Las Vegas: Leader in sustainability?

By Charlotte Hsu (contact), Phoebe Sweet (contact)

Monday, Oct. 29, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

Perhaps the last place you would look for leadership on sustainability: the city that's a monument to consumerism, a model of urban sprawl, a water-guzzling man-made oasis in a desert.

But that's just what Las Vegas is looking to be - a thought leader when it comes to living and growing without depleting resources that future generations will need .

And UNLV, which last week hosted 400 academics and community leaders at a conference on the topic, wants to place itself at the center of the conversation.

Last week's event, Shaping the Future of Southern Nevada: Economic, Environmental and Social Sustainability, was the first of what the university hopes will be twice-annual conferences. The gathering was meant in part to help stakeholders develop a better understanding of what sustainability is. Future conferences will focus on more narrow topics such as water consumption.

This year the school launched a campaign to foster collaboration between UNLV and the community in solving quality-of-life challenges Las Vegans and Nevadans face.

"(We) feel as though we have a professional responsibility to reach out to the community and state because , after all, it's the taxpayers who support this university and we owe that to our region," said Ron Smith, UNLV's interim vice president for research and graduate dean.

The university, he said, already has invested $30 million in research dealing with renewable energy sources.

For the future, UNLV is looking to craft a graduate-level urban planning degree that would incorporate sustainability.

One environmentalist said he hopes the next conference will create a larger discussion among members of the public and academics, executives and politicians.

"I'm thrilled UNLV is taking a leadership role on this in our community. They're going to have to take a role," said Scot Rutledge, executive director of the Nevada Conservation League. "This is a great first step."

As the university steps up to be a leader on sustainability, it appears Las Vegas is in a position to do the same.

Since 1998 about 10 percent of new development in the United States has been certified as environmentally friendly by the U.S. Green Building Council. About half of new projects along the Strip have earned that certification.

And the region has alternative-fueled city fleets of cars, buses and maintenance vehicles, heralded water conservation programs and massive commercial developments such as CityCenter that are going green.

Las Vegas also has two things that many cities don't: the money and the political will to shed its skin and rebuild itself. Although many people deride the region's willingness to embrace the new, speakers said that such an inclination could be an advantage. Both planners and residents of young cities are less set in their ways and more able to adapt to new technologies that promote sustainability, said Arthur Nelson, director of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute and a speaker at the conference.

While Boston, Chicago and other older cities struggle to maintain aged infrastructure such as piping, the Vegas Valley has the opportunity to install state-of-the-art water delivery and other systems as it grows, Nelson said . Shoddy pipes in other regions lead to water loss and cause pollution when wastewater leaks into soil - problems Las Vegas could minimize in future building.

But speakers at Wednesday's conference - environmentalists, academics and public employees - said there's still work to be done.

Las Vegas' harsh desert environment - which promises to become only harsher as climate change further dries up water supplies and already baking summers sizzle longer - makes change not a luxury but a necessity for the future.

"Sustainability will lead to a stronger economy and a better quality of life," Rutledge said. "It's not some token project that should be left in the halls of academia or the science journals. It should be how we live our lives."