8 ms·

Learning from Las Vegas: Sustainable vs. Susceptible

78 points by jeffreyrogers 4y ago

hervature 4y ago
As someone who has lived in Las Vegas, this person seems to not give credit where credit is due. First, I don't know how they weren't able to find the cycling path from the store. You can actually see the store and its solar panels from the entrance [1]. Second, the exact thing they are a proponent for is actually the root cause of the water crisis in the southwest. Growing things in a desert. It takes water, a lot of water. The reason why you don't see much green in Las Vegas is because it is a huge water use. So, while the slightly cooler ground directly beneath the tree is nice, it really is the exact opposite of sustainable. Through initiatives like paying to rip up grass lawns, Las Vegas has actually been able to reduce water use by 30% while growing probably something close to 10% in the last 3 years. Point to anywhere else in the US that has actually reduced usage of anything in the last 3 years. This is all with the huge waste of water that is Lake Las Vegas and the golf courses. Which goes back to the main point, the water crisis in the southwest is purely a function of agricultural use in California and to a smaller extent Arizona. Of course Las Vegas relies on outside agriculture but there is going to have to be a shift in the coming decade for more sustainable farming practices in the southwest. [1] - https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1210033,-115.3267191,3a,75y,199.22h,74.14t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s91Nsh6naa5UspsJBkFkWfQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D91Nsh6naa5UspsJBkFkWfQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D68.011284%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1210033,-115.3267191,3a,75y,...
- wazoox 4y ago
  There's a huge difference between maintaining absurd grass lawns (about everywhere but in rainy England) and maintaining reasonable vegetation.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    There is some well-known reasonable vegetation in arid climate: things that naturally grow in such conditions. A cactus here, a baobab there, things like that. That would give a city an even more unique look.
  - oneplane 4y ago
    There's also the difference between building stuff in a desert and building it in a more moderate location... I figure the only reason this stuff is being done at all is because somewhere there is some margin to be made. Sadly, that doesn't magically create more water, but money doesn't care about that.
  - irrational 4y ago
    We can maintain a grass lawn in the PNW without watering it, but I still replaced mine with artificial turf since I hated mowing it. I definitely wouldn’t want to maintain reasonable vegetation.
- coredog64 4y ago
  Arizona (or at least the greater Phoenix metropolitan area) has been replacing agricultural land use with residential for 20+ years.
- Eji1700 4y ago
  I'm glad to see this. It is constantly annoying to see there's amateur hot takes on Las Vegas that really ignore the larger water issues of the southwest as a whole. I know only enough about the subject to realize i'm an idiot when it comes to all this, but there's so much going on, and it all hinges on the Colorado River and proper water usage. Also for reference because it really bothers me when people leave out comparisons, the Vegas Valley rainfall is cited as 4inches in the article and then compared to the national average of 38. This is borderline intellectually dishonest in my opinion, since I'm not sure many people would realize that LA only has 16 inches of rain on average. Is it better than vegas? Absolutely, is it anywhere near the 38 being used for this comparison? Absolutely not. The entire southwest has a lot of issues they're going to eventually need to address, and I'm frankly much more worried about the 40 million in LA than the 2.2 in vegas.
  - NonNefarious 4y ago
    Which is why nobody should be making sacrifices for Vegas. Yet here we are with another epic drought in SoCal, being asked to make all kinds of water cuts... again... while Vegas exists. At least California grows a huge percentage of the nation's food. Vegas grows what? Fat asses and gambling debt?
    - Eji1700 4y ago
      You understand that if you delete vegas tomorrow you're still going to be making sacrifices. The demands california has are FAR beyond the amount allocated for vegas, and a lot of what's grown in california is a massive waste of water that really should be grown somewhere else.
      - NonNefarious 4y ago
        I agree on the last point, but Vegas is a worthless cesspool that doesn't grow anything but silicone tits.
- mikelor 4y ago
  I ride my bike down Town Center and up the pedestrian Bridge every morning. It's super easy to get on from the road, not sure what this person's problem was in finding it. Also, on May 5th, 2022 the recorded high was a nice 91 degrees. This is not hot given the low humidity. I've been here five years and that 8 degree low has got to be an all time record low. Rarely will it get below freezing. These are just a few examples of how the author bends the truth to there narrative, makes me wonder about the rest of the posts.
  - CHB0403085482 4y ago
    His bias is from a tourist's pov and the fact it's not easily accessible to an outsider.
ianbicking 4y ago
Looking at all the parking lots, I can't help but wonder if there isn't a more appropriate form for this particular area? In lots of places asphalt at least has the advantages of suppressing plants, making it easier to plow snow, avoiding any car fluids from seeping into the groundwater, keeping it from getting muddy in the rain, and so on. There's still issues with washboarding, and there is at least a little rain, but it feels like you could skip a lot of this built landscape. I wonder how much the asphalt is, ultimately, aesthetic. It says "this is a built area" as opposed to "this is an empty lot".
- ianai 4y ago
  LV is mostly gravel in its “natural state”. They even export the stuff. It’s really a lot like a naturally cleared plot of land with no uses outside of modern tech. (Modern tech includes a lot of water recycling and choosing plants suitable to the desert.) Edit-I lived and worked there for 10 years. Ultimately it’s just too hot and dry for me. I like being outside too much and miss actual wild/green areas closer by. I saw it actively push out any business not gambling too. So pointing at the golf courses and casino tourist attractions as waste of water is probably a waste of time. TLDR Las Vegas is Americas “Arrakis.” Complete with Fremen locals and probably a few Muad'Dibs it’s welcomed and ultimately rolled.
suzzer99 4y ago
Now do the Bellagio fountains that evaporate 12 million gallons of ground water every year. I can't imagine that's being replenished at a sustainable rate.
- tekla 4y ago
  https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=glj https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11... According to this, the fountains uses negligible amounts of water versus the population + visitors. > Resort hotels’ water use accounts for only seven percent of the water supplied in Las Vegas.187 The average guest at a resort hotel uses sixty-three gallons of water per day. In comparison, the amount of water used by a Las Vegas resident is nearly double that amount.
- thaeli 4y ago
  The lake which the Bellagio fountains are part of is filled from a private well on the property. It does not pull from the mountain aquifers or from Lake Mead, but from a shallow and rather polluted aquifer underneath the Strip. That aquifer is primarily replenished from ground infiltration; Vegas does get rain, just not a lot of it, and there is still some irrigation which filters into the shallow aquifer. Because it's irrigation and turf runoff, and so shallow that there hasn't been sufficient filtering by soil layers, this aquifer is "salty" (various salts, not just NaCl) and not potable water. It is trapped by clay layers in the soil and does not refill the deeper aquifers or Lake Mead. So they are using that lower-quality groundwater for nonpotable use in the Bellagio lake and fountains. The shallow aquifer is replenished at a sustainable rate, it's just not the high-quality mountain water in the deep aquifer. In fact, replenishment of the shallow aquifer has INCREASED with development - ironically for a desert, the water table would be high enough in parts of Las Vegas to require sump pumps if it wasn't for the shallow-aquifer wells that feed the fountains and golf courses. There is a very limited number, accounted for in existing water rights, of these intensive nonpotable water uses that the Las Vegas Valley can support, but those few play an important role in the overall water cycle.
- EricE 4y ago
  Steve Wynn bought the Dunes to build the Bellagio because it had a natural artesian well (and associated water rights). There was a 9 hole golf course that got taken out with the demo of the Dunes. Fountains use a LOT less water than golf courses!
HWR_14 4y ago
Plants don't provide "natural cooling". They naturally provide evaporator cooling. That is, they cool the surrounding area because they release water vapor. Drip irrigation is much better than other irrigation, but it doesn't change that growing trees and vines in the desert is wasteful.
- cassepipe 4y ago
  But isn't the point of fighting desertifaction that since there is more shade, there's less evaporation and the little water that drops there accumulates in the soil supporting more vegetation and kicking off a virtuous cycle ? (I am no expert but that's what I assumed looking at counter-desertification projects)
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Shade can be an important piece of it, but evapotranspiration (evaporation through the leaves) is responsible for 7-10 degrees of cooling in a normal environment. In a hot dry place probably even more. I think this is one of those "if the whole area is green, you get great effects. But that doesn't mean planting a garden in the desert does the same thing."
criddell 4y ago
> Without modern machinery and a national network keeping this place supplied with essentials there’s no way the current population of 2,200,000 people could survive in this environment. Las Vegas is basically a space colony. Isn't that true of every large city? Is there any city of millions of people where you could put a wall around it and it would be self-sustaining? All cities rely on having food trucked in, use electricity mostly generated elsewhere, rely on water that comes from outside the city, etc...
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I think “survive in this environment” is meant to reflect the fact that human beings could not exist for nontrivial periods in the Nevada Desert. Contrast that with San Diego or New York, where the environment is not actively trying to kill you during most of the year. All cities import goods, because the economics favor it (space is at a premium). But most cities don’t exist in spite of their physical environs; they’re generally situated somewhere that’s advantageous to ordinary economic conduct (along rivers, lakes, coasts, etc.)
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    But even in San Diego, it seems there isn't enough freshwater to support a population nearly as large as the city has. From a quick search it looks like SD imports something like 80% of it's water. I think Las Vegas is not really unique in this way, just a bit more extreme.
    - bin_bash 4y ago
      Well they get their water from the same source (Colorado River). The difference is that river is right next to Vegas, so it's not imported. San Diego pipes it 200 miles across the state. The reason Vegas has such limited water is because California and Arizona have far more water rights. (Only 4% in fact) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact
      - 4y ago
tracerbulletx 4y ago
The entire state of Nevada is allocated 4% of the water from the Colorado. Almost every residential property, and recently the commercial ones as well, is xeriscaped with rock. Yeah there are a few golf courses and hotel fountains which do as much water recycling as they can and look out of place in the desert, but Las Vegas is not particularly significant to the South West's water problems really.
- Eji1700 4y ago
  For reference California takes 58% of the water. It's not even close to self sustaining and is HIDEOUSLY overpopulated in comparison to the resources it has available (especially when you consider the squandering of them on inappropriate agriculture).
lazyant 4y ago
> Most of the water actually flows under the stones and isn’t exposed directly to the sun in order to reduce evaporation. Can somebody confirm this? it's not obvious to me that since the surface would be the same, that everything equal (average temperature of the water probably not?), the evaporation would be the less in this case vs normal stream.
anonymousiam 4y ago
Nice to see some local photos. I bought my ebike at Las Vegas Cyclery. It turns out that Vegas is getting a lot better with regard to water usage. Despite a big increase in population and new houses, usage has been trending down. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/sep/22/las-vegas-water-use-dropped-prominent-residents/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/sep/22/las-vegas-water-use... I think most of the drain from Lake Mead is coming from California, which has been moving in the opposite direction. Also, Denver has been diverting more and more runoff from the Rockies to the East instead of West.
iostream24 4y ago
This is great. Basic common sense, no nonsense.

78 points by jeffreyrogers 4y ago

As someone who has lived in Las Vegas, this person seems to not give credit where credit is due. First, I don't know how they weren't able to find the cycling path from the store. You can actually see the store and its solar panels from the entrance [1]. Second, the exact thing they are a proponent for is actually the root cause of the water crisis in the southwest. Growing things in a desert. It takes water, a lot of water. The reason why you don't see much green in Las Vegas is because it is a huge water use. So, while the slightly cooler ground directly beneath the tree is nice, it really is the exact opposite of sustainable. Through initiatives like paying to rip up grass lawns, Las Vegas has actually been able to reduce water use by 30% while growing probably something close to 10% in the last 3 years. Point to anywhere else in the US that has actually reduced usage of anything in the last 3 years. This is all with the huge waste of water that is Lake Las Vegas and the golf courses. Which goes back to the main point, the water crisis in the southwest is purely a function of agricultural use in California and to a smaller extent Arizona. Of course Las Vegas relies on outside agriculture but there is going to have to be a shift in the coming decade for more sustainable farming practices in the southwest. [1] - https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1210033,-115.3267191,3a,75y,199.22h,74.14t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s91Nsh6naa5UspsJBkFkWfQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D91Nsh6naa5UspsJBkFkWfQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D68.011284%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1210033,-115.3267191,3a,75y,...

wazoox 4y ago
There's a huge difference between maintaining absurd grass lawns (about everywhere but in rainy England) and maintaining reasonable vegetation.
- nine_k 4y ago
  There is some well-known reasonable vegetation in arid climate: things that naturally grow in such conditions. A cactus here, a baobab there, things like that. That would give a city an even more unique look.
- oneplane 4y ago
  There's also the difference between building stuff in a desert and building it in a more moderate location... I figure the only reason this stuff is being done at all is because somewhere there is some margin to be made. Sadly, that doesn't magically create more water, but money doesn't care about that.
- irrational 4y ago
  We can maintain a grass lawn in the PNW without watering it, but I still replaced mine with artificial turf since I hated mowing it. I definitely wouldn’t want to maintain reasonable vegetation.
coredog64 4y ago
Arizona (or at least the greater Phoenix metropolitan area) has been replacing agricultural land use with residential for 20+ years.
Eji1700 4y ago
I'm glad to see this. It is constantly annoying to see there's amateur hot takes on Las Vegas that really ignore the larger water issues of the southwest as a whole. I know only enough about the subject to realize i'm an idiot when it comes to all this, but there's so much going on, and it all hinges on the Colorado River and proper water usage. Also for reference because it really bothers me when people leave out comparisons, the Vegas Valley rainfall is cited as 4inches in the article and then compared to the national average of 38. This is borderline intellectually dishonest in my opinion, since I'm not sure many people would realize that LA only has 16 inches of rain on average. Is it better than vegas? Absolutely, is it anywhere near the 38 being used for this comparison? Absolutely not. The entire southwest has a lot of issues they're going to eventually need to address, and I'm frankly much more worried about the 40 million in LA than the 2.2 in vegas.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Which is why nobody should be making sacrifices for Vegas. Yet here we are with another epic drought in SoCal, being asked to make all kinds of water cuts... again... while Vegas exists. At least California grows a huge percentage of the nation's food. Vegas grows what? Fat asses and gambling debt?
  - Eji1700 4y ago
    You understand that if you delete vegas tomorrow you're still going to be making sacrifices. The demands california has are FAR beyond the amount allocated for vegas, and a lot of what's grown in california is a massive waste of water that really should be grown somewhere else.
    - NonNefarious 4y ago
      I agree on the last point, but Vegas is a worthless cesspool that doesn't grow anything but silicone tits.
mikelor 4y ago
I ride my bike down Town Center and up the pedestrian Bridge every morning. It's super easy to get on from the road, not sure what this person's problem was in finding it. Also, on May 5th, 2022 the recorded high was a nice 91 degrees. This is not hot given the low humidity. I've been here five years and that 8 degree low has got to be an all time record low. Rarely will it get below freezing. These are just a few examples of how the author bends the truth to there narrative, makes me wonder about the rest of the posts.
- CHB0403085482 4y ago
  His bias is from a tourist's pov and the fact it's not easily accessible to an outsider.

ianbicking 4y ago

Looking at all the parking lots, I can't help but wonder if there isn't a more appropriate form for this particular area? In lots of places asphalt at least has the advantages of suppressing plants, making it easier to plow snow, avoiding any car fluids from seeping into the groundwater, keeping it from getting muddy in the rain, and so on. There's still issues with washboarding, and there is at least a little rain, but it feels like you could skip a lot of this built landscape. I wonder how much the asphalt is, ultimately, aesthetic. It says "this is a built area" as opposed to "this is an empty lot".

ianai 4y ago
LV is mostly gravel in its “natural state”. They even export the stuff. It’s really a lot like a naturally cleared plot of land with no uses outside of modern tech. (Modern tech includes a lot of water recycling and choosing plants suitable to the desert.) Edit-I lived and worked there for 10 years. Ultimately it’s just too hot and dry for me. I like being outside too much and miss actual wild/green areas closer by. I saw it actively push out any business not gambling too. So pointing at the golf courses and casino tourist attractions as waste of water is probably a waste of time. TLDR Las Vegas is Americas “Arrakis.” Complete with Fremen locals and probably a few Muad'Dibs it’s welcomed and ultimately rolled.

suzzer99 4y ago

Now do the Bellagio fountains that evaporate 12 million gallons of ground water every year. I can't imagine that's being replenished at a sustainable rate.

tekla 4y ago
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=glj https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11... According to this, the fountains uses negligible amounts of water versus the population + visitors. > Resort hotels’ water use accounts for only seven percent of the water supplied in Las Vegas.187 The average guest at a resort hotel uses sixty-three gallons of water per day. In comparison, the amount of water used by a Las Vegas resident is nearly double that amount.
thaeli 4y ago
The lake which the Bellagio fountains are part of is filled from a private well on the property. It does not pull from the mountain aquifers or from Lake Mead, but from a shallow and rather polluted aquifer underneath the Strip. That aquifer is primarily replenished from ground infiltration; Vegas does get rain, just not a lot of it, and there is still some irrigation which filters into the shallow aquifer. Because it's irrigation and turf runoff, and so shallow that there hasn't been sufficient filtering by soil layers, this aquifer is "salty" (various salts, not just NaCl) and not potable water. It is trapped by clay layers in the soil and does not refill the deeper aquifers or Lake Mead. So they are using that lower-quality groundwater for nonpotable use in the Bellagio lake and fountains. The shallow aquifer is replenished at a sustainable rate, it's just not the high-quality mountain water in the deep aquifer. In fact, replenishment of the shallow aquifer has INCREASED with development - ironically for a desert, the water table would be high enough in parts of Las Vegas to require sump pumps if it wasn't for the shallow-aquifer wells that feed the fountains and golf courses. There is a very limited number, accounted for in existing water rights, of these intensive nonpotable water uses that the Las Vegas Valley can support, but those few play an important role in the overall water cycle.
EricE 4y ago
Steve Wynn bought the Dunes to build the Bellagio because it had a natural artesian well (and associated water rights). There was a 9 hole golf course that got taken out with the demo of the Dunes. Fountains use a LOT less water than golf courses!

HWR_14 4y ago

Plants don't provide "natural cooling". They naturally provide evaporator cooling. That is, they cool the surrounding area because they release water vapor. Drip irrigation is much better than other irrigation, but it doesn't change that growing trees and vines in the desert is wasteful.

cassepipe 4y ago
But isn't the point of fighting desertifaction that since there is more shade, there's less evaporation and the little water that drops there accumulates in the soil supporting more vegetation and kicking off a virtuous cycle ? (I am no expert but that's what I assumed looking at counter-desertification projects)
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Shade can be an important piece of it, but evapotranspiration (evaporation through the leaves) is responsible for 7-10 degrees of cooling in a normal environment. In a hot dry place probably even more. I think this is one of those "if the whole area is green, you get great effects. But that doesn't mean planting a garden in the desert does the same thing."

criddell 4y ago

> Without modern machinery and a national network keeping this place supplied with essentials there’s no way the current population of 2,200,000 people could survive in this environment. Las Vegas is basically a space colony. Isn't that true of every large city? Is there any city of millions of people where you could put a wall around it and it would be self-sustaining? All cities rely on having food trucked in, use electricity mostly generated elsewhere, rely on water that comes from outside the city, etc...

woodruffw 4y ago
I think “survive in this environment” is meant to reflect the fact that human beings could not exist for nontrivial periods in the Nevada Desert. Contrast that with San Diego or New York, where the environment is not actively trying to kill you during most of the year. All cities import goods, because the economics favor it (space is at a premium). But most cities don’t exist in spite of their physical environs; they’re generally situated somewhere that’s advantageous to ordinary economic conduct (along rivers, lakes, coasts, etc.)
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  But even in San Diego, it seems there isn't enough freshwater to support a population nearly as large as the city has. From a quick search it looks like SD imports something like 80% of it's water. I think Las Vegas is not really unique in this way, just a bit more extreme.
  - bin_bash 4y ago
    Well they get their water from the same source (Colorado River). The difference is that river is right next to Vegas, so it's not imported. San Diego pipes it 200 miles across the state. The reason Vegas has such limited water is because California and Arizona have far more water rights. (Only 4% in fact) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact
    - 4y ago

tracerbulletx 4y ago

The entire state of Nevada is allocated 4% of the water from the Colorado. Almost every residential property, and recently the commercial ones as well, is xeriscaped with rock. Yeah there are a few golf courses and hotel fountains which do as much water recycling as they can and look out of place in the desert, but Las Vegas is not particularly significant to the South West's water problems really.

Eji1700 4y ago
For reference California takes 58% of the water. It's not even close to self sustaining and is HIDEOUSLY overpopulated in comparison to the resources it has available (especially when you consider the squandering of them on inappropriate agriculture).

lazyant 4y ago

> Most of the water actually flows under the stones and isn’t exposed directly to the sun in order to reduce evaporation. Can somebody confirm this? it's not obvious to me that since the surface would be the same, that everything equal (average temperature of the water probably not?), the evaporation would be the less in this case vs normal stream.

anonymousiam 4y ago

Nice to see some local photos. I bought my ebike at Las Vegas Cyclery. It turns out that Vegas is getting a lot better with regard to water usage. Despite a big increase in population and new houses, usage has been trending down. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/sep/22/las-vegas-water-use-dropped-prominent-residents/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/sep/22/las-vegas-water-use... I think most of the drain from Lake Mead is coming from California, which has been moving in the opposite direction. Also, Denver has been diverting more and more runoff from the Rockies to the East instead of West.

iostream24 4y ago

This is great. Basic common sense, no nonsense.