April
2001
Pipe
Dreams
By Michael Clyne
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“We know the value of water when the
well runs dry.”—Benjamin Franklin
Fantasy is reality, at least in the western U.S. In the middle
of the driest state in the nation one can find the ultimate expression
of “man’s” dominance
over nature: Las Vegas. The city blazes with light, people and traffic
24 hours a day, and in the neon glare one can see water,
water everywhere, in fountains and pools and artificial ponds and small
lakes. One and a half million people live in this city and its environs,
with 6,000-plus more moving in each month, and they are thirsty, and
need to wash their clothes, their cars, and keep perfect green lawns.
All of this adds up to water and more water; more than the city currently
has.
Las Vegas sits atop groundwater gathered from the surrounding mountains.
That water, collected over millennia, enabled the establishment of Las
Vegas, and the city continues to pump it on a daily basis. As the city
has grown, its need for water has multiplied, requiring the water authorities
of the city, the county, and the state of Nevada to look farther for
fresh water supplies. Currently, 88 percent of the water consumed in
greater Las Vegas derives from Lake Mead, an enormous artificial reservoir
created by damming the Colorado River. With all other sources already
fully exploited, Nevada will see its Colorado River allotment reach
its limit by some time in 2006. This assumes the current rate of population
growth, which may well accelerate over the next decade.
The circumstances surrounding the damming and subsequent allotments
of the waters that flow down the Colorado River are extensive and complex,
but a few facts are worth noting. The Colorado River is already over-allotted.
This means that more water has been promised to seven states and Mexico
than actually flows in the river itself. The largest state with the
greatest allotment, California, is already exceeding its take of water
by almost 15 percent, to accommodate its giant agribusiness concerns
and sprawling cities. On top of that, Lake Mead—the reservoir behind
the Hoover dam—is actually falling in capacity, due to silt accumulation.
Moreover, the river no longer even reaches the sea, instead, literally
disappearing into the ground in the middle of the sands of Mexico.
Water allotments are measured in acre-feet, the amount of water it takes
to fill one acre to the depth of one foot, or approximately 326,000
gallons. The following quote is from the website of the Southern Nevada
Water Authority (see www.snwa.com),
a super-agency created in 1991 to build new water projects:
“The Colorado River has an average flow of 15 million acre-feet
per year. Under the Law Of The River, the Upper Basin States (Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) receive 7.5 million acre-feet each year
and the Lower Basin States (Arizona, California, and Nevada) receive
7.5 million acre-feet. Mexico was allotted 1.5 million acre-feet.”
Okay, let’s do the math: 7.5 + 7.5 + 1.5 = 16.5 million acre-feet.
Yet the total average flow is rated at 15 million acre-feet per year.
The basic allotments have not changed since the Colorado River Compact
was signed between the aforementioned states. This special math is the
entire basis for allocating water in states where the average rainfall
is less than seven inches per year, and is illustrative of the kind
of blindness to reality that places like Las Vegas represent. While
storage in high flow years can alleviate the crunch, a few dry years—a
phenomena not unknown in the arid Southwest—and the house of cards
collapses. Yet millions of acres of land are under irrigation from this
source, and tens of millions of people rely upon it for everyday water
needs. The Colorado River and its tributaries have more than 20 dams
all designed to do the same thing—suck every last drop of usable
water from the rivers before they empty into the sea. This reflects
what is commonly meant when westerners speak of the need to conserve
their resources, i.e. exploit them to their fullest, lest they be “wasted.”
The environmental repercussions have been serious, and continue to worsen.
The lower Colorado River is polluted by the runoff of fertilizers, pesticides,
and salinity rising high enough to kill crops further downstream. The
surrounding land, while fertile with the addition of water, has very
poor drainage in many places, which contributes to the accumulation
of salt, making the land eventually unusable. Those salts eventually
find their way back to the river, further poisoning the land when it
is taken up again for irrigation.
While irrigation for marginal farmland comprises the primary use for
Colorado River water, the burgeoning cities of the seven states that
take from it are in increasing competition for a share. In some locations,
the rising salt content of the land has forced acreage out of production,
leaving a fraction more water available for the cities, but the rate
that this occurs is so slow it will not keep up with demand. Which brings
us back to Las Vegas, the thirsty monster in the sand.
Nevada’s allotment of the Colorado River is the smallest of all
the seven states, a mere 300,000 acre-feet per year. At its current
rate, it’s estimated that the water needs of Las Vegas and its
environs will soak up its allotment by the year 2006. The city does
officially practice some conservation measures, but they are not very
strict and are not rigidly enforced. Using the word “conservation”
in conjunction with a city that prides itself on tremendously elaborate
and wasteful water displays is a rather sick joke—the amount lost
to evaporation alone from all of that exposed water in the dry air
and
blazing sun runs into the millions of gallons annually.
And to what end? While the entire western water ethic is highly questionable,
Las Vegas doesn’t even produce food. It offers illusions: illusions
of wealth, entertainment, comfort, and luxury, and little else. While
it is not the most voracious scavenger of the remnants of the Colorado
River, it is the most grotesque. Already, city planners, ecstatic over
the rapid growth of the city and the influx of more cash, are reaching
out for more water to feed their habit. Amongst the plans proposed
is
the pumping of groundwater from rural areas into the city; and, if
left unchecked, Las Vegas will be free to execute another ill-conceived
pipe
dream water project and literally suck the rest of the state dry. Meanwhile,
the Colorado River, master carver of the grandest canyons and rock
formations
in the world, vanishes into the sand.
Michael Clyne is a free-lance writer living in Norman,
Oklahoma.
