Las Vegas Is Going All In on Its Water Conservation Plan

Anything goes in Las Vegas, except excessive water use. Two decades ago, the city began to grapple with a reality that many other cities in the Southwest were trying to put off: Eventually, it could run out of water.

In contrast with cities like Phoenix or Los Angeles, which get water from a number of sources, Las Vegas still gets about 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River, and it has little other water to tap into.

The restrictions in place in Las Vegas include limiting pool sizes, forbidding cooling systems that pass air over evaporated water (also known as swamp coolers) in new buildings, issuing fines when water leaks onto sidewalks, restricting personal car washing to once a week, and prohibiting homes from having fountains or decorative ponds larger than ten square feet. Vegas has also successfully incentivized the removal of roughly 200 million square feet of turf, saving more than 10 percent of Nevada’s Colorado River allocation.

But the need for conservation has become even more pressing. In 2022, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the Unites States, both fed by the Colorado River, were again at record lows. Federal water officials warned that major cutbacks were necessary in some of the states that rely on the Colorado River: Nevada, Arizona and California. In response, the federal government declared its authority—in a worst-case shortage crisis—to make sweeping water cuts to cities across the Southwest. Such a scenario was avoided following a wet winter in early 2023, but climate scientists expect the overtapped watershed to provide less and less water in the future.

The Phoenix area and other cities are now facing pressure to catch up with Las Vegas as the Southwest becomes even more arid. Phoenix proper gets only about one-third of its water from the Colorado River. But outside its city limits, areas like Scottsdale are more dependent on the river. Scottsdale asked its residents to reduce water use by 5 percent, stopped homeowner associations from requiring overseeding lawns and banned the use of grass in front yards for new developments.

In an especially dramatic move, Scottsdale cut off water to the Rio Verde Foothills, an outlying community of 2,000 homes. The community was built by so-called wildcat developers who avoided official requirements for subdivisions. Arizona’s Groundwater Management Act, passed in 1980, requires developers in urban areas to prove that they can meet residents’ water needs for the next 100 years. The developers behind Rio Verde Foothills took advantage of legal loopholes to sidestep this requirement.

In 2021, the Nevada Legislature required the removal of sidewalk and median turf by 2026. Yard signs mark patches of dry grass along sidewalks, curbs and artificial lakes. “This Turf Removal is mandated by State Law AB356,” the signs tell residents. Once an emerald patchwork in the desert, the grass is no longer watered. It’s on its way out, as are hundreds more acres of turf across the Las Vegas Valley, which gets about four inches of rain each year.

Las Vegas water officials insist that their conservation plan is sound. To tree lovers like Schilling, they say that there are ways to keep trees alive without thirsty lawns and sprinkler systems—for instance, applying water directly to the tree’s roots using a soil probe. They also say the rate structure for water-usage fees is fair, noting that the top 10 percent of residential users consume most of the water. (The thresholds for single-family homes change each season, ranging from 14,000 gallons in winter to 28,000 gallons in summer, and residents have to pay $9 for every 1,000 gallons they go over the limit.)

From the sky, golf courses appear as a conspicuous exception, but even they have trimmed back. Golf courses in Vegas have a limited water budget, and that budget is tightening this year. Country clubs have been forced to pull out nonfunctional turf and make other big changes. Anthem Country Club, about 15 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, traded its original rye grass—which stays greener at cold temperatures—for Bermuda grass, which turns browner in the winter but requires less water.