eme of things.” 29 And now, in a moment of great uncertainty, one thing is certain: the Mojave is a land of limited resources, and no resource is more limited than water. The need for water, in ever-larger amounts, may set final, insurmountable limits on the unlikely urbanization of the desert. Today Lake Mead, from which the Las Vegas Valley draws 90 percent of its water, is falling to record low levels. 30 Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography predict the reservoir may go dry by 2021. 31
Yet at Lake Las Vegas, developers continue to drape Italianate gardens and golf courses over desert hillsides. Creating such a mirage required submerging the Las Vegas Wash, a once natural and ecologically sensitive drainage system, and confining the limited water to two 96-inch-diameter pipes that run under Lake Las Vegas toward the dwindling Lake Mead. Fifty miles north of Las Vegas, at Coyote Springs, an isolated area once off-limits as a rocket test site, a new 43,000-acre development — 150,000 residences, “buzzing village streetscapes,” fifteen golf courses, and several lakes and water parks — has begun construction. 32 This new exurb features xeriscaping, yet its “lifestyle activities” include golfing and boating, for which it will need to appropriate extensive water resources, potentially draining wildlife sanctuaries. Coyote Springs has been the subject of environmental litigation. 33 As with many sites in the Mojave, accessing limited water resources for such vast interventions can be construed as a form of extraction, one that serves not only vital needs but also questionable desires.
Such desires exemplify what many call “desert denial.” Water is supplied by sources above and below ground; the most important are the Colorado River and its reservoirs. Lake Mead is bracketed by Lake Powell, Lake Mojave and Lake Havasu, all fed by the Colorado and its tributaries. Seven states and Mexico have rights to the Colorado waters, the percentages determined by complex apportionment guidelines and adjusted according to the flow of water measured at Lee’s Ferry, Arizona. 34 Las Vegas prided itself on being the nation’s fastest-growing city, and, at about 660 liters per day, its per capita water consumption mirrored this. 35 Thus the Colorado River’s finite capacity has triggered the search for new sources. These include a regional groundwater aquifer extending from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Death Valley, California, that would provide almost 250 million cubic meters of water annually; it would also deplete the groundwater in at least 78 basins over nearly 90,000 square miles, greatly impacting a fragile ecosystem and adversely affecting twenty federally listed species and 137 other water-dependent species, as well as thousands of rural domestic and agricultural water users in the region. 36 Nonetheless, the Southern Nevada Water Authority plans to tap the aquifers of northern Nevada to allow Las Vegas to continue its profligate growth, a plan some compare with the historic Owens Valley water grab in California. 37 And in a still more aggressive proposal, the Authority has proposed damming floodwaters in the Midwest to supply greater Las Vegas. 38 Even if this wins local support, the likelihood of implementing such extravagant plans in a time of scarcity is doubtful.
When we started our research in 2005, it would have been difficult to imagine the changes occurring in the Las Vegas Valley in the short period since. Boom has turned into bust, repeating a time-proven cycle in the American West. Boosters insist this is just a bump in the road. Others are less sanguine, and the local press is filled with commentaries marked by bitterness and betrayal.
On the Strip, 2008 began with the foreclosure of developer Ian Bruce Eichner’s $3.9-billion Cosmopolitan, upscale twin towers designed by Arquitectonica. In August, Boyd Gaming halted construction on the $4.8-billion Echelon resort, located on the site of the former Stardust. Two weeks later construction was delayed until “sometime in 2009″ on the $5-billion Las Vegas Plaza, a re