Vegas - just bright lights and excess? Or, is there eco-hope?

Recently I stopped over in Las Vegas on my way home from San Francisco, California, a haven for green thinkers, to meet up with my family. Sin City is certainly not sustainable at first sight. Built in a desert, its bustling tourist crowd consumes incredible amounts of water, electricity and buffet food. The city's record-high temperatures of at least 120 degrees each day were unbearable for many visitors who hopped in rental cars or taxis to travel a mere half-mile. Vegas culture is certainly all about excess. I wondered if a city that appeared an eco-hell on the surface was working on any green initiatives. If so, were they effective?

Las Vegas' "Citycenter"

My research found that Vegas' Domino's was delivering with electric cars, and that the building going up outside my hotel window was in fact green. While many casinos were hoping to go green as well, they failed to ban smoking and thus could not be officially LEED certified. The most admirable green project in the city was an area called Springs Preserve,

In a press release announcing it's opening, Springs Preserve was described as:

180 acres of green museums, botanical gardens, galleries, trails and concert venues. The Preserve is designed to set new standards in "green building" while becoming a new cultural hub for locals and even for tourists seeking a different kind of experience than you'd normally associate with Las Vegas.

As the largest commercial straw-bale construction project in the United States, the Preserve is erecting seven new green buildings intended to join an elite list of buildings nationwide that already have achieved "Platinum" Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

Platinum LEED rating is the highest and most coveted designation a building can earn from the USGBC, which has become the most renowned national sanctioning body for green building. In simple terms, this environmental rating indicates that a large share of required building materials be either recycled, re-used or recyclable. For the Preserve, this translates into creating some of the most energy efficient commercial buildings in the country and the first ever Platinum certified buildings in a visitor attraction.

More specifically, this means incorporating innovative green products such as: carpet made from recycled pop bottles, bio-filtration ponds that reclaim on-site wastewater, certified sustainable lumber, rammed earth walls, straw bale walls, radiant floor heating, cool towers for evaporative cooling systems, computer controlled building operations systems, and "Low VOC" paints, furniture, fabrics and wood composites.

Although an increasing number of museums are "going green" by incorporating green building principles into their facilities, The Desert Living Center at the Preserve has taken that commitment a step further by using green living principles as the focus of interpretation within its Sustainability Gallery. Many museums today are finding that placing their collections within a sustainable building can yield significant energy cost savings while serving as an effective "lead by example" approach.

But Desert Living Center creators hope their bottom line impacts go beyond energy savings. By imparting practical sustainability knowledge throughout the visitor experience at the Preserve, they hope to tap into a "green movement" that becomes more mainstream and more relevant each year.

"It is a virtual miracle that a city like Las Vegas can exist and thrive in the middle of one of the most inhospitable and resource-poor climates in the world with an average annual rainfall of only 4.5 inches," said Francis Beland, Springs Preserve director. "This anomaly makes the concept of sustainable living a very relevant topic for Las Vegas." - Earthtimes

On the surface, the Springs Preserve project is certainly admirable in light of the culture on Vegas' casino's strip. Its Desert Living Center even challenges visitors' water usage through interactive games and exhibits.

It was upon my return home that I learned the Las Vegas Valley Water District had funded the $250 million dollar museum project. According to opponents to the project, the Water District has plans to mine groundwater from rural areas outside of Vegas in order to sustain the city's growth despite warnings from scientists, conservationists and ranchers of this move's environmental impacts. This mining will effect areas of not only Nevada but also Utah and California. Thus, at the heart of Vegas' greenest project one finds a very clear and disappointing hypocrisy.

In all of Vegas' green projects we find this same contradiction. While there are buildings being constructed with sustainability in mind, is building more in an already wasteful city over its carrying capacity actually sustainable? Can the city itself even be sustainable in light of its desert location? It seems the $250 million dollars spent on Springs Preserve could have gone directly towards a water conservation project, rather than a museum whose funders fail to practice what they preach. What if one could at least visit a green casino where small percentages of the gambling world's insanely large profit went towards environmental causes?

Vegas' work to go green reminds us of a struggle sustainability faces: we can not simply switch what we consume into green commodity. Sustainability instead comes when we fundamentally change our wasteful consumption habits. Vegas is excessively consuming green. Could one say the same about those driving hybrids but opting out of public transportation?