Gina Telaroli
June 27, 2008 | 10:01 am EST
Nevada, it’s not just for gamblers anymore. The Silver State is seeing an industry boom the likes of which it hasn’t experienced since the growth of its gambling industry starting in the 1950’s. A state that was once on the verge of losing its statehood after changes in the mining industry caused a massive drain in population - which in turn lead the state to legalize both gambling and prostitution ,in certain underpopulated counties, in order to draw residents back within its borders - is now seeing the same arid, sun drenched conditions that burdened it being turned into an asset through the rapid growth of the solar power industry.
Witness the opening of Ausra’s solar thermal power plant factory in Las Vegas last week which will produce the hardware necessary to convert all that free, clean, renewable sunlight out there into power we all can use. At full capacity the plant can produce equipment to generate 700 MW of electricity - enough to power 500,000 homes. The future of solar looks practically limitless in Southern Nevada, with the Bureau of Land Management having received applications for production facilities capable of producing up to 10,000 MW, projects that could bring up to $40 Billion worth of investment to the state.
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It’s June 27th, I’m Gina Telaroli and this is TakePart.com’s look at the week in social action
SACRAMENTO, Ca. — Firefighters are making headway today against hundreds of blazes that have charred about 100,000 acres across Northern California in recent days, but are fearful of more lightning storms later this week.
Big fires continued to burn in rugged reaches of Mendocino, Butte and Monterey counties, and more than 2,000 homes remained threatened by approaching flame.
Fire crews from Nevada and Oregon are helping California firefighters battle hundreds of blazes that are darkening the sky over the San Francisco Bay area and Central Valley, leading public health officials to issue air-quality warnings.
The lightning-caused fires have charred tens of thousands of acres and forced hundreds of residents to flee their homes, though few buildings have been destroyed, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
According to the AP, More than 800 wildfires were set by a storm that unleashed nearly 8,000 lightning strikes across Northern California over the weekend.
A dozen Randolph College students toured the Chicken Ranch, a legal bordello in the desert 60 miles outside Las Vegas. Nevada is the only state where prostitution is legal. Brothels are allowed in 10 Nevada counties, though not in Las Vegas. The class trip, included seminars from the working girls, capped a course on American consumption and “the ideas that consume us.” The course also included reading “The Beauty Myth,” by feminist author Naomi Wolf, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” by Hunter S. Thompson, and viewing a “20/20″ episode on prostitution with Diane Sawyer.
Academic and media inquiries are daily occurrences at many of Nevada’s 27 legal brothels. Some shy away from the scrutiny, others, like the Chicken Ranch, welcome the publicity.
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Quixotic, or just idiotic? Ecorazzi reports that former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss “plans to open the world’s first legal, wind-powered brothel for women” on 60 acres she owns near a Nevada town called Pahrump. Why wind power? Because “there’s a need for it,” and she doesn’t want “anything polluting.” Fleiss is evidently banking that hordes of horny treehuggers will make the trek to her yet-to-be-built sustainable stud farm. Call it her own field of dreams: if she builds it, they will come.
With all its gaudy neon and nonstop glitz, Las Vegas doesn’t get a gold star for energy efficiency–yet. But that’s about to change, thanks to MGM, which is constructing the nation’s most expensive LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design) private development, according to the CS Monitor.
The 68-acre, $7.5 billion complex, called CityCenter, will feature a casino, hotels, condos, shops, and a convention center. The decision to make the complex ultra-energy efficient is a win-win for MGM; first, it will benefit from a rebate on state sales and property taxes for construction that meets the LEED standards, and second, MGM expects to save a bundle on operating costs. The 10 hotels it already owns on the Strip run up a daily electric bill of $350,000. Yes, daily.
The decision to go green has not been without complications, though. MGM couldn’t find suitably luxurious low-flow faucets, so it had to have a faucet specially designed to meet its specifications. An extravagance, perhaps, but it’s not money down the drain; with the west’s water growing ever more scarce, a complex like CityCenter has no choice but to conserve. What better place to build an eco-friendly development than an irrigated desert famous for its electrifying excess?
Eight years of record droughts have left western states squabbling over who gets how much water from which rivers, but now California, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico have signed a historic twenty-year plan to share their dwindling dams and rivers more or less equally.
The plan spells out how the states will cope with reductions during droughts, but it doesn’t go far enough for some conservationists, who question why there’s no effort to limit growth in a region where resources are already stretched so thin.
As John Weisheit, conservation director for Living Rivers, asked NPR’s Ted Robbins, “What’s wrong with saying, “I’m sorry, we ran out of water, you can’t live here?”
Learn more about how you can help conserve water here.
