One year, I was in Las Vegas representing Utah at a Western States Air Resource (WESTAR) Council meeting. I was staying at the Tropicana, and as someone who paid my way through college as a plumber, I was amazed that none of the showers or toilets were “low flow” units, particularly because at that time, Utah and Nevada were “negotiating” how to give Nevada more of the Colorado River water.
I was also amazed at all the fountains and ponds inside and outside the resorts. At that time, Excalibur was a new resort, and I was standing outside of it on the sidewalk, watching the show on their man-made lake with the director of the Clark County air quality program. I commented to him about all the water the people in Vegas were wasting. He said to me that people didn’t come to Vegas to conserve water – or anything; they came to indulge their every whim. “Besides,” he said, “Utah has plenty of water, and Vegas has plenty of money; and you can buy anything in this world if you have enough money.”
Now, as I read stories about the expansion of the Meta (Facebook) data farm in Eagle Mountain and all the millions of dollars in government subsidies Meta has already received and will receive in the future, I was reminded of the director’s words. As I see the tens or hundreds of millions of tax money Utah spends to draw data farms to our state that each consume millions of gallons of water daily, it seems to me that our leadership is at best disingenuous, but probably closer to arrogantly idiotic when they ask me to do everything I can to reduce my water consumption so they can spend my tax money to help line the pockets of people like Mark Zuckerberg.
Thomas Jefferson once asked members of the Continental Congress if “we are such a doltish people as to swallow such an absurd distinction”
Seems to me that we are, particularly if we let our leaders lead us down this primrose path, and we just blindly follow.
Dave McNeill, South Jordan