Water woes in the Southwest are nothing new. People have been fighting over water rights in the arid Western states since the 1800s. Mark Twain is often cited—perhaps incorrectly—as having penned the line that best sums up the water situation in the West. “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over,” he is said to have written in 1884. It’s no less true today than it was then.

In Southern Nevada, the water situation can best be demonstrated with a trip to Lake Mead. The clear delineation between the sun-burned brown and calcified white rocks shows how low the water level is compared to where it used to be. Since 2000 alone, the water level has dropped 100 feet, the equivalent of 3 trillion gallons.

Interestingly enough, water consumption is not entirely the cause of our problems. It is, instead, the last 10 years of ongoing, increasingly severe drought that has depleted water levels in Lake Mead more than anything. Couple a drought with the water-intensive agricultural use of Colorado River water, and you end up in the situation we are in today. While water conservation messages seem to be working, and water use has fallen despite a dramatic population increase, some still tell dire tales of Lake Mead being empty as early as 2050.


A Bad Deal
The Colorado River, which is the primary water source for Las Vegas, starts high in the Rocky Mountains. Melting snow creates small trickles of water that eventually forms larger streams, then smaller rivers and eventually the mighty Colorado, the drainage system of the Western United States.

Though dammed to create lakes in several locations, none are larger than Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam. The back up of water behind the dam provided Las Vegas with the water needed to grow from a railroad stopover into the burgeoning metropolis that it is today.

The river also provides water for irrigation throughout the seven states through which it flows. The amount of water each state received was established by the Colorado River Compact, which was signed in 1922. The compact divided the river into upper and lower basins, and then apportioned water among the member states of each basin. Nevada is included with California and Arizona in the Lower Basin of the Colorado River. Because the agricultural industries were—and remain—larger in scope in California and Arizona, those two states get the majority of the Lower Basin water allocation. California gets 4.4 acre-feet of water per year (afy), Arizona gets 2.8 afy and Nevada gets 0.3 afy (an acre-foot of water is the amount necessary to flood a football field to a depth of one foot).

Unfortunately, recent tree ring studies suggest that the Western states were settled during a particularly wet period. Many early settlers had what are now seen as unrealistic expectations as to the amount of rainfall and snow pack that would replenish streams and rivers, including the Colorado. While the Colorado River Compact allocates 15 million afy and was based on an estimated flow of 22 million afy, new studies suggest the average flow of the Colorado is closer to 14 million afy.

The Southwestern states are also in the middle of a terrible drought that is reducing snow pack in the Rockies, and sucking up water through evaporation as the river winds through the increasingly hotter and arid regions in Southern Utah, Northern Arizona and Nevada. To see the extent to which water levels are down is not very difficult, and requires only a short drive to the banks of Lake Mead. The bath-tub ring clearly shows haw far the lake is below the high water mark.

“It’s absolutely worse than the Dust Bowl,” said Robert Webb, a hydrologist who works with the U.S. Geologic Survey. “It’s the biggest drought in 500 years.”

Las Vegas, in particular, one of the driest locations in the country, receives only four inches of rainfall each year. The predicted effects of an increase in surface temperatures throughout the world include a worsening of the drought conditions in the area, and some scientists are speculating that by 2050, precipitation could drop by 10 percent to 25 percent. That could mean as little as three inches of rainfall annually.


Misplaced Aggression
Among the green activists, there is a particularly hateful eye turned towards the fabulous water features at several Las Vegas casinos. The fountains at Bellagio, volcano at Mirage, faux-channels of Venice at the Venetian, not to mention the pools that seem to grow with each new property and the lush landscaping surrounding them, all bear the brunt of the rabid environmentalists’ misplaced aggression.

“Really, it is inconsequential,” said J.C. Davis, a spokesman with the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which manages water resources in the area. Air conditioning cooling towers, in some cases, actually use more water at resorts than landscaping, pools and water features combined. “But no one is talking about turning off the A.C.”

Ultimately, yes, there is more water consumed in Las Vegas currently than there would be if the casinos would turn off their water features and close and drain their pools. In doing so, however, they may as well close the casino and hotel rooms, too.

“We could shut off the canals at the Venetian,” said Pat Mulroy, general manager of the SNWA. “There is a very real chance if you shut off the canals at the Venetian, it would be reflected in their visitor counts. What the hotels do, if you start affecting their visitor counts, they start laying people off. That’s their instant reaction.”

Jaime Cruz, director of energy and environmental services for MGM Mirage, said typically hotel-casinos use about 30 percent of their water allocation for outdoor uses, while 70 percent is used indoors in rooms and kitchens. The water used indoors can be recaptured and recycled—and is often then put to various outdoor uses. Furthermore, the fountains at the Bellagio benefit from access to ground water, and, Cruz said, use less water than when the land was being used as a golf course for the old Dunes Hotel.

The casinos are also able to capture and return to the SNWA a large amount of the water they use. Because Las Vegas is located within the Colorado River Watershed, the SNWA is allowed to clean water to federal standards and return it to Lake Mead. Returned water counts as a credit against the amount of water that has been used.

“In a perfect universe, in theory, if all water was used inside, we would essentially be a water resource perpetual motion machine,” Davis said. “That has allowed us to extend our water supply. The resorts buy a lot of water, but their impact is very small.”

Moreover, when the casinos of the state are lumped together and looked at as the gaming industry as a whole, it becomes clear that there is an economic benefit behind the use of the water.

“The entire Las Vegas Strip uses 3 percent of our water,” Mulroy said. “With that, it generates over 70 percent of this state’s gross product. If you ask me from a purely economic perspective, is that a waste of our resources? Is that a poor investment of our water resources? No, it’s not.”

The fact that many people don’t want to hear is that agriculture and home use account for a majority of water consumption not only in Las Vegas or Nevada, but throughout the entire Southwest. Though they are often good stewards of the land, ranchers and farmers—especially those trying to grow water-intensive crops like cotton in the desert—consume the most water while generating the smallest benefit for the state and its residents.

Davis said there is some truth in the off-hand remark, “People don’t use water, plants do.”

The reason there is no state income tax in Nevada is not because of the success of the agricultural industries, it’s because of the success of gaming. As the noted historian Hal Rothman said in his book Neon Metropolis, “Nevada would dearly miss the MGM if it couldn’t get enough water, but if all of Nevada’s agriculture and ranching dried up and blew away, urban Nevada might not notice for years.”


The Answer Is You
The residents of Southern Nevada are second only to attempts to grow water-intensive plants in the desert, in consuming the most water in the area. A lot of that stems from an antiquated attitude that water is anything but scarce, even in the desert.

“People in the ‘50s and ‘60s came here and the defied living in the desert,” Davis said. “Neighborhoods were built on a template that came straight from Los Angeles: half-acre lots with wall-to-wall grass.”

As most homeowners are well aware, it’s difficult to keep grass alive in 115 degree heat. Even in the wetter and more humid Midwest, keeping grass green in the summer months is a constant challenge. With limited water resources, however, the recent move in the Southwest has been towards desert landscaping. This involves using plants native to the region—and thus acclimated to life with little water and intense heat—and replacing grass with gravel or rocks.

The effect so far has been somewhat amazing. Between 2002 and 2006, the Las Vegas Valley population increased by 330,000 people. At the same time, residential water use in 2006 was 18 billion gallons less than it was just four years earlier. That is the result of aggressive water conservation campaigns as well as better and more sustainable landscape designs.

“People are starting to realize that we are in the middle of the driest desert on the continent,” Davis said. “They are realizing that we might want to act like we live in a desert.”

By Greg Jones

Greg Jones is managing editor of Casino Connection Nevada, as well as associate editor of Global Gaming Business magazine.

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