Sin City Goes Dry

Unfortunately for such species as the Moapa dace, people like Martinez and Sprunger-Allworth don’t run the Fish and Wildlife Service. On January 27, 2006—in apparent violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Wildlife Refuge Administrative Act, and the Endangered Species Act—the service surrendered to the SNWA senior water rights needed for the survival of the Moapa dace and the rest of the valley ecosystem, thus clearing the way for Las Vegas’s water grab and Whittemore’s instant city at Coyote Springs.

Another of the hundreds of important habitats threatened by the SNWA is the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, a 10-mile-long ribbon of green in the desert and an Audubon IBA. Along with 267 other species of birds, the refuge feeds and shelters imperiled yellow-billed cuckoos, bald eagles, and the largest breeding population of endangered southwestern willow flycatchers on the Colorado River watershed. Hiatt and I surprised a covey of Gambel’s quail and found barn owl pellets under holes in a sandstone cliff. Killdeers and least sandpipers stalked mudflats. An immature bald eagle (or possibly a golden) hunched on a distant cottonwood. Diving and dabbling ducks sculled along ice sheets, and a flight of tundra swans circled, set their wings, and splashed down.

Two years ago Merry Maxwell left Alaska’s Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge to take over as manager here because she “wanted to deal with some of the complex problems faced by refuges in the Lower 48.” She found them. For example, the property abounds with springs that almost certainly harbor imperiled or endangered fish and other unique fauna, some perhaps unknown to science. But none has been inventoried, because the refuge lacks funds to hire a biologist. “As a manager I need that data to make good decisions,” said Maxwell.

North of the refuge she showed me the valley’s two major water sources—Ash Springs, a popular bathing spot and the only home of an endangered subspecies of White River springfish, and Crystal Springs, which sustains another endangered subspecies of White River springfish. The endangered Pahranagat roundtail chub is already extinct in the wild but clings to existence in a state-owned artificial refuge along Route 93.

Maxwell pointed out illegal water diversions for duck blinds, but there is scant enforcement of water law. “We created our impoundments because we do not have water rights for wildlife,” she said. “We have to hold water all year so we can support wetlands to the south. That means we never have enough water to manage for wildlife. So if we lose any, we’re really in trouble.”

No worries about refuge wildlife or the endangered desert fish of Ash and Crystal Springs, avers the SNWA, because the Pahranagat Valley isn’t targeted for groundwater pumping. The adjacent Delamar Valley is, however, and its water table is at the same level as Pahranagat’s and very likely connected. Suck the water out from under the springs and creeks in one basin and you’re apt to dry up aquatic habitat in others.

On our way back to Las Vegas, Hiatt and I hit rush hour and a setting sun that lit the brown miasma of construction dust and vehicle exhaust in which the city festers. It’s some of the filthiest air anywhere.

Local fantasies notwithstanding, there are always limits to growth. I wondered what the limit would be for Las Vegas. So far at least, it has not been air or water pollution. It has not been a scarcity of private land because, with Reid’s land bills, Congress has been auctioning off property belonging to all Americans. It has not been water because, until now, the city has been taking all it wants from Lake Mead.

But that doesn’t mean that these potential limits won’t kick in. Even the groundwater the SNWA calls “unused” cannot sustain current lifestyles very far into the 21st century. And even Reid couldn’t talk Congress into hawking a lot of the public land surrounding the city and its valley. There’s the BLM’s Sloan Canyon National Conservation area to the south, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Desert National Wildlife Refuge complex to the north, the National Park Service’s Lake Mead National Recreation Area to the east, and the Forest Service’s Spring Mountain National Recreation Area and the BLM’s Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area to the west. The day is not far off when Las Vegas will have no choice but to contain its sprawl and learn to live with the water it has.

Unfortunately for fish and wildlife, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas. But between now and the time Sin City forces religion on itself, it has a gift to offer communities all across America—an example of what not to do.