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The Deans of Green
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Leaving Las Vegas
comments (0) December 9th, 2008 in Blogs_72dpi_crop_sqs.jpg)
Alex Wilson, contributor
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Development around the South Point Casino in Las Vegas.
I try to avoid Las Vegas
like the plague. But I was there for the WaterSmart
Innovations Conference, the first-ever national conference focused on water
efficiency and water conservation.
The choice of Las Vegas
as this venue for this conference was apt. The city normally receives only
about 4 in. of rainfall per year—the lowest rainfall of any major American
city—and this year, as of early October, they hadn’t even recorded 1 in. The
city is 90% dependent on Lake Mead for its water, and scientists are telling us that
there’s a 50% chance that this reservoir on the Colorado
River (the largest reservoir in the nation) will be effectively
empty by 2021.
After two days of conference sessions and lots of time in the exhibit hall, I
spent two hours on my last morning exploring the residential neighborhoods near
the South Point hotel and casino resort (where the conference was held). My
walk past dozens of housing subdivisions was pretty sobering. The empty lots I
passed were as dry as dust. The only green plants I saw were those being kept
that way with irrigation. When I carefully examined what looked like classic
“xeriscaping” (water-conserving landscaping), I invariably found the hidden
lines of black tubing with drip emitters that provided these plants with their
lifeblood of water.
And despite the offer of the Southern Nevada Water Authority to pay homeowners
$1.50 per sq. ft. (!) to remove irrigated turf, a majority of the lots in the
gated neighborhoods I peeked at through the gates were sparkling,
Kentucky-bluegrass green, sometimes with water running down the sidewalk from
the spray irrigation.
But it wasn’t just the lack of water that got to me, it was the speed and
extent of growth the city is experiencing. Las Vegas has doubled in population just
since 1995. On The Strip, where I spent an evening walking from The Venetian
casino to the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino, towering construction cranes
provided a backdrop to the skyline, with each new casino trying to
out-Las-Vegas the last in its exhibitionism. Megawatts surged through the
umbilical cords of power lines, illuminating the night sky with flashing,
pulsing, multicolored light.
My final shock was in learning that many of these massive new projects are professing
to be green. The largest LEED
Platinum building anywhere in the world is now in Las Vegas, and there are
nine LEED-certified projects in the city and at least 68 projects registered
with LEED and currently under construction (a number of them casinos). That
makes Las Vegas one of the most active areas in the country for “green
building.” Is it just me, or does it seem like there’s something wrong with
this picture? While the glitzy colors gold, silver, and platinum certainly fit
right in, something just doesn’t seem right about calling casino construction
in the nation’s driest city “green.” After all, gambling is the opposite of
sustainability (it only works because patrons lose money), and there is no way
that 4 in. of rainfall per year could sustain any building.
I’m glad to be back in Vermont!
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