Misconceptions of Nevada Water Use

“People need to be accountable for the water they are using, and I think we are accountable. I don’t know of any other city in the country that’s doing more than we are to cut down our water use on a per capita basis.”
In 1990, the average valley resident consumed 347 gallons of water per day. Last year, that number shrank to 219 gallons
In the past decade alone, the community has reduced its overall water consumption by one-third even while adding 400,000 new residents.
The community has banned front lawns at new homes, imposed landscape watering restrictions, clamped down on fountains, misters and car washes, and plowed about $200 million into conservation initiatives.
The turf rebate program alone saves 9 billion gallons of water a year, Bennett says. To date, roughly 165 million square feet of grass has been removed from valley homes and businesses. That would be enough to form an 18-inch-wide roll of sod stretching about 85 percent of the way around the Earth.
The average Las Vegas home goes through about 150,000 gallons of water annually.
If Wet ’n’ Wild’s projected water use is spread out among 300,000 visitors a year, it equates to about one 10-minute shower per person, Bennett says. That’s less water than you would use if you let your children run through the backyard sprinklers for two minutes, he says.
(In response to critics) J.C. Davis, a water authority spokesman, says such rhetoric conveniently ignores the reality on the Colorado River.

Utah is home to roughly 100,000 more people than Nevada but enjoys more than five times as much water from the Colorado.

In fact, Nevada’s annual allocation of 300,000 acre-feet is the smallest by far among the seven Colorado River states, and almost every drop goes to supply drinking water to more than 70 percent of the state’s population. No other state relies so heavily on the river to provide water to its residents.

Davis says Las Vegas will always be criticized regardless of what the community does to conserve. To some people, this desert city’s very existence is an indefensible waste of water."

BELLAGIO FOUNTAIN TAPS GROUNDWATER WELL

Though the rest of Las Vegas gets about 90 percent of its water supply from the Colorado by way of Lake Mead, the Bellagio’s signature feature is fed by an old groundwater well once used to irrigate the golf course at the Dunes.

Bennett says the resort corridor as a whole drives Nevada’s economic engine while consuming less water per guest than a typical Holiday Inn in another city.

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