LETTER: Why celebrate mega mansions in Las Vegas?

Seriously? Your Sunday Real Estate section featured a 55,000-square-foot home. That’s not a home, that’s a conference center.

This proposed home, at the top of McDonald Highlands, will cost $75 million … so far. The owner will be living there only occasionally because he has a “number of residences.” I hope some of those homes have lots of water so the man can haul some with him when he comes here.

The Las Vegas Valley Water District will be carefully monitoring water usage by all of us water-conscientious peons down here in the Valley — and will fine us if we step over the amount allotted. It’s not just the amount of water used in a 55,000-square-foot mountaintop “home”— it’s the infrastructure costs involved in getting water and power up on the mountain. Do they have a well we’re unaware of, or are they paying the full cost of getting the water up into the hills? To be sure, we are helping to foot that bill.

But it wouldn’t matter if the residents were spending $1 billion for this mountaintop home the point is: Noblesse oblige. To whom much is given, much is expected. We do not expect the uber-wealthy to gorge themselves on precious resources such as water and electricity.

And shame on the real estate people, the politicians, water and power officials and all those fawning over this largesse instead of considering the impact on the community as a whole.