Fountains at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas sparkle day and night—regardless of drought or weather. Photo © Joakim Syversen
With its noon–at–midnight galaxy of lights and its naughtiness–as–public–policy atmosphere, Las Vegas may be unlike other western cities, but in two key ways it is the epitome of a western city. First, it has runaway population growth. The population of the metropolitan area has more than tripled since 1980, and is now pushing 1.8 million people. Growth itself has become second only to gambling and tourism as the metropolitan area’s most powerful economic driver, as contractors build new homes, stores and golf courses.
Nevada led the nation in population growth during the 1990s, although other western states galloped along close behind. The irony is that this wild growth in the West is predicated on what most of the region lacks: water. And that’s the second resemblance. The blue skies and sunshine make it an appealing place to live, but aridity defines this region and Las Vegas, as it does with population growth and everything else, carries this aridity to extremes. Snowfall is rare, and even rainfall is scant—little more than four inches annually.
Ironically, Las Vegas was created in 1905 precisely because of its water resources. Melting glaciers long ago created aquifers below the valley. Those aquifers were tapped to service steam locomotives on a new railroad linking Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Then, in 1931, Nevada authorized quickie divorces and legalized gambling. But something else happened that same year to seal Las Vegas’s future as America’s gaudiest extravaganza: The federal government began construction of Hoover Dam on the nearby Colorado River.
Because of Lake Mead, the reservoir created by the dam, fountains splash even on the hottest summer days on the Las Vegas Strip. Nor is Las Vegas the only beneficiary of this federal largesse. For the better part of a century the federal government installed dams on key rivers across the West, as well as their tributaries. Farms were to be created and cities were to prosper. This policy of reclamation has succeeded wildly in its goal of settling the West. While the population of the United States from 1900 to 1990 grew 225 percent, the Southwest bulged by 1,500 percent.
Las Vegas never expected any of this to happen. It long ago drew down its aquifers, and local water officials now worry the ground underneath the city may slump because of the cavities below. It never expected to need much water from Lake Mead. Now, the city is using its full allocation from the lake annually, and regional officials are scrambling to shore up supplies. The local government has even been paying homeowners to remove lawns while simultaneously trying to tap aquifers left over from past ice ages in Nevada’s more northerly valleys. Still, the population growth continues. With the oldest baby boomers beginning retirement, buyers attracted to the warm, dry climate can be expected for decades to come. And so life continues in Las Vegas, the civic poster child for what is perhaps the West’s most notable contradiction: growth where there is no water.
Of course, the West is not uniformly arid. It is also defined by its mountains, which writer Daniel Flores describes in his book The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains as “emerald islands in the lowland sea of encircling plain, sagebrush steppe, and cactus desert.” These ranges yield 50 percent of the water in the West. Winter matters most in the hydrological cycle. In Colorado, 75 percent of precipitation falls in the form of snow. Of that snow, more than half accumulates between 9,000 and 11,000 feet. Elevations differ in other states, but the basic principle does not: mountain snowpack is essentially water storage.
The U.S. Forest Service is a major player in water issues, as guardian of the landscapes where 33 percent of water in the West originates. This fact is not lost upon state and local water managers in the region. Periodically since at least the 1980s, scattered local officials in the West have argued for cutting forests to prevent trees from stealing moisture that could otherwise be directed to supposedly more beneficial uses. The idea has been studied in depth for several decades now, but in a January 2000 study called “Water & the Forest Service,” the agency politely rejected it. “Although theory suggests that vegetation management can produce more streamflow, for a variety of reasons, general water–yield increases through forests management are likely to fall in an undetectable range,” states the report. “The data suggest that relying on augmentation from national forests will not be a viable strategy for dealing with water shortages.”
Key state water officials in Colorado, where one of the more lively water debates occurs, do not dispute the study’s conclusion about vegetation management. “It makes your wet year wetter, and it doesn’t do anything for you during dry years,” notes Chris Treese, director of governmental affairs for the Colorado River Water Conservation District. “I don’t think anybody sees it as the solution. It’s not a silver bullet. Nor are there any silver bullets.”
More substantial is the disagreement between federal land agencies and the states about the supremacy of water management on public lands. For decades, the federal agencies insisted they should be able to mandate something called bypass flows from water diversions and dams located on public lands as necessary to ensure that bugs, fish and other aspects of ecosystem health can thrive. State water officials, especially in Colorado, have growled back that states have authority over water allocations. Democrats have sided with the federal government, Republicans with the states’ rights position. The Bush administration has backed away from confrontation. A letter from Agriculture Department Undersecretary Mark Rey pledges “cooperation” rather than “unilateral regulatory action.” Treese insists that states can often tinker with water allocations with greater expertise and across broader regions to ensure enough supplies to meet localized needs; he suggests foresters tend toward a very localized and less sophisticated response. This may be true, but it dodges the ultimate question of values in times of greatest scarcity. What value do we put on ecosystem health then? Can ecosystem health be achieved with voluntary efforts?
All of these issues have been prominent since the late 1990s, when the first of what became at least a five–year string of sub–par winters began.
In many places, 2002 was a defining year, providing an uncomfortable glimpse into the future. A lackluster and dry winter was cut short by an early spring. Then, in April, harsh winds eviscerated the snowpack early, drying up soil and making vegetation into tinder. June brought not peak runoff, but massive forest fires. A normally cautious Colorado Governor Bill Owens spoke the figurative truth, if not the literal one, when he reported that “all Colorado is on fire.” Soon after, Arizona was blazing too, and, by late summer, so was Oregon. In Colorado, fields went fallow for lack of water and, in Denver’s City Park, grass was painted green (for a grand opening of a Martin Luther King, Jr., monument). Coloradans had hitherto thought this sort of lunacy was confined to California. Scarcity also hit the news in Oregon, where competing interests fought over Klamath River water, illustrating that despite its reputation for being rain–drenched, even the Pacific Northwest is vulnerable to scarcity issues.
Later studies showed that, at least in portions of the Colorado high country, 2002 had the most severely depleted streamflows in about 300 years. More sobering yet were studies that suggested the recent drought years were closer to “normal” than anything in the twentieth century. In fact, some concluded that the twentieth century was a wet period as compared with the last 1,000 years, and that the early part of the twentieth century was the wettest. This early period was what states referenced when they apportioned the Colorado River water in the compact of 1929. In other words, instead of the 17.3 million acre–feet in annual average flows that had been recorded in the years before the compact was adopted, the 9.9 million acre–feet of the last several years might be closer to the normal flow of the last 400 years.
What this drought of the early twenty–first century has showed, and 2002 glaringly so, is a sharper image of the future. There will be fewer farms and more houses. For decades, this conversion has been occurring near such places as Boise, Colorado Springs and Phoenix, as water supply systems originally created for agriculture are being reconfigured to service homes and businesses. In metropolitan Phoenix, cotton fields and orange groves long ago began the transformation to subdivisions and golf courses. The change is easily explained: money. Housing prices in the Phoenix suburb of Maricopa increased 20 percent from December 2004 to April 2005. Seen in this way, the West still has vast resources for population growth. In Colorado, somewhere between 80 and 93 percent of water is used for agriculture, with a majority of the ag water used for livestock production, primarily for corn and alfalfa to feed cattle.
Still ahead is the wildcard of global warming. Global warming computer projections vary wildly in attempting to predict what increased temperatures will do to the West. Some say more precipitation, others say less. But all forecast more erratic weather and prominently warmer and shorter winters. In addition, evaporation increases with warmer temperatures, meaning more snow and rain are needed for yield to stay the same.
This has important implications. Already, water managers in California are noting significantly earlier runoff—several weeks early, as compared with the mid–twentieth century. Given that change, dam operation will become trickier. Reservoirs must be drawn down during winter, to allow storage in case of floods. But with spring arriving sooner, there is even greater need for more storage, because so much more time follows with no additional precipitation.
So far, none of these uncertainties about future water supplies have dampened the population growth in the West, including Las Vegas. There, officials report 5,000 new residents arriving every week. The weather report they hear is “hot and dry.”