Letter: Out-of-control growth will lead to demise

Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

Phoebe Sweet's excellent Oct. 26 article, "A harsher reality ahead," points out realities that both business and political leaders in Las Vegas and Clark County refuse to acknowledge. That problem is we are running out of water to meet the growth rates we have experienced in the recent past.

You have to question the reason and sanity of cramming more than 70 percent of Nevada's population into one valley, the Las Vegas Valley. In the past 15 years or so the quality of life in the Las Vegas Valley has rapidly deteriorated with increased crime, traffic congestion, school crowding, teacher shortages, loss of affordable housing and land prices exceeding $600,000 an acre, to name a few ills.

Now we are looking to spend $1 billion on a new straw for Lake Mead to draw water from the rapidly disappearing lake and $2 billion to pipe water from northern counties to Las Vegas. And for what purpose? So more people will move to the Las Vegas Valley and the quality of life will go further down the tubes?

When I was in college I took an engineering economics course and I remember the professor discussing major projects and saying to always ask yourself these three questions:

Why do it this way? Why do it now? Why do it at all?

It is time these questions were answered and curbs on future development seriously considered. The Las Vegas Valley may be headed over a cliff. The question is how many more lemmings will we invite to the valley to help us get to the cliff faster.

Jim Weber, Mesquite