BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Vegas heading for 'dry future'
The Las Vegas area is exploding with privately governed gated communities, and people are moving there in droves. One unanswered question remains: Where is the water for all these folks--and their lawns and golf courses and swimming pools--going to come from? I am very skeptical of any sentence that includes the words "environmentalists warn," because that is usually followed by an exaggerated or utterly groundles claim based on some bogus computer model. But in the case of Vegas, they may have a point. It is a desert, after all.

Las Vegas is world-renowned as a city of fantasy, flaunting its reputation for excess. It appears a green oasis of refrigerated plenty, set in a blazing desert. But environmentalists warn water supplies could run dry within the next 50 years; while urban sprawl is out of control and development is encroaching on protected areas.