Water+War+KM

Katrin MacPhee English 2773 February 7th 2010 __A Response to McPhee’s Article “Water War__” This article is about Las Vegas’ application to drill the saturated valleys of eastern Nevada, and to transport the water hundreds of miles for the city’s use. The proposed move would turn the landscape into a veritable desert, a barren wasteland where delicate ecosystems once flourished. Throughout the article McPhee subtly critiques the wastefulness and selfishness driving Las Vegas’ actions, and those of other cities who transport water from areas hundreds of miles away, only to squander it. Las Vegas, McPhee states, is a ‘marinopolis of pools and fountains.’ From theme parks and golf courses to what some consider the ultimate symbol of the city’s decadence-the strato-volcano outside The Mirage, Las Vegas is a city where water is used to entertain, to beautify, but rarely to hydrate. What strikes me as incredible is that a city of this proportion has been built and allowed to grow in an area with so little of an essential resource. This reminds me of a film I viewed several months ago called Blue Gold. The film discussed the idea of only building on land endowed with the proper resources needed to sustain the desired settlement. What a revolutionary idea! How incredible to consider limiting the population and consumption levels of an area to what the land can naturally support! What I like most about McPhee’s writing in this piece is his use of subtlety and sarcasm to get his point across. Rather than saying outright that what Las Vegas wants to do is irresponsible and selfish, he makes statements like “Las Vegas blandly claims that the resource is renewable, that Las Vegas will not be mining Nevada’s Pleistocene water. All they have applied for is-annually-the equivalent of a one-acre pond eight hundred and sixty thousand feet deep.” This tongue-in-cheek concluding line is effective in demonstrating to the reader how ridiculous the city’s demands and tactics are in a way that stating so outright could ever be. His use of humour engages his readers and encourages them to think about the issue at hand for themselves.