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Las Vegas Is "Screwed"; The Water Situation "Is As Bad As You Can Imagine"
"It's just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly," warns Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, telling The Telegraph, the situation in Las Vegas is "as bad as you can imagine". After a devastating, 14-year drought drained the reservoir that supplies 90% of the city’s water, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion as Las Vegas population has soared. As Barnett ominously concludes, "unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere, Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they’re still building, which is stupid."
As The Telegraph reports, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion.
America’s most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all.
“The situation is as bad as you can imagine,” said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It’s just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they’re still building, which is stupid.”
Things are not good...
Las Vegas gets just four inches of rain in a good year, and in the first four months of 2014 there was just 0.31 of an inch.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has the task of keeping the city from running dry, has described the effects of the drought as “every bit as serious as a Hurricane Katrina or a Superstorm Sandy”.
...
However, Las Vegas still uses 219 gallons of water per person per day, one of the highest figures in the US. In San Francisco the figure is just 49 gallons.
But they have a plan...
Lake Mead’s water level is currently at 1,087ft above sea level. There are two pipes, known as “straws”, that take water from it to Las Vegas.
The first extracts water at an elevation of 1,050ft and is likely to be sucking at air, rather than water, soon. The second straw is at 1,000ft.
Lake Mead is expected to fall another 20ft towards that critical point by the end of this year.
Beneath the ground a mammoth effort is already under way to complete a new, lower straw which will be able to draw the last of the water from the lake.
But it is a painfully slow process as a giant drill the size of two football pitches advances at a rate of one inch per day.
That rescue project is costing $817 million and is currently expected to be complete by late 2015, but it is not viewed as a long-term solution.
Las Vegas also wants to build a separate $15.5 billion pipeline that would pump 27 billion gallons of groundwater a year from an aquifer 260 miles away in rural Nevada.
But a judge has refused permission after environmentalists sued on the basis that it would adversely affect 5,500 acres of meadows, 33 miles of trout streams, and 130,000 acres of habitat used by sage grouse, mule deer, elk and pronghorn, an antelope-like creature that is endangered in the region. The court heard that 25 species of Great Basin springsnails would be pushed toward extinction.
But in the end, it's a fals promise...
“It’s a really dumb-headed proposition. It would provide a false sense of security that there’s plenty of water and it would delay the inevitable decisions that have to be taken about water conservation and restricting growth.
“The drought is like a slow spreading cancer across the desert. It’s not like a tornado or a tsunami, bang. The effects are playing out over decades. And as the water situation becomes more dire we are going to start having to talk about the removal of people (from Las Vegas).”
Mr Mrowka cited Lake Las Vegas, a mega-resort where stars including Celine Dion live, as one of the “most egregious examples” of wasting water.
And then there's this...
One proposal is for landlocked Nevada to pay billions of dollars to build solar-powered desalination plants in the Pacific off Mexico, taking Mexico’s share of Colorado River water in exchange.
But Mr Mrowka said: “The Colorado is essentially a dying river. Ultimately, Las Vegas and our civilisation in the American South West is going to disappear, like the Indians did before us.”
* * *
The bottom line - get there now, watch the fountains, drink the water, swim in the lake... (and sell your house)
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I don't get it. Seems to me that the runoff of a few years of heavy snowfall in the mountains would result in Lake Mead filling up again. Wouldn't it?
yes, but the drought has last 15 years and no sign of retreating. it could last 15 MORE years as it has in past history...
An engineered drought. Geo engineering at its best.
there are trolls tonight. who else would down arrow the facts?
further, why do we think a 14 year drought is long? geologically there is no reason they couldn't have a 100 year drought or even a 1000 year drought.
The snowmelt is being used more and more upstream. Lots and lots of people moving into Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. A lot of the water is pumped out of the Colorado river basin across the continental divide and on to the "front range" of Colorado. Denver, Aurora, The Springs, and the zillion cities that make up the Denver metro area suck up water and yes even the marijuana industry is drawing from the mix. Then there is fracking. Doesn't matter if one is for or against fracking, the fact remains that water used for fracking is lost. Taken out of use on the earth and trapped underground.
Imagine the nerve of Colorado to want to use its own water and not share!
Sustainability means planning our future in a way that we do not set ourselves up to crash and burn at some future date. Long-term planning has not been something politicians excel at or are even good at. Our system is geared at getting politicians reelected and fulfilling the most pressing needs of today.
Things like profit, greed, and quenching our unrelinquishing desire for growth are placed in front of longer term issues and needs. Mapping out a logical and sustainable long-term plan requires delving into some rather hefty philosophical questions like what brings real happiness. More on this important topic in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/04/planning-sustainable-future-for-m...
trolls must be out tonight considering the number of down votes you got...
I downarrowed both of you because...
THERE ARE NO GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS.
GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM.
PLANNED ECONOMIES DO NOT WORK.
And you write about "Government Planning"??? Incredible.
There will lots of water for Vegas when the polar glaciers finish melting .
Calm down, that's nothing yet. In central planning even sand in the desert will become scarce.
Reblogged Tyler
https://dublinsmick.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/las-vegas-prepares-for-glob...
the wages of sin are thirst...
Doesn't look like it when I see my friend's scantily clad pics in some LVS casino's pool partay. No worries there. lol.
Of all places to go for playing in the water and getting drunk... in the middle of a a friggin desert.
"Of all places to go for playing in the water and getting drunk...in the middle of a a friggin desert"
It's "The American Way"
long on stillsuits
Isn't unsustainability the point of Las Vegas in the first place?
Vegas will be a thing of the past soon. Macau and local Indian casinos are taking over. Everymuniciplatiy wants their own peeples top gamble near home and keep their monies in their State Gubmints' pockets.
Having relocated most of American manufacturing to Asia (mostly PR China), TPTB have realized that outsourcing gambling cash cow from Las Vegas to Macao will make it a golden cash cow.
Just off the top of my head, isn't the U.S. still the world's largest manufacturer? And in response to the parent post, how can local gubmints cash in on foreign gambling? Are you guys upticking yourselves?
Probably, according to government statistics. The kid/boomer at MacDonald's who "manufacturers" your Big Mac contributes to that statistic.
Atlantic City is almost dead. Too many casinos opening up in the Philly and surrounding areas are killing it.
Cant they sell the newly formed land below the old waterline as beach front lots? build McMansions and then use the money to buy more water? Sell all the loans to Fannie and Freddie.
if the water comes back they could just ask for a TARP bailout. Either money or get people to literally bailout the lake to protect the "housing starts"
@wisefool: I believe Dick Fuld tried it already and look what happened to Lehman...
Oh those numbers come from scientists. Fox News tell me they all be lying. So I'll put the money I got from selling my soul on the free market to buy me a McMansion in Vegas with a 50ha Golf Course I'll water until all that dumb grass is dead. Can't go wrong listening to old Murdoch.
If SCOTUS cock blocks the union dues, plan 2 noted as Agenda 21 kicks in.
Progressives will fail again.
This just illustrates the unfairness of our present system. Cities like New Orleans that are built below sea level in hurricane zones are eligible for federal flood insurance.
But cities like Las Vegas that are built in the middle of a desert are not eligible for federal drought insurance! WTF?!
Hairy Reid is not doing his job!
What will the illegals drink?
Finally, long Detroit real estate!
Yeah, what ever happened to them Injuns anyway?
I spent a week in LV 15 years ago & couldn't believe the waste especially coming from a fellow desert city (Adelaide, Aust). It has always been a disaster waiting to happen; what a joke.
For a nation which use to be and still wishes to present itself as a world leader, why now are the first response options to any ensuing crisis the most self destructive? ( and often destructive to the rest of the world) ?
America, the smartest country ever! Spending other peoples money since 1914!
It's Manifest Destiny.
Go Roman, have the illegals and unemployed build aquaducts.
Harry Greed spent all the money on son's Chinese solar project and arms for the BLS to chase down those raciest ranchers... No worry Austria signed a pipeline deal with Gizprom to avoid Biden's son in Ukraine.. All is good ISIS has all those stingers. Don't blame me keeping the DNC/RNC secret court Kleptomaniacs in... office.....
The community organized enough yet? We are Weimar. Crazy was giant sucking sound, or just march home...
Can someone with any insight tell me why the California coast does not have a half dozen desalination facilities along its 3500 miles of coastline.? I was recently in Mexico and they already have, are developing and building more to accommodate their water needs. Their friends from the UAB are consulting and building them off their coast. Why doesn't California build numerous of these plants?
There are 70 million cubic miles of water in the Pacific, which equates to 187,189,915,062,857,142,857 gallons, (187 quintillion gallons or 187,189,915,062 billion gallons), of water in the Pacific Ocean. Might be time to Tap IT and sell water to Nevada, New Mexico, etc.
Really!? Mexifornia is somehow supposed to come up with a solution, like desalination? These clueless Libertards couldn't find their own backsides with both hands, and they'll tax the living shit out of ANYONE with a spare nickel in the process. Hey Pelosi, how's your million dollar lawn doing while you wlecome every soul that can fog a mirror at the border?
Really!? Mexifornia is somehow supposed to come up with a solution, like desalination? These clueless Libertards couldn't find their own backsides with both hands, and they'll tax the living shit out of ANYONE with a spare nickel in the process. Hey Pelosi, how's your million dollar lawn doing while you wlecome every soul that can fog a mirror at the border?
"Insight"... The Government is using all their money to rig stawks.
The project to which you refer (collect sea water, desalinate, and distribute to a solvent and viable customer) may be considered a risky venture for private, for-profit developers. Such a project would take years of permitting, design, and construction; would involve expenditutures of large sums of money that are at risk until the project is commissioned; and operations would always be dependent on a reliable energy supply at a reasonable cost. Apparently, private developers are investing their monies in other areas, where a high ROI is assured with less risk.
cost - desal is energy intensive
What ever happened to that "brilliant" <sarc> idea about dumping iceberg chunks into Lake Mead? ;-0
Vegas gambled and bled.
Don't worry, they can distill the water back out of all that vodka. Prost!
Yea, directly from the wastewater treatment plant.
Move Las Vegas to Detroit. Plenty of water and land. Go where the water is.
When the bowl runs dry, it can be truly said that what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.
Former Head of the Las Vegas Gaming Commission, Harry Reid, is purportedly importing children from Latin America to dig a giant trench by hand from the Pacific Ocean to Las Vegas. The children dig more quietly than heavy machinery ... A desalination plant will be built upon the Bundy Ranch ...
Drink you own urine, the astronauts do it.
similar situations in hundreds of sanctuary cities near you.
Kalifornication will fall into the pacific and Vegas will be oceanfront prop with desalinization plants cranking out the Perrier....
Harry Reid will pass while trying to save crazy Nancy....
Give the illegals $100 and a bus ride to Vegas where they can join the SEIU and visit Harry mumbles home
Kalifornication will fall into the pacific and Vegas will be oceanfront prop with desalinization plants cranking out the Perrier....
Harry Reid will pass while trying to save crazy Nancy....
Give the illegals $100 and a bus ride to Vegas where they can join the SEIU and visit Harry mumbles home
"Las Vegas still uses 219 gallons of water per person per day, one of the highest figures in the US. In San Francisco the figure is just 49 gallons."
Are golf courses and swimming pools a right or a necessity?
It's a desert. Grass doesn't grow in a desert without wasting a lot of water.
"Las Vegas still uses 219 gallons of water per person per day, one of the highest figures in the US. In San Francisco the figure is just 49 gallons. Are golf courses and swimming pools a right or a necessity?"
San Francisco, a city full of small apartments and condos, actually uses an average water of 98 gallons per day.
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25090363/california-drought-water-...
Most of San Francisco's water is piped in from hundreds of miles away from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park.
San Francisco is a city that was built on an active fault line and in a location without water. Is San Francisco necessary?
Surpise! Not
sensationalist headline... "as bad as you can imagine!"
actually, i can imagine much worse. like having no water. while that may be coming, not quite yet.
A place that can't grow a row of potatoes without a garden hose, ain't worth living in.
They won't leave until you have to pay for ice in your free mixed drink.
The shortest answer, a Chinese-scale desalination/turbine energy center located in Death Valley. Pipe water in from the Pacific.
and the cost of running such a machine?
Replacing the mob with Hollywood types was the worst thing that ever happened to Las Vegas.
Hollywood is the mob
You can't mess around with nature and think you can get away with it. Economy is a subset of ecology, not the other way around.
We have been assured that when water is needed it will be printed for us. I'm expanding my McMansion to include a couple of extra pools.....hey get off my turf...
Actually Vegas has rid itself of turf in the neighborhoods, seldom see it.
The right way to handle this would be with price. Amazing how efficient citizens can get when it comes from their pocket. No doubt though this will be settled in the political arena and we will just steal water from somewhere. We tried to get it from up North but the locals caught on too quick. They did not want beautiful mountain lands turned into high altitude deserts.
The Luddites have captured Las Vegas! As if ecology was a fictional army of evil doers who would rob us of our birthight of infinite economic growth.
And the winner is:
Yea, slitting chicken throats and sucking on circumcised baby dicks are such rich traditions.
Easy to see where the fear pumping comes from. Fucking fucktard British.
The Whatever Water that comes to Vegas, stays in Vegas
the wages of sin are thirst...
Can someone with any insight tell me why the California coast does not have a half dozen desalination facilities along its 3500 miles of coastline.? I was recently in Mexico and they already have, are developing and building more to accommodate their water needs. Their friends from the UAB are consulting and building them off their coast. Why doesn't California build numerous of these plants?
Because the Pacific is now radioactive due to Fukushima
When the bowl runs dry, it can be truly said that what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.
catch 22--you want crude oil go 200 the barrel? "It takes energy to desalinate water". You make it sound like energy is infinite, similar to central bankers who say my labor is inferior to the money they create by decree.
More "money" will always create more energy. How bout that for some insight Mick? That kind of insight is what we already have son.
1 the coast is for elites only
2 the state legislature outlawed the use of ocean water
3 desalination uses energy (CO2)
4 Goldman Sachs controls water in CA
5 Goldman Sachs controls energy in CA
"If you build it....."
Well actually "you didn't build that" and you're not allowed to build that anymore.
CA dumped 500,000 acre feet of water into the southern desert to see if it runs down hill like it did the last time we had floods (it did).
CA has dumped an unknown quantity of water into the ocean in the North to increase demand for state water projects.
Ha! You know what? You all can support them, because I participate as little as possible in this crap. When the big money interest start whining, you can bet some poor slobs will be diverting their own water to those multi-million dollar properties...So good. Let it be YOUR tax dollars, cause it won't be too many of mine.
And I live in an area with plenty of water. Because the idea of living in city in a desert with no water supply of its own would NOT OCCUR TO ME! Nor would it occur to ANYONE who wasn't drunk or delusional!
They'll soon have to play Jack in the black. Non-sustainable practices, whatever they are, are a bitch - at least in the long run - since at some point you simply can't ignore the consequences of reality.
I had to spend a week in Las Vegas on business in January 2013. One of the "must see" attractions was the huge water fountain display at the Bellagio Hotel.
Their water situation will end the same way as the central-banking-enabled United State_ gubbermint Ponzi...badly.
Oddly, it rained twice the week I was there, including the one night we had time to go out on the town.
Beyond stupid. RO technology has come way down in price. They can re-use an enormous amount of that water and locate the plant to do it right next to their sewer plant. Maybe they should visit this place:
http://www.sandiego.gov/water/purewater/demo/index.shtml
I laugh everytime I hear that Atlanta was in a "drought" cause they only got 30" of rain one year and wants to redraw their TN/GA border. Dumb. Re-use and store what you get.
The NSA spy center in Utah uses 1.7 million gallons of water per day just to keep it's servers cool so that they can continue unconstitutionally spying on American citizens.
Shut the facility down and divert that water back into the ecosystem and maybe Vegas can use some of it down stream.
If they think the Southwest is screwed NOW just wait until 150K more illegals show up!
We get 200k a month in legal immigrants, not even the Brazilian rainforest can meet that growth.
Wait a minute... Drought...in a dessert... Who the fuck would have thought that.
The fact that this is a concern to the rest of the coutnry is ridiculous. You built it...You figure it out.
it seems fitting, the money to waste at vegas is drying up faster then the water anyway.
Las Vegas gave us Harry Reid. let it die.
Harry Rude will solve that problem. Relocate LV to Detroit?
Maybe this is just a hideous attempt to get the white man out of Vegas and ownership of the Vegas casinos so they can be acquired by either the Native American Indians or maybe as housing and businesses for the refugees from Mexico and Central America? I'm sure MS13 would love to control the strip, and not so sure Obama wouldn't like it, too.
j/k
Pretty soon you are going to have to be somebody to use Vegas water.
The drought is 2 years, not 14, the problem is Mexican invasion, our govt allowed continuous invasion for decades, then ran out of water and blamed the weather, as if the weather can mitigate a total collapse of immigration enforcement.
wrong....the drought is even older than what they said in the article.
The triple solution is to create the ORGANIZATION OF WATER EXPORTING STATES. All of the Great Lakes states joined in the midwest water compact, build pipelines from Lake Michigan to the southewest states using the Federal I-System roadway right of way.
If they can pipe oil from Alaska and tolerate the risks then they can pipe water from where it is abundant with, one would assume, substantially less environmental risk. Even a big spill would approximate the risk of a heavy downpour in a limited area.
Midwestern states could charge a reasonable per gallon charge for what to them is an essentially free resource, pay the Fed a small amount for leasing right of way space, and the southwest, with abundant water would boom. A win, win, win all the way around.
Now, all we need are some imaginative politicians to join together and make this a reality.
Las Vegas still uses 219 gallons of water per person per day, one of the highest figures in the US. In San Francisco the figure is just 49 gallons
Why not try to change first the habits ? Use less water.
Vegas will have to learn how to run with 1" of rainfall/year.
That means recycling water, Catchment basements, rain cisterns.
Is the source in the article, Mr. Mrowka, the same neerdowell envirmonmentalist that instigated the recent standoff at Bundy Ranch? This dude has way too much time on his hands.
Oh you silly people. Vegas gets about 1% of the water from Lake Mead, which comes from the Colorado River. The Imperial Valley of California gets 20% of ALL water from the Colorado. Don't ask how this happened, just know it is true and is a momumental clusterfuck.
Do you really think Vegas and Arizona will go thirsty so the Imperial Valley can grow crops? Not a fucking change. They will simply take control of the dams and refuse to send the water to California. Don't think thei can't happen.
A while back Nevada tried to grab water from Utah. The governor of Utah was "uncharacteristically blunt" about this and Utahs said they'd be standing at the lakes with guns if Nevada tried, which it didn't.
The lake level in the story is last month, now five feet lower at 1082 Ft above sea level. The rain has not come here yet this year, so we are still at 0.3 inches for the year. Could hit the minimum power pool level of 1050 feet in two or three years, which will turn out the lights.
And Bundy ranch was an attempt to get him off the land so tay could take the water from his land as well.