I’m told that all the giant fountains in Vegas are actually ok because they work so hard on water conservation.
Only sheeple believe that Lake Mead ever existed.
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I believe the Bellagio fountains are fed by a groundwater well not surface water from lake mead.
Water is fungible.
Yeah, no matter where you get it from, it evaporates really quickly when you spray it into the desert air.
No it’s not in all cases. Groundwater and surface water are not always connected outside geological timescales. It depends where the groundwater is coming from. I don’t know anything about belaggio specifically but water isn’t fungible across the board.
If I burn all my natural gas on a fancy fire display, then have to connect to your gas lines 50 years earlier than I normally would have, that’s a form of fungible.
In California’s Central Valley the ground water is running out. This is leading to massive conflicts. I’m sure on the fringes it’s leading to water being pulled from outside sources.
The Hoover Dam is an hour outside of Vegas. There’s no way the water usage between the Bellagio fountains and pulling from Lake Mead don’t have some overlap.
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No way because you say so or you looked up the hydrological mapping? This is exactly what our side shouldn’t be doing. We make choices based on fact not faith.
Anyway it is not important in the long run as your overall point about water management remains true. I just really hate when our side makes untrue statements. It so bad for the cause.
The location of the source matters. Pulling water from an aquifer located below your property is not the same as pumping it from a basin 100 miles away. That’s the important thing to consider.
The hoover dam isn’t an hour drive from the strip. Lake Mead is basically right there.
As the bird flies that’s probably less than 30 miles.
Until the aquifer below your property runs out like what’s happening in CA.
Reservoirs in CA, AZ and NV are reaching crisis levels. At what point does it become not ok for Bellagio to waste water? If people were literally dying of starvation due to lack of irrigation, would it then be ok then to ask Bellagio to not evaporate 12 million gallons of ground water a year for a display?
This whole argument is super weird. You don’t seem to understand the water cycle. If your argument is about surface water supply the you WANT groundwater being surfaced and evaporated. It then ends up as rain and thus surface water.
You do realize suzzer is talking about the real world mega-drought conditions in the southwest US and not abstract hydrology, yes?
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That part I have no disagreement with. His incorrect, or least unfounded, claims about the bellagio fountain are my only issue.
He could have simply said “opps I was mistaken in my claim all water is fungible. Thanks for the clarification”.
Every time our side makes a baseless claim about something Environmentlal, especially when we refuse to adjust in light of evidence, we simply provide the other side more ammunition.
Besides that, don’t we want to factually accurate?
i think they’re trying to gently tell you there’s quite a bit more going on here than “water goes into the air, water cycle, it’s fine” with the extremely complex and severe drought situation in the southwest
i’ll give a good example in my homeland - we often get heavy rains, but it doesn’t help the drought at all, because if it doesn’t create snowpack in the mountains the water just runs all the way to the ocean and is wasted.
it’s extremely easy to disrupt the water cycle in a lot of ways and this situation is so so dire that I really think it’s quite reasonable to start looking at clear excesses.
Do you know that Vegas is taking out less or equal groundwater than is being replenished by rainfall every year? Because CA is not even coming close. The Central Valley is literally sinking.
If not, then the Bellagio is robbing future generations of life-sustaining water for a fountain display. Whether or not that technically qualifies as fungible is beside the point. The point is water not used in one place or time can be used in another place or time.
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I do this for a living. I think I understand it. I literally spent 4 hours yesterday on an expert panel to develop a large scale watershed mapping tool for industry and government.
My point is while he is right in his larger point it doesn’t excuse patently false statements. That is the purview of the other side.
This whole exchange began with me only pointing out a minor correction in his understanding of groundwater surface water connections. It would have ended with a simple “thanks for the clarification”. But because this is the internet he has to dig in and not give an inch. Admitting you were mistaken is the truly mortal sin!
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Thanks for the clarification.
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You are 100% right on your overall concern. Access to water will almost certainly front run most of the really bad climate change outcomes.
Back to the groundwater thing, desalinating groundwater is common in the Middle East but uncommon in North America due to easily accessible surface water. This won’t be the case in the future meaning water will get very expensive.
Also, many places are adopting a water market allowing the free market to manage access to water when they limit access to new licenses to withdraw. This further increases costs. In many places, access to long term water access is already the limiting factor for further residential development.
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