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I Ain’t Loving These Odds, Baby…

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Posted February 12th, 2008 by Christopher - 3 comments

Lake Mead I knew it was dry but this is crazy! Brothas’ gotta drink out here, yo!

When I first moved to Las Vegas a number of years ago we were already at like year three or four of what is now like an eight or nine year-long “drought.” I remember thinking, “wow – drought in a desert? It’s supposed to be normally dry. It must be like crazy dry.”

Then some other interesting, counterintuitive things happened. Aside from hearing mention a few times of the local area being ahead on average rainful, a huge amount of snow fell up on Mount Charleston. So much so that at the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard resort there was an avalanche that killed a boy named Allen Brett Hutchison. Avalanches kill people in the United States but not at ski resorts. They are invariably backcountry skiers, snowboarders, or snowmobilers, that are hurt or killed in avalanches. So it was that much more shocking that an avalanche killed a boy in Las Vegas – during a “drought,” no less. (He was on a chairlift when the avalanche occurred – it took out the ski lift and him with it. Very sad.) Later in the spring, the snow melt from that year’s record-setting snowfall washed out roads and caused some flooding in a school forcing it to be closed for a time.

So what does it mean to be experiencing a “drought” in the desert Southwest when locally there are places with record snowfalls, ahead-of-average rainfalls, et cetera? “Why live in the desert – it’s environmentally irresponsible,” you say? Well the truth is, Las Vegas uses a relatively very small percentage of the drought-ridden water supply. A couple of hours to our southwest there are a few towns you might have heard of that are interspersed with other towns connecting them, in what seems like a sea of never-ending sprawl… Los Angeles, San Diego.. those ringing a bell? Well Southern California uses an unbelievably disproportionate amount of water from the Colorado River on which Lake Mead sits behind Hoover Dam. Drought in the Southwest, Las Vegas, specifically, is all about the Rocky Mountains. The headwaters of the Colorado River start in – you guessed it – Colorado, where they’ve been experiencing lower average snow packs for the basically the last decade. Lake Mead isn’t the only lake dammed up on the Colorado River, any more. The water has to make its way through Lake Powell in frickin’ Utah before it can get down here into Lake Mead, which then, by treaty with several states and Mexico, passes the lion’s share of it on to Southern California. It’s true that the lake is Las Vegas’ primary water source. There are things they call “straws” that pump out our water from Lake Mead. It’s equally true that we’re not not the cause of the drought and sucking the lifeblood out of the river water conservation system’s coffers. That would be California.

So how bad is it? Well that is the reason I wrote this article. According to a new study as reported by MSNBC.com, it’s worse than they’d originally thought. It’s so bad, in fact, that there is a 10% chance that Lake Mead will be dry by 2014. That’s six years from now! By 2017 there is a 50% chance that water levels in Lake Mead will be so low that hydroelectric power generation will have to be halted. The scariest statistic of all? By 2021 – thirteen years from today – there is a 50-50 chance that Lake Mead will be dry.

I know this is Las Vegas and if you’re a regular reader you know I got a little gamble in me… But I ain’t lovin’ these odds – not even a little bit.

Lake Mead is currently hovering about a nut hair above 50% capacity. It is the policy of the Powers That Be to not let a large amount of water out of Lake Powell to drastically increase Lake Mead’s levels until Lake Powell returns to a certain level that satisfies their requirements. Sounds like someone needs to start taking all the rumors of massive, multi-billion dollar desalination projects seriously. All that water and ya can’t drink a drop..

3 Comments

  1. Princess Elizabeth on February 13, 2008 :

    freakin’ UTAH!
    hehe
    I can’t believe it all.. even made the front page of the Review-Journal today. Darn Californians

  2. mistersplice on February 20, 2008 :

    There are things they call “straws” that pump out our water

    “I drink your milkshake!”

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