Palm Springs - The flamboyant mayor of Las Vegas may have opened up a multistate water 
war last week, when he said "no one is going to allow us to go dry" and vowed to go 
after Southern California's water, it was reported today.

Mayor Oscar Goodman's comments come as officials from Wyoming to Mexico contemplate the 
prospect of a shriveling Colorado River, where global climate changes might dry up much 
of the vast water supply for people from Tucson to Tijuana, and Denver to Los Angeles.

Goodman reportedly said last week that farmers in California "will have their fields go 
fallow before our spigots run dry." Those comments were made last Thursday, when the Las 
Vegas mayor was asked for comment about a new climate study that predicts such 
diminished flows in the Colorado River that Lake Mead and Lake Powell will be sucked dry.

"We'll see you at the battlefront," Goodman was quoted as saying by the Desert Sun 
newspaper of Palm Springs.

Battles over Colorado River supplies are not new. In 1934, Arizona's governor sent the 
state's National Guard to the Colorado River to prevent Los Angeles from building Parker 
Dam, and removed the troops only after a federal court ordered an end to hostilities.

In California, Coachella Valley Water District general manager Steve Robbins called the 
latest Las Vegas threats "ridiculous and inflammatory."

The Imperial Irrigation District views the Nevada threats as "the latest in a series of 
salvos directed at the farms and fields of the Imperial Valley," said spokesman Kevin 
Kelley.

University of Utah law professor Robert Adler told the Desert Sun that the Vegas mayor's 
comments may be a "kind of political statement, rather than a statement based on legal 
rights."

Farms in the Coachella and Imperial valleys are called the breadbasket of the southwest, 
and crops and animals grown there feed much of the country, including Las Vegas, farmers 
say. Surplus water from the desert is already in the process of being acquired by San 
Diego and other coastal cities.

Farms in California get 11 times more water than Las Vegas is allocated under a 
multistate agreement brokered by Congress in 1922. A new revision of the Colorado River 
Compact has been negotiated by the federal government and water users, to accommodate 
urban growth and decreased water supplies. 

Las Vegas ist die grösste Stadt im US-Bundesstaat Nevada. Sie ist vor allem 
wegen ihrer grossen Anzahl an Casinos bekannt. Ihre Einwohnerzahl auf 340 
Quadratkilometern beträgt rund 600'000 (Jahr 2007), die Agglomeration breitet 
sich mittlerweile auf über 1200 Quadratkilometer aus und hat insgesamt etwa 2 
Millionen Einwohner. Las Vegas ist Verwaltungssitz des Clark County. 

Las Vegas ist ein global bedeutendes Touristikzentrum, in das jährlich etwa 39 
Millionen Touristen reisen. Derzeit wird noch etwa ein Viertel des Umsatzes in 
Casinos erzielt, drei Viertel entfallen auf Eintrittskarten für Shows, Souvenirs 
und Luxusartikel. Neben den Casinos prägen die Shows den öffentlichen Charakter 
der Stadt. 

Zu den in Las Vegas tätigen Künstlern zählten und zählen Elvis Presley, The Rat 
Pack mit Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. und Dean Martin, Céline Dion, Johnny 
Cash, Elton John, Illusionisten (Siegfried und Roy, David Copperfield oder der 
Cirque du Soleil). Bekannt ist die Stadt auch für ihre grosse Anzahl an 
Hochzeitskapellen, da Nevada ausserordentlich unkomplizierte Eheschliessungs- 
(und Scheidungs-) Gesetze hat.

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