The town of Las Vegas is negotiating with other areas in northern Nevada and even other states for water rights. Like Phoenix did they want to build canals to bring water to their fountains, and swimming pools, and golf courses and sidewalk misters. Heaven forbid that people visiting the desert should get hot and dry.
The Bellagio and Caesars Forum, two of the big fountain owners, say that the fountains use recycled water and ergo don't waste this precious resource in a town without it. Evaporation they say is negligible. Which brings me to my little fountain inside my studio in the mountains of New Mexico.
Evaporation is not negligible. I rather think that the mega resorts in Las Vegas hire the same public relations people as BP uses to underplay their oil "spill."
I am sure that Caesars and Bellagio do not pay undocumented workers to carry buckets of water to replenish their fountains. So the question is whether the water pipe is metered for usage. New Mexico is a desert state and all public water usage is metered even on your own well. So come on let's hear the real figures of how much water is wasted in the desert to make it dance for the tourists?
The inquiring public wants to know. Especially those areas that are being harangued by legal officials to sell their water to a city that desperately needs it supposedly. Oh, and while we are on the subject of evaporation let's ask Phoenix how much it loses in its canal from the Colorado River to its 150 golf courses.
Thank you for this! I came here via Bee`s Blog and am happy to read that there ARE American citizens (I am a German, having spent a year in your country long ago, still feeling connected) who shake their heads at this incredible waste. Like about ALL Europeans do...
ReplyDeleteIt is the space issue. Most of us are descended from Europeans who were crowded into prisons and towns and were totally overwhelmed at the open space in this country.
ReplyDeleteGive me room, cried Daniel Boone when he headed west. It had gotten too crowded east of the Blue Ridge. There has always been historically someplace to move too. Even now there are huge unpopulated tracts of land and nobody stops to consider what happens if you subdivide it.
And for years landowners did. People brought 5,10, and 10 acre lots out west and all was fine because nobody built on it. Now they are building. Phoenix cannot guarantee you will have water a year after you buy a new house. How sad is that?
And Texans after over-grazing their state moved cattle here summers and over grazed it. Short sighted humans base their actions on the weather that moment. It is so possible in the west to build by a river one summer that isn't there the next or the next.
We do not have a national law on water use because of states rights (remember the civil war). New Mexico is one of the few states will laws governing intrabasin water transfers. Texas is just waking up to the fact that the aquifer below their state is not inexhaustible.
And nobody has quite gotten the connection between water and electricity. We built these dams that generate power for Los Angeles and Las Vegas but they do that only if there is water to release and a drought or even over usage of water and there is also no electricity.
Not only do we need to turn off the fountains. We need to turn off the lights
I remember when my step-mother lived in Fallon. She would run her sprinkler all day and often all night just to get her little tiny postage stamp lawn green. I could understand why she wanted green grass (she was from Washington State) but it just seemed so wasteful.
ReplyDeleteThe two big things I took from Fallon though were 1) watching a lady let her icecream and frozen goods melt while she played slots at the grocery store and 2) seeing so many lawn sprinklers running while the irrigation ditches were nearly all dry. Yeah I wanted a pretty lawn and pretty flowers in Kansas but NOT at the expense of my pasture or livestock.
Excellent topic :)