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Strange things are going on in the water feature by
the cocktail bar. |
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Just across the road, Treasure Island
are staging their many times nightly Pirate Show.
Skimpy bikinis certainly help gather a
large crowd. |
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No shortage of impressive pyrotechnics... |
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The Pirates ship starts to sink. Really sink. |
After that bit of water drama, it's on
to the Bellagio for a rather more subtle display all set to music. |
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Back to the Hotel for a spot of rather less subtle
entertainment... |
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It's now Friday, and Michael has a whole
day to entertain himself. I took a tour bus the short distance out to
Lake Mead and one of the wonders of the modern world: The Hoover Dam. |
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| On our way out to Boulder city where the
many workers on that huge project of the early 1930's lived, our tour
guide showed us the many homes that are still being built where grass
lawns are still an option. Excuse me, lawns, in
a desert? How responsible is that? We were also told that the aquifiers
under Vegas are depleted and the solution being planned is a 10 foot
diameter pipe bringing water from another part of the States. Lake Mead
is also some 130 feet below its 'normal' level. What's normal in this
area of Nevada? Seven years of drought. The classic picture of the water
gushing from each side of the Hoover Dam was, I believe, taken back in
the 1980's.
Isn't it time that Ecology was considered in this part
of the USA? Yes, there was evidence of recycled water in some of the
water features in Vegas but I wonder about the wisdom in allowing 'Sin
City' to grow at a phenomenal rate: more houses, more cars, more usage
of electricity and water... Ah, back to water again. Vegas's population
is now 1.9 million, grown by 50% since 1999. That's 50 not 5!!
I just saw this quote on a Reuters web page:
"This is a city ignoring its own rules," said
resident Launce Rake, an official with the Progressive Leadership
Alliance of Nevada. "There's no real commitment to conservation; they
run all through the day."
Enough said. rant over. Point made by many more people
than me. |
| Wikipaedia tells some of the
statistics of the dam.
'The Hoover
Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon on the
Colorado River, about 30 miles southeast of
Las Vegas named after
Herbert Hoover. Built during the
Great Depression from
April 20,
1931
to
March 1,
1936
at a cost of $165 m, it is 726.4 ft high and contains 4.36m yards3
of concrete. The dam was designed to control floods, store water for
irrigation, municipal, and industrial use and generate of hydroelectric
power.
The reservoir created was named Lake Mead, it
covers 247 square miles and holds 9.3 x 1012 gallons.
The hydroelectric power is generated at the
Hoover Powerplant completed in 1961, it contains seventeen main turbines
and generates 2,074 Mw. |
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The tour was a fascinating look at a huge project
that finished under budget and two years earlier than planned! How often
do we hear of that, nowadays? This is one of the
water intake pipes inside one of the huge tunnels made to divert the
Colorado river during construction. |
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These are the turbines that generate a mere 2 GIGO
watts. Vegas only has 2% of its power requirement from here for some
reason. |
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Some 96 people died during its construction which was
a true 24/7 operation. As one of the newspaper
cuttings says: 'Death is so permanent.' |
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The pylons are at a crazy angle because the power is
generated at the bottom of the huge structure. |
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Way up high, a new $240 million road
bridge hangs out over the void. It will be part of Route 93 and enable
traffic to bypass the old road which is right on top of the dam. |
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You can clearly see the calcium deposits remaining
above the current water level. If the water doesn't replenish Lake Mead,
they will eventually fade. |
