Mack. 

Spokespeople for both agencies have stressed that the health district and the water authority are separate entities — however, the two have sometimes been conflated in the conversation around septics. Though the AB220 conversion process is voluntary, Salmon said the Southern Nevada Health District’s new rules were a covert pressure on septic tank owners to make the change on behalf of the water authority. 

“The government needs to pay for it if they want it,” Salmon said, who added that he thought the health agency’s push for new rules was "intellectually dishonest.” Salmon also said the cost of the septic tank was just one aspect of the conversion. “Some people don’t want their homes torn up.” 

Why does Las Vegas have so little water? 

The context of the septic tank issue lies in the nature of the city. Las Vegas is located in the Mojave Desert and has a limited capacity for supporting large cities, something that not all residents who have relocated from regions with unlimited water understand, Ahmad said. 

After Las Vegas exploded — the city grew 700 percent since the 1970s — finding water for a growing population only became more pressing. According to Mack, the city has made considerable strides in its water use in the past two decades — cutting down water use by 55 percent since 2002.

Las Vegas has had to get creative with saving its water — including removing 250 million square feet of grass, prohibiting the installation of new grass, limiting residential pool sizes, putting a moratorium on evaporative cooling methods, as well as creating the voluntary septic conversion program.  

Some residents, such as Laura McSwain, the founder of the water activism group Water Fairness Coalition, a grassroots organization focused on water use, said the issue lies outside of Nevada. McSwain, who was present at the septic tank meeting, has long advocated against excessive water use fees, as well as cutting water for Las Vegas’ non-native trees and grasses. 

McSwain doesn’t think there is a water shortage — instead, she blames the water issue on how the water usage rights were originally allocated in 1922 when the Colorado River Compact was written. Other residents in the septic fight have also called the compact unfair. 

The compact is a water use agreement between the seven basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada and California — as well as Mexico. Nevada gets 4 percent of the lower basin states’ allocation — California gets 58.7 percent of the allocation and Arizona gets 37.3 percent. 

“The problem is that the other states haven’t done what we’ve done,” McSwain said, who said that Nevada, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, needs to stand up to the federal government to find a more permanent solution to the water allocation problem. “I’m suggesting that we protect what we have in terms of our water and use the resources that we have to get more water.”  

However, experts and officials say renegotiating the contract is not feasible. Changes to the compact would require the approval of the seven state negotiators, the seven governors, authorization from both houses of Congress as well as a signature from the president. 

“It’s not going to happen,” Ahmad said about getting a larger share, though he also said that Nevada maybe did “not negotiate well.” With a population of 81,000 in 1922, the water needs of Nevada in 1922 were low compared with what they are today. To get more water, Ahmad said Nevada would have to cut into the water shares of other states, which he said would be challenging politically. 

The compact is undergoing challenges. Dry states are experiencing what scientists call “aridification,” driven by warming temperatures and a persistent, multidecade-long drought cycle. This change has strained the compact agreement further — last month, Colorado River state negotiators failed to reach an agreement on how to allocate the water and are still at an impasse. 

“If you have any question about whether or not climate change is real, all you need to do is look at the flows of the Colorado River since the year 2000,” Mack said. “It is incumbent on us as water users to ensure that we are using this limited water supply as efficiently as we can.”