Out toward the top left corner of this picture – maybe a little bit left, out of the frame – is the point where the Southern Nevada Water Authority gets its water out of Lake Mead. There’s nothing to see – the intake is at the bottom of the reservoir. Completed in 2015, …
Continue reading ‘Tipping Point: Colorado River Reckoning’ »
In my book Water is for Fighting Over, I delighted in this cheap shot at the Bureau of Reclamation’s Boulder City office – … a grandiose white building atop a hill … surrounded by an expanse of lawn that is embarrassing in a desert city that averages less than six inches of rain a year. …
Continue reading ‘Important update on the Bureau of Reclamation’s Boulder City lawn’ »
There’s some fascinating tension around a proposed wastewater reclamation collaboration in Southern California. The project, if it goes forward, would provide some 150 million gallons per day (~170,000 acre feet per year) of treated effluent. Water now being discharged into the ocean would instead be available for aquifer recharge within Southern California. There are a …
Continue reading ‘Tensions around a wastewater reclamation collaboration in Southern California’ »
Amid the Colorado River water management attention last week rightly focused on the fact that a wet winter in the Upper Basin means a big release this year from Lake Powell to help refill Lake Mead, I missed another bit of business that may be even more important. The Bureau of Reclamation’s planning model is …
Continue reading ‘declining Lower Colorado River Basin water use’ »
David Owen makes an interesting point in this New Yorker piece: Just as proximity makes people think that Las Vegas is the principal cause of the decline of Lake Mead, it also makes them think that any further decline in the lake will be a problem mainly, or even only, for Las Vegas. But that …
Continue reading ‘Does Las Vegas have the most reliable water supply in the Colorado River Basin?’ »
Folks in Nevada today are celebrating the 80th anniversary of Hoover Dam’s sort-of-semi-official power production. Hoover Dam is such a dominant feature on the history of the west in the 20th century that it’s fun to contemplate what people thought about it before it happened. One of my fascinating side trips when I was researching …
Continue reading ‘The unexpected history of Las Vegas and Hoover Dam’ »
A correction: last night I posted about the new Resorts World Las Vegas, to be built at the north end of the strip. I said it would have a 29,350-square-foot lake. That is not a “lake”. That is half the size of a football field. That is a “pond”. I apologize and stand corrected.
The new Resorts World Las Vegas, on the north end of the strip: According to county documents, the arena will be part of a later phase but a 29,350-square-foot lake that is part of a Chinese garden, and other water features, is part of the initial development.
Following my talk in Grand Junction in September (videos linked here), Pat had some pointed questions for me about my comparisons of Las Vegas per capita water consumption to other cities. Pat’s point was well taken.
This image depicting a years’ worth of Colorado River water use, from an emailer I got from the Southern Nevada Water Authority: