‘We live in a desert. We have to act like it’: Las Vegas faces reality of drought | Climate change

IInvestigator Perry Kaye put the brakes on his government-issued vehicle to investigate the crime. “Oh oh, that doesn’t look good. Let’s take a look, ”he said, getting out to tackle one of the most existential violations in drought-ridden Las Vegas – a broken sprinkler system.

Kaye is one of nearly 50 water waste investigators appointed by the local water authority to tackle even the smallest abuse of a dangerously scarce fluid in the western United States that has dried up from two decades of drought. The situation in Las Vegas, which last year recorded a record 240 consecutive days of no rain, is getting more serious.

Lake Mead, the vast reservoir that supplies Las Vegas with 90% of its water, has now sunk to a historic low, meaning Nevada will see its first mandatory water supply cut next year. This looming cut is forcing restrictions on the city, which somehow managed to thrive as a gaudy oasis in the burning Mojave Desert.

“The lake doesn’t get any fuller at this time, so we need to conserve every single drop,” said Kaye, a staunch retired US Air Force soldier who wears a reflective vest and waves a badge as he does his rounds in search of. turns violators. He starts his shift at 4 a.m. “A lot of people think that because we’re government employees, we’re not out there at this time, but we’re out there around the clock, every day of the year,” he said.

Kaye regularly imposes fines – starting at $ 80 and then doubling for each subsequent offense – for the kind of infraction he spotted in Summerlin, an affluent enclave of Las Vegas where landscapers manicured gardens in the rising heat maintain. Water sprayed on lawns and plants must not run off the property, however That day, a damaged sprinkler had poured water into the gutter, where the precious resource was lost.

“Look, we have a little stream or creek here,” Kaye said as he used his cell phone to film the water winding into the street. “If everyone did that, a lot of water would be wasted.”

It’s so hot in Vegas – the temperature will exceed 40 ° C (104 ° F) that July day – that the wandering water evaporates in five minutes. Kaye planted a yellow flag next to the leak as a warning to homeowners, but a few taps of the computer in his cruiser reveal that there is a prior warning for this property, so a $ 80 fine is on the way.

However, there is a growing realization that such rules – no watering between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m., not at all on Sundays – won’t be enough as Nevada is crushed by a dangerously escalated drought in 2021 law, “non-working” public law for the next five years Ripping up lawns in Las Vegas, such as

Perry Kaye, a water waste investigator in Las Vegas, Nevada, issues a yellow warning flag about a defective sprinkler. Photo: Oliver Milman / The Guardian

“This is just wasteful – the only person walking on it is the person who cuts it,” Kaye said, pricking a nearby median. “Some people just want to recreate their homes where they grew up with grass.” The new law, along with a financial incentive for homeowners to replace thirsty grass with more resilient desert plants and rocks, is an acknowledgment that climate change is not that easy Imposition of a green green oasis on a bone-dry desert basin.

A city that contains a giant replica of the Eiffel Tower, sprawling golf courses and a simulacrum of Venetian canals with gondolas can never fit into its surroundings. But Las Vegas, called “The Meadows” in Spanish because of its natural springs that were pumped dry in the 1960s, is at least aware of its location in such a dry place that there are few small creosote bushes and tumbleweeds naturally can survive.

“We live in the desert. We’re the driest city in the United States, in the driest state in the United States, ”said Colby Pellegrino, assistant resource manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “We have to act like this.”

Pellegrino said the recent escalation of the drought has been “very scary” for some Vegas residents, despite insisting the water authority planned for the moment. Lake Mead’s water level fell below 1,075 feet, barely a third, in June, which sparked the first cuts under an agreement with seven states to share the water from the Colorado River, used by the Hoover Dam, around the reservoir to accomplish.

Different states receive different water grants, and Nevada is a victim of its depopulated history of only getting 300,000 acre-feet of water a year under an agreement made prior to the completion of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s (for comparison, California gets 4.4 million acre-feet). . “The joke is that the Nevada rep was drunk,” said Pellegrino, who was born in 1983 when the state was just 900,000 people. It is now over 3 million and receives tens of millions of tourists every year.

Homes, trees and swimming pools spring from the desert in Henderson, Nevada. Photo: David McNew / Getty Images

That low water allocation will shrink by 21,000 acre-feet with the new cuts, although Nevada has made impressive strides to stay below its low ceiling and has reduced its water usage, despite the fact that the population has nearly doubled since the early 2000s. Pellegrino is confident that further savings can be made and the water used in the ubiquitous cooling systems of Vegas casinos is being carefully studied.

But the effects of global warming on snowpack and the rivers of the west are relentless and the city’s water savings will only go so far. Las Vegas only has a minor role in its own destiny. Three-quarters of the Colorado River’s allotted water is used to irrigate thirsty agriculture, and the total water supply depends more on the snowmelt in the Rockies hundreds of miles away than on some additional minor savings in the suburbs.

“Vegas did great things like uprooting the grass, but we’ve lost 20% of the Colorado River since 2000 and another 10% loss is possible by 2050,” said Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist from Colorado State University, whose research has focused on the loads on the river.

“I’m afraid there could be more, and that should frighten everyone.”

Back in Summerlin, Perry Kaye is also adamant. A house across from the first culprit has broken sprinklers splashing water in puddles on the grass and street. Kaye knocks on the ornate door to inform the homeowner, but no one is inside.

“Those sprinklers didn’t pop properly, they just ooze all over the place,” Kaye muttered. He has been monitoring water waste for 16 years and has imposed countless fines during that time. “I was hoping I would have made myself unemployed in the meantime. But it looks like I’ll retire first. “