It was midday on a Wednesday, and Bill Whaley, ex-Las Vegas fire chief, was gently approaching the shore in a kayak after his almost daily jaunt on Lake Mead, the reservoir of water formed by the Hoover Dam. , along the Colorado River in southern Nevada.
“I try to come here as often as possible,” said the young retiree, barely out of breath after his walk of more than an hour on this singular body of water in the middle of an arid landscape. “I’m enjoying it while the lake is still there,” he added with a smile, despite the circumstances. “In my lifetime, I shouldn’t see it disappear, at least I hope not. But for the generations after, I am less sure. »
Last August, Lake Mead once again caught everyone’s eye by reaching its lowest level since 1937, confirming a downward trend that has caused it to lose no less than 53 meters in height in the last 40 years. . A reality that can now be read in the white of the rock that appeared on the walls of the mountainous shores of the lake after the waters receded.
Lake Mead is now only a few meters from its critical level called the “dead basin” – ” dead Pool “, say the Americans – this point where the quantity of water upstream will no longer be sufficient to pass to the other side of the dam. A prospect that worries Arizona, California or even Mexico, further south, which depend on this source of water, but which, strangely, is considered with calm and serenity in Nevada, yet at the forefront of the disaster. announced.
“Climate change is a concern for everyone, but where some develop anxiety, we prefer to look to the future with a little more optimism, wondering how we can adapt to it, summarizes the young Moe Alame, marketing manager at Casino Park MGM, met a few weeks ago on the famous Las Vegas “Strip”. People who live in Southern Nevada never complain about the weather, but rather about the growing number of people who come here to enjoy it. »
While drought and climate change have continued to mark the south of one of the driest states in the United States for decades, the demographics are far from showing the anguish that, elsewhere in the world. , speaks in the face of climate change: since 1999, the population has indeed doubled in Clark County – which includes the greater Las Vegas region – from 1.16 million to 2.33 million inhabitants today today. And the trend is not about to be reversed, estimates the most recent study by the Center for Business and Economics at the University of Nevada, which sees the cap of three million inhabitants coming in 2040. It ensures in passing that n 2023, 2024 and 2025, population growth will continue to be sustained, at more than 2%. And this, in the wake of a succession of extreme climatic episodes that have hit Nevada in recent months. Lower Lake Mead is one of them.
The lure of warmth
“Every year there are a lot of moves in Las Vegas,” says Timea Szepesi, an American of Hungarian origin who moved to the city 10 years ago to work in the real estate field. But the balance of arrivals and departures is still positive. Then, the people who leave do so mainly for work reasons or to join family elsewhere, and never because of the drought or the rise in temperatures, ”she says.
It is that the hot, the dry, the arid attract more than they repel in the south of Nevada, including in their extremes, notes Maha Madanat, who for 20 years has helped thousands of Americans and foreigners to find a home in the region. “People are mostly coming from California, where they are fleeing wildfires. They find here a lower cost of living, a similar climate and interesting job offers, she says sitting at the terrace of a café in a residential area not touristic in the south of the metropolis. There are also people who come from Washington, Michigan, Illinois, New York, attracted by the heat, then some Europeans who seek to live the American dream here. But in any case the heat is not a concern, rather one of the reasons which motivate their migration. »
Since the end of August, the day after the great summer heat coupled with episodes of deluge which made the headlines in Nevada, the real estate market, which has been fueled to excess since the start of the pandemic, has slowed somewhat, adds she. “But it’s the rise in interest rates that is responsible, not the climate. Here, the question of the environment does not stop us. She keeps pushing us forward, but forcing us to make sure things don’t get worse. »
Adapting to the environment is nothing new in Nevada and Las Vegas, an unlikely burgeoning metropolis in the heart of the desert where, on August 16, the federal government’s announcement to reduce water allocation downstate from the Colorado River and, de facto, Lake Mead was not received with fear and dismay.
However, from 1er next January, the Las Vegas area will have to do without 1.1 billion gallons of water from this basin compared to the year just ending. This is barely 1.6% of its total consumption. The cuts also affect California, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, which are more dependent on it than Nevada.
However, in 2021, the vast region of Las Vegas had already used only 86% of the volume of water that it was nevertheless authorized to take, thanks to conservation measures initiated in recent years and which, according to the municipal authorities, will allow southern Nevada to have “enough water to support the growth of its population in the years to come”, can we read on the blog of the City. “Conservation programs have resulted in a 48% drop in water use per person per day since 2002, despite adding more than 750,000 new residents.”
new normal
“Southern Nevada is faring much better than Arizona or California when it comes to drought, because we’ve made some serious changes to water use to deal with the new normal of climate change,” he said. interview at Homework biologist Stanley Smith, a specialist in desert ecosystems at the University of Nevada, while discussing the predictability of the drop in the water level of the Colorado River due to the constant reduction of the snow cover of the “Rocky Mountains” in the north- western United States.
In the residential areas of Las Vegas, these changes are embodied in land development, which now increasingly emphasizes the desert character of the territory, rather than seeking, as has long been the case, to make sprout greenery with great irrigation and watering strokes. “There are grants available for backyard conversions and front landscaping,” says Timea Szepesi. It took years to change habits, but the promotion campaigns are now bearing fruit. Artificial grass is more present and, since September, the size of the pools can no longer exceed 55 m2 in new constructions, whereas their size was previously unlimited. »
The prospect of a disruption in the electricity supply that the drop in water in Lake Mead could cause has also prompted the inhabitants of this arid South to adopt more and more massively solar energy, whose panels are rented now over a period of 30 years, to spread the transition costs over a residence. The sun now accounts for more than 15% of the energy used in part to cool the interiors of Nevada homes during hot, dry months. The state aims to double this rate within eight years. It currently gets 23% of the electricity produced by the Hoover Dam.
“There is a spirit to come and seek here,” adds Moe Alame, touting the “potential for entertainment, sport and climate that exists” there and which he says has an appeal that surpasses all the rest. “The media talk a lot about the problem of water, drought, but here we demonstrate daily that there are solutions to these problems and that it is enough to put them in place to face the future. . »
A point of view that seems to be shared by Stanley Smith, who believes that the people of southern Nevada are more aware of the problem of climate change than many politicians in the state and the rest of the country, “particularly in the environment polarized politics of ours,” he says. “Lake Mead may continue to decline, but that still leaves us several decades ahead of us to continue living here and continuing to adapt,” he concludes.
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.