LETTER: Las Vegas must stop building
Your Sept. 21 article “Experts sound alarm on water” was very informative. It states that we must take “immediate action or face crisis.” We have been hearing similar comments for several years.
We have lost our green grass in the name of conservation. I get it.
What I don’t get is why, with the water crisis, we continue to build around 12,000 new homes here in Las Vegas every year.
The average home in Las Vegas uses about 130,000 gallons of water a year. That’s an additional 1.5 billion gallons a year (based on 12,000 new homes). Our allotment of the Colorado River water gets reduced every year, and every year the demand for water goes up..
The same edition of the Review-Journal features a story about local builders are upset with the BLM for delays in permission to run utilities through federal lands, which holds up new housing construction. Members of the Southern Nevada Home builders Association really doesn’t seem to care if we are in a water crisis. The more homes they build, the more money they make.
Our politicians seem to look the other way when it comes to what’s going on with the water crisis. In 2024, the real estate and development groups gave $1.8 million dollars to our legislators.
It is hard for me to take the water crisis seriously when we keep building new homes with no thought to what happens when the bucket runs dry.
