Game over: Las Vegas entertainment industry on the brink of death due to lack of water

Las Vegas is one of the most popular US cities among tourists. 40 million tourists visit this paradise with casinos and entertainment every year. But all this luxury and splendor, despite the multimillion-dollar profits, turned into an unsolvable problem for the authorities of the State of Nevada. The fact is that Las Vegas, located in a hot desert, consumes too much water and its reserves are coming to an end.

The city of Las Vegas is located in the Mojave Desert, in the western United States. The air temperature from May to September stably stays at 30-35ºС, and the annual amount of precipitation falling in these desert places does not exceed 100 millimeters. About 600,000 people live in the city, and the Las Vegas metropolitan area has nearly 2 million inhabitants. All of them need drinking and domestic water supply.

But the main consumers of water resources in this city are not its residents, but a huge number of hotels, casinos and entertainment centers, which annually receive up to 40 million tourists.

These photographs, taken with a difference of 23 years, show how much the area of ​​urban development in Las Vegas has increased and how the reservoir Mead, which feeds this paradise of entertainment with water, has decreased.

The rapid growth of Las Vegas, whose entertainment industry consumes more and more water, contributes to the reduction in the volume of the Mead Reservoir. All kinds of fountains, artificial canals with gondolas specially brought from Venice, water parks, man-made lakes and green golf courses are unacceptable luxury in the desert. But the entertainment industry dictates its own rules, despite the fact that the city has already encountered a tangible shortage of water.

In order to solve the water supply problem of growing Las Vegas, Nevada authorities are considering an alternative - the use of underground aquifers. But against the pumping out of precious fresh water that has been accumulating for millennia, associations of local farmers are opposed. Water from the underground horizons is necessary for them in order to water cattle and provide their families with water, and they rightly believe that pumping underground water for the needs of wasteful Las Vegas will lead to an environmental disaster throughout the region.

In the meantime, state authorities are urgently looking for a solution to a complex problem, Las Vegas continues to expand. Owners of new cottages in Las Vegas are already prohibited from breaking the lawn in front of the house so as not to waste water on watering. In addition, the city organized a wastewater treatment system, which is reused for household needs, filling artificial reservoirs and fountains.

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