Why Las Vegas has coped well with drought so far

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21660546-why-las-vegas-has-coped-well-drought-so-far-concrete-oasis

by boh • 11 years ago

66 62 11 years ago

economist.com

zajd• 11 years ago

Emphasis on the so far

nostromo• 11 years ago

I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the elephant in the room: Vegas has almost no agriculture.

tajen2• 11 years ago

Well maybe it's a choice. In California water should be more expensive to discourage people/industries from using it (depending on population desnity, it could be better to import). But the agriculture lobby ensures their consumption of water is protected. Maybe if there isn't enough water i California, then intensive agriculture was a bad idea in the first place?

mentat2• 11 years ago

It's just that the rest of the country needs to pay market rates for the California water they're consuming via agriculture. It's the whole country's problem.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

What qualifies a bad idea?

California is one of the best climates in the world to grow certain crops.

It's also one of the most popular climates to live in.

If there isn't enough water for both, how do we pick? Do the people who want to live there get automatic priority? Vica versa?

maxerickson• 11 years ago

The municipal users are paying far more than agricultural use would be able to.

HarryHirsch• 11 years ago

Hey, there's an idea: seize water rights through eminent domain in the drought-afflicted parts of California and auction them off to the highest bidder!

brohoolio• 11 years ago

"Las Vegas sucks up a lot of water. In 2010, the latest year for which nationally comparable figures have been released by the US Geological Survey, each resident of Clark County, which covers the entire urban area of Las Vegas and its suburbs, used 234 gallons of water every day. In California, the figure was 181 gallons. But in recent years southern Nevada has dramatically cut its water use. Between 2002 and 2014 the region’s consumption of Colorado river water fell by 30%, even as Clark County added half a million residents."

This seems to confuse things, implying that Vegas is becoming more thrifty when measured from 2002 to present but the snapshot from 2010 shows strikingly high utilization. Where did they start, 300 gallons per day per person?

toyg2• 11 years ago

As it says at the beginning, people used to have real lawns and palm trees and so on, so yeah, probably per-capita figures were higher.

skennedy• 11 years ago

As a current resident of Las Vegas, it is interesting to see articles like this written. We recycle 94% of the water that makes it to a drain[1]. In addition, recycled water accounts for 40% of our overall water usage[2].

However, I just broke a 3 year lease after 2 years because of both an in ground pool and very green lawn. Both contributing to a $300+/month water bill 5 months a year. The landlord could not get the HOA to approve landscape changes and the pool evaporated a thousand gallons a month. It is great there are laws for new houses, but there is still a challenge to change for homes built 20 years ago. Add in the electric bill for non-stop air conditioning in the summer months ...

No income tax in Nevada only goes so far. It will be interesting to see how much longer we can sustain our growing 2 million person population[3].

[1] http://www.snwa.com/ws/reclaimed.html [2] http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2012/02/10/even-your-ev... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas

bkeroack• 11 years ago

At least in California there are new state laws prohibiting HOAs and municipal governments from fining or otherwise preventing homeowners from conserving water. Sounds like Nevada needs to do the same.

vogt• 11 years ago

HOAs are a vicious racket everywhere, but especially so here in Las Vegas. It's a real problem.

gregr4012• 11 years ago

Also live in Vegas and haven't heard of water bills that high! How frequent were you watering your yard? My total bill with in-ground pool never exceeds $30 / mo.

The HOA thing doesn't surprise me, but would be curious what area / specific HOA.

thrownaway2424• 11 years ago

Count yourself lucky. In Alameda County I pay over $200 per month while using almost no water, and as for electricity I pay typically over $200 again, because I have to subsidize the people in Bakersfield who run their air conditioners all day long (and in fact the PUC has voted this year to raise my bill and lower theirs so that I subsidize their lifestyle choices even more). It sound like you're getting a really good deal in comparison.

lern_too_spel2• 11 years ago

Bullshit. The meter charge for a house in the ACWD is $20.77 / month, and the rate per hundred cubic feet (748 gallons) of water usage is $3.373. I use about 70 gallons per day, so please explain how you pay over $200 / month "while using almost no water."

jsprogrammer2• 11 years ago

"the pool evaporated a thousand gallons a month"

That's because the pool is not covered. Cover the pool and evaporation will be minimized.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/100-raw-Bayer-polycarb...

InvisibleCities• 11 years ago

Sure, but what fun is a pool you can't do a cannonball into?

ido• 11 years ago

How common are roof-top solar panels over there? Seems to me like you'd have the optimal climate for solar (in germany you see solar panels on the roofs of detached houses all the time).

toyg2• 11 years ago

As a tourist, I remember seeing quite a bit of panels, also on road signs and bus stops, on my first trip in 2006 and again last year.

pkulak• 11 years ago

The problem is that when you're renting, your landlord has zero incentive to install panels on the house. You're the one paying the electric bill, after all.

If you own, however, you'd be crazy to have a south-or-west-facing roof in Las Vegas and not throw some panels on there.

garduque2• 11 years ago

Your water bill seems high. You sure your pool and/or irrigation aren't just dumping into the ground? That's pretty common out here, things age quickly.

carleverett• 11 years ago

In the long term, Las Vegas is in way more trouble than California. California has several sources for its water, and even though those sources are pretty pitiful right now, there are always be the emergency fall-backs of desalination (at great cost) or forcing the farms that use up 85% of its water out of the state (at great cost to the US food supply). Vegas meanwhile gets 90% of its water comes from Lake Mead, and if that dries up, people will simply have to leave the state. If this drought turns out to be an effect of climate change instead of just being a historically bad drought, it's really not going to be long before this is the situation.

I personally think that Vegas will be attracting a whole new set of tourists at the end of this century as the world's largest ghost town.

cbr2• 11 years ago

desalination (at great cost)

Desalination for human consumption isn't a huge cost. It's only huge compared to the current incredibly low cost of agricultural water.

daurnimator• 11 years ago

It's still quite expensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Desalination_Plant#C... And that's (currently) depending on cheap Coal generated electricity.

adventured• 11 years ago

The solution for Vegas, given the vast amount of people and money there, will be to build coastal desalination plants and pipe the water inland. It'll cost a lot, and they'll do it in the next 30 years. It might be done on a 50/50 basis with California, sharing the plants.

A lot is a relative term though, is $50 billion spread out over 30 years too much to ensure Las Vegas has water? No, it's very cost effective in fact. San Diego's big new plant has a billion dollar price tag, but provides enough water for 300,000 people. Las Vegas has 1.4 million people in its metro area. In the grand scheme of things, this is a comically trivial problem to solve.

I have a counter prediction: Las Vegas will finish the century as the same engineering dependent marvel it is today. Except it'll be even more impressive.

skybrian• 11 years ago

It would make more sense to sell the water from those desalination plants on the coast than to pipe it that far uphill. But perhaps Las Vegas could trade it with California somehow and actually take the water from the Colorado.

I'd guess there are a lot of water laws in the way of that sort of financial innovation.

netfire• 11 years ago

Wouldn't it be cheaper to build the desalination plants on the coast and sell it to California cities/famers in exchange for water that usually goes down the Colorado River from Nevada to California. Pumping it upstream seems like a waste of energy and infrastructure when the cities in Southern California already want and need the water for their residents.

The problem isn't that there isn't enough water for Vegas passing through Lake Mead. Its that legally they are obligated to send it downstream. Nevada gets a meager 4% of the lower basin of the river, while California gets 58.7% [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact

sundaeofshock• 11 years ago

I think it is unlikely the citizens of California are going to be be willing to shoulder all the environmental damage required to move massive amounts of water from the Pacific Ocean to Las Vegas, even if the full financial burden is shouldered by Nevada.

johnohara• 11 years ago

In 1997, I drove across the Hoover Dam on my way to McCarran Airport and was witness to water splashing over the spillways. It was a rare and unprecedented event in the history of the dam and unique in my lifetime.

The growth in Vegas at the time was mind boggling. New casinos, subdivisions, schools, hospitals, highways, freeways, it was unparalleled and nothing short of remarkable.

Today, that water level is easily 80 ft. below the top of the spillway and Vegas stridently inches its way back to its old dynamism.

Water has ALWAYS been its most important issue. Like every city, it's not perfect, but it's done a damn good job so far.

gregr4012• 11 years ago

What's even more concerning to me is the water rights / treaties for the Colorado (Lake Mead) still date back to the 1920's and 1930's.

bwb• 11 years ago

This is what good government does, creates a framework that forces the right behaviour through artificial controls to preempt the problem.

I hope we get to limiting co2 emissions soon.

I hope we get a gradual tax on gas and push that back into infrastructure.

ChuckFrank• 11 years ago

Honestly, in times like these, it's so good to see someone talk about what government is good at. All we hear is the opposite, especially with things like TPP coming towards us. It's as if we've forgotten what government does. Yours are great examples.

Asbostos3• 11 years ago

Is it really the government doing something though, or failing to do something (control water prices)? What would go wrong with a free water market? Sure some types of user that are currently subsidised wouldn't be able to survive but they probably should be in a more water rich location for overall greater efficiency.

dghughes2• 11 years ago

I live on an Island in Canada population 140,000 right now it's cool 18C/64F but even we have water restrictions and have been for the last three years.

I can't even imagine a desert climate with millions of people even finding any water for all those people boggles my mind.

Asbostos3• 11 years ago

This is the irony of water shortages. They're not a function of how much water is available. They're a function of how much money people are willing to spend on it. Water, it turns out, is a renewable resource but it costs money to produce.

dghughes2• 11 years ago

In my area on and island of about 200 miles long by 30 miles wide it's mainly farming and also the majority ~75% of the population lives in the capital city. Too much demand for too little volume and modern conveniences of coffee shops, car washes but also golf courses.

nl• 11 years ago

Those interested in this may be interested the novel The Water Knife by (Hugo and Nebula winner) Paolo Bacigalupi.

I really enjoyed it. The Windup Girl was an amazing debut, and I think this is just about as good.

Reviews: http://www.npr.org/2015/05/28/408295800/the-water-knife-cuts...

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-paolo-bacig...

akafred2• 11 years ago

In Oslo, Norway, a city with abundant supply of fresh water, the water use per citizen is about 42 gallons per day. This includes industrial use and leaks from pipes. The city wants to further reduce this to less than 35 gallons per person. These numbers are not particularly low in Europe.

243 gallons is quite a lot in comparison to these numbers.

steve192• 11 years ago

I don't know how relevant comparing Oslo with a desert city is.

in any case, why is Oslo reducing water usage if it is abundant?

akafred2• 11 years ago

I agree, comparing is probably unfair, but still, 5-6 times higher water consumption is quite a lot and I found the numbers interesting. Actually, most poor people living in deserts around the world use a fraction of the water we use in Oslo.

Population is Oslo is increasing, and the city wants to keep the cost of treating waste water down, and one way is to reduce fresh water use.

erikb• 11 years ago

Strange that the drought leads to chaos in California, especially with fires. I'm far away from the US but every year I know it's summer when I hear news of Californian wild fires. It became so super normal already, that I don't even listen in on these news any more. So why is it a surprise for California, I wonder.

tomohawk• 11 years ago

Even with the conservation, LV is still looking at augmenting its water supply by grabbing it from others.

http://lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jun/22/not-water/

http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/john-l-smith/repo...

Why Las Vegas has coped well with drought so far

Related Stories