EDITOR’S NOTE: “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes new entries every Monday, with a bonus Flashback Friday edition. Today’s entry in our ongoing series originally ran on Jan. 13, 2023.

Because of its proximity to Lake Mead, from which it gets 90% of its water, most people assume that Las Vegas is the main city threatened by the reservoir’s alarmingly dwindling water supply. In reality, its proximity to Lake Mead is what ensures Las Vegas its water supply for the foreseeable future.

As of December 17, Lake Mead was at 27% capacity, 1,043 feet above sea level. (This is not a measure of the water’s depth, by the way.) That’s its lowest level since 1937, when the reservoir was filled for the first time.

Yet, Las Vegas will be one of the last Southwestern cities reliant on Colorado River water to be in serious danger of running out of it.

Wet Republic

One of several reasons is the eight years of reserves Las Vegas has stockpiled for water emergencies. Some is stored in a groundwater aquifer where it was injected, and some is part of Lake Mead’s water. In comparison, in a snapshot estimate of its reserves in September 2022, the water authority in San Diego, which gets about half its supply from the Colorado River, said its local reservoirs held a six-month supply.

Some scenarios of climate change and water demand considered by the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s (SNWA) 50-year water resource plan require dipping into those reserves in the next couple of decades. However, not all scenarios do.

These massive reserves owe to Las Vegas being part of one of the world’s most efficient regions at water conservation. Since the current drought was first declared in 2002, Southern Nevada has never completely used its annual water allotment.

This is hardly the cumulative impression a tourist gets from observing the fountains at the Bellagio, Caesars Palace, and Wynn, in addition to all of those golf courses and aquariums that resort designers felt pressure to build over the decades to out-Vegas the competition.