City looks to extend utilities east to the Lyon County line

With space to grow rapidly disappearing, Carson City is trying to see what it would take to extend city utilities east along Highway 50 to the Lyon County line.

City supervisors are scheduled to vote Thursday on a contract with a Seattle engineering firm to study the prospect of extending water and sewer lines from the Morgan Mill and Deer Run Road area more than a mile east to the county line.

The lack of city utilities near Lyon County stands in the way of any major development there, said Carson City Principal Planner Lee Plemel.

"We have private properties with limited development potential because there's no water or sewer service," Plemel said. "There's a lot of properties with that potential."

Property owners in far east Carson City have asked about getting utilities in the past, said City Engineer Larry Werner, including First Christian Church, which is being displaced this year because of a city project to extend Stewart Street.

Depending on where planners decide to end the V&T rail line, extension of city utilities could also benefit efforts to restore the historic railway. One site being considered for the last V&T depot is near Deer Run Road, which is already close to water and sewer lines, but another possible site is near Lyon County where the potential extension project would bring utilities.

While it would expand the options for the V&T Commission, that is not the "primary benefit" of utility extension, Plemel said.

About 150 acres along Highway 50 near Lyon County are privately owned. The rest is mostly owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Usually, developers pay to extend water and sewer pipes piece by piece as land next to existing lines is marked for a new business or subdivision.

But much of the land between the nearest utility lines and the county line has already been developed with wells and private septic systems, Werner said. A long stretch of any eastward utility line expansion would serve no one, so no one would pay for it.

The $125,000 study supervisors are slated to vote on Thursday would include an estimate of what kind of service future developments in the area might need as well as an assessment of the different ways water and sewer lines might be extended to the county line, how much each option would cost, and how it might be funded.

If approved, the study will begin this spring and be finished as soon as October.

n Contact reporter Cory McConnell at cmcconnell@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1217.

What's happening

City supervisors are considering whether spend $125,000 to study the prospect of extending water and sewer lines to the Lyon County line.

If you go

What: Carson City Board of Supervisors meeting

When: 8:30 a.m. Thursday

Where: Sierra Room of the Carson City Community Center, 851 E. William St.