Vegas Baby! That was the general mood everyone was in today, we were all excited to see the city and have some free time, but were a bit sad because it was our last day with Hossay. We stopped at lake Mead where we discussed water issues and the Colorado River, many of which we read about in our book "Restoring Colorado River Ecosystems: A troubled sense of immensity". We talked about the law of the river and the Colorado River Compact which was responsible for designating 7.5maf of annual water allotment to both the upper and lower basin states. We mentioned the political issues between the U.S. and Mexico caused by Americas excessive water use resulting in Mexico receiving less than its allotted share of water and at very low quality conditions.
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| Lake Mead, the white lines represent past water levels |
Lake Mead and the Hoover dam were the first projects initiated in the U.S. with the objective of taming the Colorado River, and to this day Lake Mead remains the nations largest artificial reservoir. The ecological impacts of dams this size are referenced in our book, such as decline in native fish populations, loss of shoreline and loss of riparian habitat, decreased water flows, and trapped river sediment. We drove over the Hoover Dam and got a few pictures and then drove to our next destination at the Nevada Solar One Project.
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| Hoover Dam |
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| Nevada Solar One Project |
Unfortunately, our speaker bailed on us and we were unable to get a tour, so we had to settle with looking at the site from miles away behind the barbed wire fence and listened to a lecture while a dust storm bombarded us. This site uses 182,000 mirror which focus the suns energy onto a series of pipes containing a synthetic fluid. This fluid is heated to about 700 degrees Fahrenheit and then the fluid pumped through the nearby station where it heats up water and turns it into steam which then turns a generator and produces electricity. The mirrors of this site are programmed to follow the sun so as to take the most advantage of the available daily sunlight. The average energy production of this station is roughly 64MW, up to a maximum production of 75MW.
Next we met up with Mike Burrows of the Nevada Fish and Wildlife Management center. Mike discussed in detail the habitat, characteristics, range, issues, and various other things of the native and endangered Desert Tortoise. Mike discussed the states efforts to set up blockages to keep the tortoises from walking onto the road, where car accidents make up the majority of tortoise fatalities each yeah, explaining how different methods have succeeded and failed. Finally, we discussed how issues have developed with the nearby solar projects which require large blocks of stable, flat land with plenty of sun, which just so happens to be the preferred habitat of the Desert Tortoise. This conflict over land has brought cause for concern over the future of the tortoise.
After thanking and saying goodbye to Mike, we left the Wildlife center and headed to our hotel at Circus Circus in Las Vegas. I wish we had more time to see the city as we were only able to walk around a couple of blocks before we had to be back in time for our curfew but we were all still able to have a fun time. We got to eat dinner at a nice place in town and than walked along the strip, admiring the different casinos and fountains set up within the area.
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| The fun van outside Circus Circus |
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| The Vegas Strip |
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