In this episode of 21st Century Water, we sit down with John J. Entsminger, General Manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) and the Las Vegas Valley Water District. John oversees the water supply for 2.5 million residents and 40 million visitors annually in one of the most water-stressed regions of the United States. He shares his journey from environmental law to leading a major water utility and highlights the pivotal moments that shaped his approach to water management, including the 2002 Colorado River drought and the 2007-2009 recession.
John explains the vast scale of SNWA’s infrastructure, from its 250 miles of massive pipelines to the 7,000 miles of distribution lines in the Las Vegas Valley Water District. With climate change and cybersecurity as the biggest challenges facing water utilities, he emphasizes how SNWA has aggressively tackled conservation. Through innovative measures like removing non-functional turf, enforcing watering schedules, and deploying water enforcement officers, Southern Nevada has added 800,000 people since 2002 while reducing total water consumption by 35-40%.
We discuss the importance of strategic investments, including a $1.5 billion low-lake-level pumping station at Lake Mead, designed purely for redundancy to secure supply. John also shares insights into international and interstate water negotiations, where he has played a key role in agreements involving the seven Colorado River Basin states and Mexico. He highlights the delicate balance of ensuring every party “loses” just enough to reach a compromise that sustains long-term water management.
A key advantage for Las Vegas is its ability to recycle nearly 100% of indoor water use. Thanks to its unique geography, all wastewater is treated and returned to Lake Mead, allowing for legal return flow credits. The city’s only significant water losses come from outdoor irrigation, evaporative cooling, and septic systems, which SNWA is actively addressing. John also discusses their use of innovative leak detection technology, AI-powered predictive maintenance, and automated metering to enhance efficiency.
One remarkable case study is how SNWA worked with Formula 1 to make the Las Vegas Grand Prix the first net-positive water race in history. By offsetting race-related water use with an atmospheric water generator installed at MGM, the event saved more water than it consumed. John sees AI playing an increasing role in optimizing pipeline maintenance and customer leak detection, making conservation even more effective.
Another is the building 54 weirs, which are erosion-controlled structures to slow down the water. And over the last 20 years, the number one source of materials for those weirs is imploded old casinos.
As we wrap up, John reflects on his legacy, emphasizing pragmatism and the importance of speaking truth to power. His leadership has positioned Southern Nevada as a global model for water conservation and resilience, proving that even in the face of extreme scarcity, strategic planning and innovation can secure a sustainable water future.
More:
Las Vegas Valley Water District: https://www.lvvwd.com/
Southern Nevada Water Authority: https://www.snwa.com/
21st Century Water - Las Vegas
Speakers: Mahesh Lunani & John J. Entsminger
[Music Playing]
Voiceover (00:01):
Tremendous challenges and opportunities exist right now for our nation's water infrastructure. In this podcast, the industry's top leaders and innovative minds share their knowledge and insights for ensuring our water systems are operating safely and efficiently.
These discussions are designed to motivate and create vibrant 21st century water systems and the innovative workforce required to lead and operate them.
This is 21st Century Water, with your host, Aquasight Founder and CEO, Mahesh Lunani.
Mahesh Lunani (00:33):
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I'm delighted to welcome John J. Entsminger. He's the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Las Vegas Valley Water District.
John leads an infrastructure that provides water resources for 2 million residents, 2 million residents, and over 40 million annual visitors in one of the most water stressed regions in the country. His career is not only been dedicated to address Southern Nevada's unique challenges, but also, he has been instrumental in landmark agreements for Colorado River Management.
I'm excited to host John, understand his journey, understand his insights and his visionary approaches in terms of water resources in the western part of our country. Welcome, John.
John J. Entsminger (01:26):
Thank you very much for having me.
Mahesh Lunani (01:28):
A real pleasure, real pleasure. I want to get right into it. You're an attorney, and this is not a typical role of attorneys to run water departments, although there have been few very successful ones in this industry.
What motivated you to come into this industry and address complex water challenges? What's your journey like, and what's been a couple of pivotal moments in your career?
John J. Entsminger (01:52):
Yeah, just in terms of addressing how an attorney winds up as the CEO of a major water utility, I went to law school at the University of Colorado and spent the last two years of law school focused really heavily on environmental and water policy issues.
Got hired straight into SNWA out of law school. Had a goal probably to be like general counsel, but over time, you get horizontally integrated into the organization and wound up as the general manager.
And if you look at a Jeff Kightlinger or aJim Lockhead at Denver Water, I think having attorneys in the CEO role is far more common in the western United States than it is in the eastern United States, where you probably see a lot more engineers and operator types getting into those roles. In terms of pivotal moments that kind of shape, I guess my worldview or how I look to run a water utility, four big ones.
The drought that hit the Colorado River in 2002, I was three years out of law school, but at that point, SNWA’s water resource plan showed us a secure 50-year water supply, but was reliant from 2001 to 2016 on surplus water from the Colorado River. And that went away by 2003. So, we were really scrambling.
So, never underestimate the worst-case scenario in resource planning was a pivotal moment in my career. And then the 2007 to 2009 recession, SNWA went from having $188 million a year in connection charge revenues from new growth to refunding $3 billion in 2009 (chuckles).
So, again, the lesson of the worst-case scenario is something that has really stuck with me. But on the flip side of that, I've been fortunate enough to work on processes that resulted in the signing of the 2007 guidelines to operate the Colorado River, to see the drought contingency plan put through.
In 2019, they passed Congress 535 to zero. Show me one other piece of legislation that's passed 535 to zero in recent memory. So, it's this dichotomy of, on my one shoulder I have this, you got to really plan for a worse-case scenario, but on the other shoulder, strike when the iron's hot and not let an opportunity go by. So, that's what shaped my view of how I try to operate in the water sector.
Mahesh Lunani (04:16):
Excellent. That's a great kind of ambidextrous approach of managing risks, at the same time, taking advantage of the opportunity.
John J. Entsminger (04:24):
Absolutely.
Mahesh Lunani (04:25):
So, SNWA, it's a huge organization. We take it for granted how big it is, especially when you have a very dynamic demand. You got 2 million residents, about 40 million visitors coming in and out. Can you explain to me the size and scale of your assets and operations, and how exactly do you ensure reliability in a very challenging environment which you are in, in terms of the water supply?
John J. Entsminger (04:52):
Sure. The first thing to keep in mind is I actually oversee two utilities, the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Las Vegas Valley Water District. And the easiest way to understand the difference is SNWA is a hundred percent of the wholesale for those 2.5 million residents and 40 million visitors. Las Vegas Valley Water District is about 70% of the retail.
So, when you look at our infrastructure, SNWA only has 250 miles of pipe, but it's all 10-to-12-foot diameter laterals, two main water treatment facilities, three pump stations that combined can treat and deliver 900 million gallons of water a day to our community.
But then you flip over to the retail side of things, and the Las Vegas Valley Water District has 7,000 miles of pipe. So, you can run our pipe from San Diego to New York and back, and still have an extra thousand miles of pipeline that we're taking care of on a daily basis. We have 84 reservoirs, 50 pumping stations.
So, the difference between the macro and the micro, on a daily basis running both a hundred percent of the wholesale, but 70% of the retail in my experience, is a unique challenge in the water sector. Regional authorities, big retail systems – I'm unaware of a situation where they've been married together like they have been in Southern Nevada.
Mahesh Lunani (06:23):
Yeah, no, definitely. And it's complex, very complex and massive in terms of operations. You have external factors are super critical in your case, especially as it pertains to climate or drought and so on.
How do you go about addressing those challenges both at an operational and strategic level in your role? And that would help with the wholesale part of your business and the retail part of your business?
John J. Entsminger (06:52):
Yeah, I mean, our two biggest challenges (and I don't think this is unique to Southern Nevada) are climate change and cybersecurity. So, I think right now, what we're really focusing in on more is the climate change aspect that Las Vegas and Southern Nevada as a whole, we're 90% reliant upon the Colorado River.
And it is a river that just with the data we already have in the 21st century, looks like it's going to be diminished by 20% over what the river was getting in the 20th century. And if you listen to smart climate change experts like the Brad Udalls and the Jonathan Overpecks, they're telling you the situation's going to get worse by mid-century.
So, we're 90% reliant upon a declining system, and there's no large-scale obvious ways to augment the supply side of the equation. There are things, and we can talk about it later, maybe in terms of SNWA's participation with Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and their Pure Water Project, but you're mostly forced into dealing with the demand side of the equation. So, that's conservation.
And that's why I think SNWA has emerged, and so, Nevada has emerged as a world leader in urban water conservation. It's not because we're better or more altruistic people than anybody else on the planet. It's because necessity demands that we come up with conservation and demand management programs to secure our water supply. So, that's led to the removal of a tremendous amount of turf in the valley.
We've added about 800,000 people to Southern Nevada since 2002, and reduced our overall water consumption, our gross or net water consumption by 35, 40%. We have shown you can grow and have a dynamic economy with not just a zero-water footprint, but with a negative water footprint.
And then the second part of that sustainability is ability to ensure your means of delivery. Because all of our water is pumped out of Lake Mead, and Lake Mead people have seen the satellite, it's fallen 140, 150 feet this century. So, we have invested $1.5 billion in a new low lake level pump station, a new third intake that didn't increase our ability to pump or treat water by one gallon. It was all for redundancy, all for water security.
So, you don't often think of big water projects as climate change adaptation, but if you want to see what climate change adaptation looks like, come take a tour of our low lake level pump station here in Southern Nevada.
Mahesh Lunani (09:52):
It sounds like you really tackled the demand side of the equation in spite of the massive population increase per capita consumption dramatically reduced, and replacement of turf played a big role. And then obviously, improving your supply side by building up this low lake pump station at Lake Mead so you can continue to get the supply.
So, widely different strategies here. One is changing behavior; the other one is building assets. I want to talk about the size and scale as you talked about your wholesale retail arm, pretty significant. And I assume you have a significant budget, both capital-wise and O&M-wise.
Can you just identify what these dollar amounts we're talking about, and where is the majority of investments going?
John J. Entsminger (10:36):
On the SNWA side, our operating budget this year is about 307 million dollars, and our capital budget is $416 million. I would note that I expect that capital number to go up significantly over the next couple of years.
We have some big projects in the queue, probably for most of the 2020s, we'll be spending about half a billion dollars a year in capital on the water authority side of the equation. And then on the water district side, our operating budget’s about $380 million and our capital budget's about 170 million.
The reason for that is on the water district side, development … like if there's a new reservoir that needs to be built, the developers are required to build that. So, that's not technically within our capital budget.
So, our capital budget is mostly capital maintenance, taking care of those 7,000 miles of pipelines, those 54 pumping stations. So, it's a little more of an O&M on the retail side than it is system expansion on the wholesale side.
Mahesh Lunani (11:42):
So, this budget includes both SNWA and Las Vegas Valley Water District, both?
John J. Entsminger (11:49):
Yeah. But if you're taking them in combination, capital and operating for SNWA is over 700 million. And capital and operating for LVVWD is approaching 600 million. So, between the two utilities, you're in excess of a billion dollars, capital and operating.
Mahesh Lunani (12:06):
You talked about the investment priorities going on, but one of the big things that was instrumental is the water sharing agreements, that you have been instrumental as part of. Can you describe what that is about and what effort got in, and what are the long-term implications of it?
John J. Entsminger (12:23):
Yeah, so I guess I've been fortunate to be a part of several different negotiations throughout my career. The quantification settlement agreement was the first one in Southern California, which kind of got California into balance.
And from there, we went into the 2007 guidelines, which are basically the rules for how seven states can operate on the Colorado River, operation of Glen Canyon Dam, operation of Hoover Dam, circumstances under which Arizona and Nevada will take shortages.
And then going into negotiations with Mexico, which I think is oftentimes an overlooked piece of this because in the United States, you have seven states that share the river, but there's also a 1944 treaty with the country of Mexico.
And so, the process of opening a dialogue where it really couldn't just be the U.S. State Department and the Mexican federal government having the conversation because it's counterintuitive a bit, but the United States government doesn't own any water on the Colorado River. They operate the dams, but they don't own any water.
So, most of what the Mexican government wanted to negotiate for was things only the seven states could agree to. And that resulted in a series going back to probably 2008, the series of what they call minutes, which are essentially addendums to the treaty, minute 316, then the big one in 319, and the next one in minute 323, where ultimately, Mexico agreed to take shortages commensurate with what the United States agreed to take.
And the United States for the first time ever allowed Mexico to bank their water, their unused treaty water in our facilities, essentially in Lake Mead so that they could use that water at a future date. So, this pretty constant negotiation from about 1999 to the present day. I've been in seven state negotiations twice in the last two weeks (laughs).
So, it's this constant negotiation that's produced some really good results, but also has us facing continued challenges, because all that stuff that we've negotiated from the late nineties through particularly 2019 timeframe, everything expires at the end of 2026. So, we essentially have to renegotiate or re-up or renew what the rules of the road are going to be going into the future.
So, just lessons learned from that. I think in business, people talk about win scenarios and (laughs) everybody's got to win. In the water world, it's the inverse, everybody's going to lose. And figuring out how to do that delicately so that I can go home and tell the elected officials I work for that this is what we gave up, but also gaining the certainty that at least I have this much left, is a real balance. And then there's been lots of thesis written about negotiations and the size of the table and everything else.
And I guess what I would tell you from my experience in negotiating these deals, you have to have the real parties in interest at the table. Having somebody with a title or your federal official XYZ doesn't mean you have skin in the game. You actually have to have the people who have skin in the game sitting at the table. And it needs to be a relatively small table. And there will be people … I've been criticized, oh you like the backroom deals and all that.
And I'm like, no, I just have never been part of a negotiation with more than 20 people that ever achieved anything. And if you want to have transparency in a congress of 200 or 300 stakeholders sitting at a table, then you're probably not going very far. So, it needs to be big enough to be representative, but it needs to be small enough to be intimate and build those human relationships that ultimately, result in being able to achieve compromise.
Mahesh Lunani (16:28):
John, that is a fascinating insight. And not only as a water utility leader taking on cross border participation, but also driving negotiations for a successful conclusion, that is a lose-lose for everybody. And that's credit to obviously your attorney background and knowing how to make these kinds of transactions work.
You already discussed conservation measures in terms of turf replacements and things like that. Are there other important initiatives that you have rolled out within your service area that are worthy of sharing/discussing how this per capita consumption has dramatically decreased within your jurisdiction?
John J. Entsminger (17:14):
(Laughs) I never get tired of talking about conservation in Southern Nevada. I think we have a good story to tell. So, maybe just to give a little bit more detail.
Far and away, our most successful program is what we call our Water Smart Landscape Rebate Program. We used to call it Cash for Grass, the Drug Enforcement Agency asked us to stop calling it that, so we relabeled it as Water Smart Landscaping.
And to date, that has replaced 242 million square feet of turf, which represents an annual water savings of 13.5 billion gallons, or 203 billion gallons to date that has been saved from that program across 90,000 individual water conservation projects.
So, it’s been a massive effort to bring the culture of conservation, the ethic of conservation, the acceptance of living in the Mojave Desert for people who largely have moved here from other places. Most of the people that live in Las Vegas came from places with a lot more water.
They came from the Midwest and the Northeast and the South and are very used to having big, lush lawns and getting them to accept that native landscaping can be beautiful too, and that you don't need grass that isn't going to be played on. We had grass in highway mediums (laughs). We had grass in places … our definition of non-functional turf is if you won't let your kid or grandkids play on it, then we don't need it in Southern Nevada.
So, the grass has been a major effort, but mandatory watering schedules, getting people to both seasonally, time of day, days of week, apply the amount of water that their landscape actually needs to thrive is a major effort, both educationally and enforcement. And then I would highlight that enforcement measure.
I don't know of any other city that actually has water cop cars. We have cars that say water enforcement with sirens and flashing lights (laughs), and they drive through neighborhoods and write tickets to people who are breaking the rules.
And I think it just highlights the fact that we're a city that if you take a step back, Nevada has a legal entitlement to 1.8% of the Colorado River. And that's 90% of the water supply for 76% of the state's population and 79% of the state's economy.
So, we're incredibly reliant upon an imperiled water source. And hence all of these steps that we've taken to ensure that source is sufficient, both for our existing population and for future population growth.
And now, there'll be people that say pull up the drawbridge, no more growth. I've lived in Las Vegas since 1999. I think since that time, 900,000 people or so have moved to Southern Nevada. Not one of them has ever picked up the phone and asked us if we had enough water before they moved here.
And the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas says we can expect over the next 50 years that our population will probably increase to about 3.7 million from 2.5 million. So, you have no choice but to plan to protect your existing population, but also plan to accommodate in migration just domestically without even considering anything internationally.
Mahesh Lunani (20:52):
Fascinating measures. Did you actually say (I want to reconfirm) that you only have access to 1.5% of the Colorado River aqueduct?
John J. Entsminger (21:00):
1.8%.
Mahesh Lunani (21:01):
1.8%, wow. And that's pretty much serving 78% of the population of the state of Nevada, right?
John J. Entsminger (21:08):
90% of 78% (laughs). I just always want to be precise, but-
Mahesh Lunani (21:15):
These numbers fascinate me and it's quite a story on many fronts. One of the things that are being talked quite a bit in the past is circular economy. How you could use wastewater to repurpose for many things you can do besides in some cases drinking water. But even that technology has improved dramatically. Are you doing anything on that front to repurpose, reuse wastewater in your system?
John J. Entsminger (21:40):
We've talked about like some of the challenges that we have here in Southern Nevada. One of the huge benefits that we have, a huge strategic advantage that we have is we're on the shore of Lake Mead. So, Las Vegas as a city sits entirely upstream of Hoover Dam.
So, because of that, we can take every drop of water that hits a drain in Southern Nevada, we can treat it to near drinking water standards. And we can convey it down what's known as the Las Vegas Wash. Because Las Vegas is a funnel. Las Vegas has mountain ranges on three sides of it, and a big manmade lake on the fourth side.
So, we take every drop of water that hits a drain, we treat it, and we put it back into the lake. And we get legally what's known as our return flow credits, we get to take that same amount of water back out of the lake.
So, everything indoors in Las Vegas is zero water use. It doesn't deplete anything from the system. The way I try to visualize it for people is, you could turn on every shower head and every faucet in every hotel room on the Las Vegas strip, leave them running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and you won't deplete any more water out of Lake Mead because it's a closed loop.
So, when other communities talk about direct potable reuse or some of these other strategies for water reuse that doesn't apply to us. We're already near 100% indoor recycling. The only way we lose water out of our system is outdoor irrigation. And hence that heavy focus on turf removal, evaporative cooling, which we've now put a moratorium on evaporative cooling in Southern Nevada.
So, if you're going to build a new building in southern Nevada, you have to do it in a way that uses mechanical cooling. And we've seen that. I'll give an example, there's a new data center, $400 million data center being built in North Las Vegas by a company called Nova. And they use a cooling technology that's purely mechanical.
And so, that $400 million data center will have a zero-water footprint, whereas, a legacy data center built just 10 years ago would've had the water footprint of half of a golf course, because people don't realize your smartphone is a water hog.
Cooling those servers, if you're using evaporative cooling is a big water use – outdoor irrigation, evaporative cooling. And then we do have about 19,000 septic systems in the valley that we're going after. Because obviously, if it's going into a septic system, it's not getting back into the sewer, not getting back into the lake.
But those are our control points. If we can reduce and control the amount of water leaving that closed loop through those three mechanisms, then we can get closer and closer to a hundred percent closed loop.
Mahesh Lunani (24:46):
Yeah, no, it's really interesting to see how you've been already designed as a system for closed loops, except these, what I call leakages of some sort. Do you approximately know what percentages is in those spaces where you're leaking compared to what's going back into the Lake Mead?
John J. Entsminger (25:03):
Ultimately, a hundred percent of the net uses going through the three leakages. It depends on how many passes you want to make. But on a first pass, it's probably 40% consumptive, 60% reuse. But then that 60% goes back through again, and then you divide it 60/40, 60/40 until you ultimately get to zero net use inside and outside.
But we deliver probably at least 2023 numbers because I don't think our 2024 numbers have been fully updated. But 2023, we probably delivered to our customers about 550,000-acre feet of water. And we consumptively used 187,000-acre feet.
So, again, I'm unaware, I always hesitate to call us unique because I'm not entirely sure we're the only ones, but I'm unaware of any other utility that your delivery number doesn't actually matter. It's only your consumptive net use number that ultimately matters from a water resource perspective.
Mahesh Lunani (26:09):
So, you are only drawing a hundred thousand-acre feet, as net new from water resources?
John J. Entsminger (26:17):
In terms of what … but forward Las Vegas existing, what would've been in Lake Mead in 2023, that net consumptive use was 187,000-acre feet. Their irrigation districts in Southern California that used 3-million-acre feet a year.
I try to stick up for us as much as I can, but sometimes you have to accept the fact that in terms of mass balance hydrology on the Colorado River, Las Vegas is a rounding error. And people look at the Fountains of Bellagio and they're like, “Oh, how could that be possible?” We're really good at not using water.
Mahesh Lunani (26:52):
This is a really fascinating story, and I hope all the facts you've laid out today are truly well-understood by the audience because it's the fact that you draw so much less net new from water resources. I want to talk about technology innovation, it's growing rapidly.
John J. Entsminger (27:09):
Can I just before we leave that last topic, just because I think it would be fascinating for your audience – I mentioned the Las Vegas Wash, which is how we convey the water back into Lake Mead. We've had to build 54 weirs, which are erosion-controlled structures to slow down the water. And over the last 20 years, the number one source of materials for those weirs is imploded old casinos.
We've taken the El Rancho, the Riviera, the Stardust, these iconic hotels that used to be on the Las Vegas strip. When those got imploded, we took all that waste material and built water control structures to create green infrastructure, world-class wetlands that are home to numerous aquatic and avian endangered species, help the water quality by filtering the water before it gets back into Lake Mead. Sometimes what you see in Las Vegas isn't the whole story, we’ve reused even blown-up hotels.
Mahesh Lunani (28:06):
Yeah, it truly is fascinating John, and I feel like I'm going to view Las Vegas so differently next time I land in the city with all the things you just talked about.
Technology, it's key in the world, key to the water industry. What are you deploying? What are the emerging innovations you're excited about? Could you share your thoughts?
John J. Entsminger (28:29):
Innovation is one of the core elements of our strategic plan. And I've talked a lot about innovation on sort of the conservation side of things, but nuts and bolts technology side of things, our major focus is on leak detection, surge prevention, being able to operate our hydrologic model in a way to optimize our operations.
And I'll give you one example of that. We've deployed a system called Siba SmartEarsin order to be able to detect leaks. And when the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the F1 race came to Las Vegas for the first time in 2023, that SmartEars technology detected a leak under the racetrack. And we knew it could be a major issue for us.
So, that technology let us get in there, sleeve the pipe. We didn't have to dig up the track, but we could sleeve the pipe, which is another one of our innovations, and prevent any problem with that.
And sticking with the Grand Prix, they came in and told us, “We want this race to be the first in the world with a zero-water footprint.” And we said, “Okay, there's two things you got to do then. The entire paddock for the F1 race has got to be mechanically cooled.” You can't have any evaporative cooling in the paddock complex.
And then second, you need about 80,000 gallons of water to wash down the racetrack before the race. So, to offset that, they agreed a partnership between F1, SNWA, and MGM. Installed an atmospheric water generator on a cooling tower at the MGM Grand that captured the evaporative cooling stream from the cooling towers at MGM, recirculated those through their cooling systems and saved by our estimate, about 500,000 gallons of water.
So, that race wasn't just water neutral, it actually saved 420,000 gallons more than was actually utilized to wash down the track. So, that's how granular we get in chasing gallons of water through innovation and technology.
Mahesh Lunani (30:41):
Yeah. Is that atmospheric water generator still in place today?
John J. Entsminger (30:45):
Yeah, absolutely. So, it wasn't just a one-year thing. It's going to generate that water going forward, and it's actually a pilot that we've used. I mentioned earlier in the podcast that we've put a moratorium on new evaporative cooling in place.
There's no practical way to replace 30, 40 years’ worth of evaporative cooling that's been put in place. And maybe as it reaches the end of its useful life, things can be done. But some buildings, you can't rebuild the building. But we think that pilot using that atmospheric water generator may be able to be deployed onto other properties.
Mahesh Lunani (31:20):
Got it. Now, what do you think about AI, and where do you think the future of AI is when it comes to water industry?
John J. Entsminger (31:26):
I think the future's here. We're using VODA AI machine learning to help prioritize how our pipeline replacement goes. Because I think in times gone by, you would basically have a Nessie curve that your asset management people and your engineers would say almost exclusively relied upon the age of the pipe.
At 50 years, the cast iron pipe needs to come out, at 45 years, CI needs to come out. But what this is helping us do is it's inputting a lot more factors. It's not just the age of the pipe, it's the soil conditions, the pressure that the pipe has been under for how long, how many surge events have occurred in that stretch of pipes.
So, we're using AI's predictive capabilities to help us determine pipeline replacement on a multi-decadal schedule. And then on a customer service side of things, we've completely replaced all of our meters with AMI. So, our whole system has AMI in it now. So, we're getting real time data of water flow to every house in Las Vegas. So, you're talking about 700,000 water user accounts that we can now see real time.
Three years ago, if somebody had a leak, it would've taken a human being to see that on the meter, read and generate a paper letter that 30 days later, that customer would get told, “You have a leak.” Today, AI can see if you have a running toilet and if you've signed up for our program, can send you a text message and say you've got a runny toilet.
So, the mass of data that is created by AMI, we have to have AI in order to be able to process that and put it into a usable format for our customers to be able to take corrective actions if they have a leak on their property.
Mahesh Lunani (33:22):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, as we wrap up this discussion, this is something I always ask our guests: what do you want your legacy to be?
John J. Entsminger (33:31):
I think the easy thing to be is to just focus on accomplishments, the deals that I've been a part of and all that. But I think most of those are a product of the time, the place, and a lot of other people that were involved. So, I don't take credit for any particular deal that I was involved in.
If I was writing my own professional eulogy, what I would want somebody to say about me is I firmly believe the only thing you control is the quality of your own action. And because of that, I want people to remember that I was pragmatic, and I was always willing to speak truth to power.
Mahesh Lunani (34:10):
This is excellent. John, there's so much I learned, so much I think the audience learned. A, your tremendous skills in bringing together this agreement, not only the seven states agreement, but also cross border. Your passion towards focusing on the demand side of the equation because the supply side you don't control as much.
That’s ripped tremendous benefits of over 13 billion gallons savings. The fact that with this Las Vegas Wash, you really have such a limited draw from the overall resources that it's not too far before you could be net zero from a supply and demand side in terms of how you're recycling. And the fact that one of the most fascinating sports in the world, you were able to not only zero waterproof, but actually net positive water, that's a tremendous achievement to your leadership.
So, I want to personally thank you. There are some things I heard today that I've never heard before that just gets me excited. So, I want to thank you for your time, John.
John J. Entsminger (35:15):
Thank you very much for hosting this podcast and getting the word out. I think sometimes people take the water situation we have in the United States for granted, and just letting people learn a little bit more about what it takes to make water come out of the tap every morning, I appreciate you providing this platform.
[Music Playing]
Voiceover (35:32):
Join host and Aquasight founder and CEO Mahesh Lunani for another episode of 21st Century Water, produced by Jag in Detroit Podcasts.