Fast-growing Western US cities face water crisis

Desert golf course superintendent Bill Rohret is doing something that 20 years ago would have seemed unthinkable -- ripping up bright, green turf by the acre and replacing it with rocks.

Back then "they came in with bulldozers and dynamite, and they took the desert and turned it into a green oasis," Rohret said, surveying a rock-lined fairway within sight of the Las Vegas strip. "Now ... it's just the reverse."

The Angel Park Golf Club has torn out 65 acres (26 hectares) of off-course grass in the last five years, and 15 (6 hectares) more will be removed by 2011, to help conserve local supplies of one of the most precious commodities in the parched American West -- fresh water.

But Rohret's efforts have their limits. His and many other golf courses still pride themselves on their pristine greens and fairways and sparkling fountains, requiring huge daily expenditures of water.

Aiming to cut per capita use by about a third in the face of withering drought expected to worsen with global warming, water authorities in the United States' driest major city are paying customers $1.50 per square foot to replace grass lawns with desert landscaping.

Built in the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas leads Western U.S. cities scrambling to slash water consumption, increase recycling and squeeze more from underground aquifers as long-reliable surface water sources dry up.

From handing out fines for leaky sprinklers to charging homeowners high rates for high use, water officials in the U.S. West are chasing down squandered water one gallon at a time.

Nowhere is the sense of crisis more visible than on the outskirts of Las Vegas at Lake Mead, the nation's largest manmade reservoir, fed by the once-mighty Colorado River. A principal source of water for Nevada and Southern California, the lake has dipped to below half its capacity, leaving an ominous, white "bathtub ring" that grows thicker each year.

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