Extended Interview

Brian Greenspun Editor Las Vegas Sun   Read more extended interviews.

This interview has not been edited for content.

Interviewer:  Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing communities in the country.  What's so great about Vegas?

Brian Greenspun:  What's so great about Vegas?  There's a short question with a very long answer.  I'll try to say it in just a few words.  What's great about Vegas is Vegas.  There is no place on earth like this.  Adults, children--actually adults with children's minds--anybody whether it's Europe, United States, South America, you pick the spot, they've all heard of Vegas.  I've been in places around the world where people are watching T.V. and they hear something Vegas on T.V. and they stop.  There is a fascination about this place.  It used to be gambling and still is to some extent, or to a large extent, but it's so much more.  It's a state of mind.  So when you ask me what's so great I'd say to you, "What's so great about your state of mind?"  That's what it is.  When you talk about growth in Las Vegas I don't think you can look at the last five years or ten years or ever twenty years.  I remember growth being talked about in 1953 or '54.  I was too young to remember anything before that and people were lamenting the fact that we were growing too fast.  Where will we put all of these people?  Who is going to show up here?  Where are they going to live?  It's nothing but desert and on and on and on.  So I've heard about growth for half a century.  The rest of the world has heard about growth, let's say since the early 1990's because I think we've reached some kind of critical mass where instead of growing from 50,000 to 100,000 and 100,000 to 200,000 we grew from 500 to a million and now we're approaching 2 million.  So people sit up and take notice.  And it's not stopping.  It just continues.  There is a great engine here and the engine is called entertainment and the great Southwest.  Those are two things that are driving the growth in Las Vegas. 

Interviewer:   What about water in this community?  What does water mean in this town? Who gets it and wants it?

Brian Greenspun:  Water is for fighting over they used to say.  Well maybe they say it now more than ever.  We live in a desert.  A good part of the Southwest is in the desert.  Water is precious.  Without water there is no growth, so they go hand in hand and if Las Vegas wants to continue to growth, as it seems naturally to do right now, it needs water so it's looking for water wherever it can get it.

Interviewer:   Talk a little bit about the politics of water and where the power is.

Brian Greenspun:  When you talk about water in Las Vegas in this valley, there are a number of different users.  We have one giant engine in Las Vegas--it's called the entertainment gaming tourist industry.  Surprisingly enough, it probably gets all the water it needs, but it uses this much water compared to the total usage in this valley.  I think the largest users are probably people with homes and grass and trees and shrubs, outdoor use and things like that.  That's most of the water and Las Vegas has been doing a reasonably good job of conserving it over the last few years once we've realized we have a problem.  But it's counter-intuitive for people to believe that it's the gaming industry that is using up all of the water with the fountains and the lakes and all that kind of stuff.  It just uses, I don't know, 3% or 4% or 5% of the water.  So when you ask who gets it and what the politics are, you've got 1.8 million people who want to water their lawns and swim in their pools and you've got a gaming entertainment industry that wants to take care of 38 million people a year and growing.  I think that's where the friction is and that's where it will continue to be.

Interviewer:   Talk a little bit about Las Vegas and the American dream.  Why do people move there?

Brian Greenspun:  Las Vegas is the American dream.  At least it's the American dream in the 21st century.  I think it was for the last half of the 20th.  People are moving here for a couple of good reasons; number one there are jobs.  Every time they build a new hotel here thousands of new job opportunities open up, not just for the hotel, but for all of the supporting industries that go along with that and then all of the professions that come along with that.  I think the number is something like three or three and a half jobs for every hotel room.  If you look out over the next five or eight years, we've got something like another 30,000 rooms coming down the stream.  So what's that a hundred thousand jobs give or take?  That's a lot of new people and a lot of families, so that's one thing that's causing the growth.  The other thing is my age, my group--baby boomers.  Many people are starting to retire and they're looking to move from those places where they've lived all of their life, especially in the Northeast and other places where it has either become too expensive or too oppressive.  So they're looking for a warm, sunny climate and Las Vegas is right in the middle of it.  So we're getting a whole lot of people who are coming here to retire.  In fact a lot of young retirees are coming, not to just retire but to live before they retire. 

Interviewer:   What do you think about typical urban growth issues?

Brian Greenspun:  I think more and more people are starting to be very concerned about it.  In year's past we'd water our lawns three times a day and the greener the better and on and on.  We didn't think about it.  But when we went, let's say in the early '90's now where we've practically doubled going from a million to almost two million people, all of a sudden we can't water our lawns every day.  You're told to not flush the toilet as often although there aren't those kind of restrictions, but we see lawns and golf courses going brown where it never use to happen before.  And it's tangible—we notice it.  I think most people are aware that we live in a desert, finally.  There are restrictions on whether you can plant lawns anymore.  All of the new subdivisions are coming up with cactus and desert landscape in their yards so people are clearly becoming more cognizant of it and I think the cost of water has gone way up.  So in a very tangible way they are feeling that pinch also. 

Interviewer:   Are people here knowledgeable about the water issues here?

Brian Greenspun:  I think most of the people here are relatively unaware of what it's going to take to get more water to the valley.  I think from time to time we have bond issues about building new pipelines to the lake and things like that.  There are stories every once in a while about the desire of the Water District to try and find water from other sources or in the middle of Nevada or eastern Nevada.  But it's not the kind of thing that is top of the mind.  The thing that brings that home would be if we run out of water some day and people say, ok turn your taps off for two days.  hen we'd know we have a problem, but right now most people are just leaving it to our political water leadership to find the answer.  There are answers.  There are a myriad of answers and we're leaving it to others no find it.  Those of us who are paying attention are probably aware of it.  Most people?  No, nor should they, not now.

Interviewer:   What happens to Vegas without water?

Brian Greenspun:  I can say we dry up and die and we don't grow.  And if Las Vegas isn't growing, that will do something significant not only to our community, but to every body else who believes that Las Vegas is the American dream and the dream city.  We're 38.5 million tourists right now.  A few years ago we were thirty-four and years before that we were twenty-six, and five years from now we could be forty-five.  Those people won't come and have a place like Las Vegas.  Maybe they'll go to Salt Lake, I don't know. 

Interviewer:   What do you see for the future of Las Vegas and water in the West?

Brian Greenspun:  I've always believed maybe too simplistically that water is an economic issue.  We live in a desert and don't have a lot of it.  There are people who are drowning in water so there is water in some places in this country and there is very little water in other places.  It's a question of how you get it there and what the trade-offs are.  I've never really considered water a showstopper.  It certainly is slowing things down and you have to go deal with people on a rational basis.  Know one would ever suggest down here, for example, that we go do an Owens Valley thing.  We don't go take water from people who have it and need it.  But there are places where there is plenty of extra water, and to the extent that there is extra water, we just need to find a way to bring it down here.  If compensation is involved, you compensate people.  But you get the extra and you get it down here to the extent you need it, but never ever to the point of taking from people who are using it and need it. 

Interviewer:   What's the perception of growth in this community?  Is it sprawling out of control?

Brian Greenspun:  It depends what residents you ask.  If you ask me, I think where we are sitting, and in one or two other areas of this community they are well planned.  We're in planned communities out here.  A lot of it still grows willy-nilly.  There is an attitude in this community that is very pro-business and pro-growth and there is nothing wrong with that but to the extent that they put the kind of aesthetics in place so they require the kind of aesthetics to really make it a nice place to live.  We're still learning.  We're a very very young town and we're still learning from others so I'd say it's a very pro-growth town and it needs to mature a great deal still in the way we grow and how pretty we grow.  But I don't see anything that is going to stop us from growing.

Interviewer:   Can you give us your opinion on whether the ranchers should be trusting "Las Vegas" with their water.

Brian Greenspun:  I think when you talk about the trust issue as it relates to the ranchers and farmers either in Utah or the eastern part of Nevada, I think that is a very proper and reasonable position for them to take.  How can they trust us down here that we will keep our word?  I've lived in this town my whole life.  I know that sometimes you can't trust this or that politician or you can't even trust the people you work with from time to time, but I've never known the political structure of Las Vegas to ever go back on its word, especially with something like water.  You need goodwill on both sides and sure it's a matter of faith because it has never been done before.  So I understand that there is a natural fear.  What is going to happen if we give them an inch?  Will they be a mile down the road before we ever look up?  I know as long as I live here and as long as I have input, I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure that people in this state are never looked on by their neighbors as people they cannot trust.  That's just not the way neighbors should work.  We need them.  We need them badly.  I think we're going to be able to find a way to show the ranchers and the farmers and the people who live in the rural areas that they can also benefit from an arrangement with Las Vegas.  But you make your contracts and you make your deals and you have your understanding just in case the trust thing breaks down.  I understand the fear, but I think it will ultimately be an irrational fear.  Today it may be a rational fear just because they don't know, but look down the road five or ten or fifty years from now and we will all look back and say, like most things, look what we were afraid of…wasn't that silly?

Interviewer:   Most of these cities in the West are growing exponentially.  Where do you think the resources will come from in the future, not just for Las Vegas, but for Tucson and Phoenix and many of these other western cities?

Brian Greenspun:  If you're talking about how this exponential growth that we're all assuming is going to happen from the baby-boomers retiring and moving into the Southwest, a major resource is obviously going to be water.  And it's not just Las Vegas that will need water--iit's Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico.  They all have different water sources and some of us share the same water sources.  I hope that the drought will end.  Droughts do end and then happen again.  So the real question is finding something more permanent—finding the places that have the water and don't need it and won't need it for thousands of years and finding a way to transport it to those places in the Southwest who will need it.  The people moving here, not just Las Vegas but all over the Southwest… millions and millions of people will move here.  They are the ones who are going to drive that determination to find the resources and a lot of them are moving from places that had the water.  So they're coming with relationships.  So yes it's a huge problem, but problems can be solved.  This is America.  We solve problems here.

Interviewer:   What are the biggest misconceptions about Las Vegas?

Brian Greenspun:  When you talk about misconceptions that people have about Las Vegas, I would think that the single overriding misconception that I hear a lot is about the kind and quality of the people who live here—that we're all gamblers and dealers, waitresses, gaming moguls and that's it, and that we all just live for the money that comes in here.  I don't know if that has ever been true.  Many times in the past, Las Vegas has encouraged that kind of conception about Las Vegas because they wanted people to come and visit and see the gangsters and the hookers if you will and all of that stuff.  There are 1.8 million people here and I'd say 1.795 of them are decent, honorable, responsible people and they just want to do the right things for themselves and for their families and for this community.  But remember we are a very young town so we're still learning how to do all of those things.  So if you look at misconceptions, I think it's who the people are because actually we all come from everyplace else.  We're the same people that live next door to you in Salt Lake City, or lives next door in Demoine or New York City or Los Angeles.  They just come here to live—they're the same people.  So that's what I think is the largest misconception and it's a misconception that is way off. 

Interviewer:   I was mentioning that the ranchers really fear the Water Authority and indirectly Las Vegas.  Are you concerned about that?

Brian Greenspun:  I think in the end the ranchers and farmers in Eastern Nevada and Western Utah who have exhibited or expressed some fear about this voracious appetite for water that Las Vegas seems to have, that once we get our hooks into them, if you will, we're just going to take all of there water.  I think that will clearly be an unfounded fear.  Do I understand the fear?  Yes I do, but like many fears they go up and then they go away and are never looked at again.  I wouldn't put too much stock if I were living in Utah or Eastern Nevada, in that kind of fear.  There is a way to overcome it.  Again, part of it is the trust issue and part of it is just in being good responsible people.  We are not bad people here!  When we say to the ranchers that "you can trust us" they really can.  They may not know why right now but they can trust us.  We're going to do the right thing.  We have always done the right thing.  We get 38 million people a year coming back to Las Vegas because we do the right thing by them.  We treat them well.  We treat them respectfully.  They treat us pretty well and leave a little bit of what they brought, but there is a relationship where we don't abuse one another.  We have the best gaming regulatory scheme in the world that has been set up in Nevada just so people won't feel cheated or disrespected in any way.  We'll feel that they can trust us.  That's who we are.  Look at what we've done to create that ability over the last fifty to sixty years.  It's the same credibility that we will have in dealing with the people out in the rural areas of Utah and Nevada.  Again, you can look at them in the eye and say, "you can trust us" but that only takes you so far.  The real issue is in the doing.  As I said before we'll all look back in twenty or thirty years and say, can you imagine what we were afraid of, it never came to pass.