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Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas Age October 33, 1944 SOUTHERN NEVADA'S OLDEST NEWSPAPER _|25------—Established irir 190$---------- - A weekly newspaper published every Sunday morning tor general S r S l n “ I L 1Vegas, Nevada, and entered in the Postoffice as second-class matter. 1 , _______ : y»r ?' CHARLES P. SQUIRES.... ..Editor E. E.BOCT 24 1944 S' The Water Problem At Tuesday’s meeting of Las Vegas cham­ber of commerce a motion was adopted pro­pounding to the state engineer a series of questions the' answers to most of which we already know and, as to the balance of which our guess is probably as good as that of the ' state engineer or other state official. The important point in the whole matter ; serns to hinge on the assumption that, be- I! cause of the long summer drouth, the artesian ! water supply is near depletion.. This is cou- j pled with the threat, or at least the implies- j tion, that the city of Las Vegas should acquire j the water system of the Las Vegas Land and H Water company and should also buy from 1 the government the great pipe line and ; pumping system which bring a water supply i to the plant at Basic Magnesium, There are^two assumptions in the proposal j which may or may not be borne out by facts. lj One is that, because of the past summer’s | drouth the artesian water supply is endan- j gered. The other is that the Basic Magnesium plant is being permanently closed. Many times in the past we have, like other L communities, suffered from lack of rain. ) However, just as often we have seeri the decline in water fully replenished by the j swing of the weather cycle from dry to wet. | Furthermore, the assumption that the war [ is about ended is not warranted and the > future may show that the full output of the Basic Magnesium plant will be very neces- L sary to keep the supply of magnesium flow - ] ing into the war activities. And following the war, when industrial plants begin to work on civilian products, it will very probably 1 be found that all the magnesium BMI can J turn out w ill be needed by the robust air­plane and automobile plants already being | planned, and that magnesium has established ' itself as one of the basic metals of industry. There is one feature' of the controversy that may give us temporary unrest. That is | the charge that Las Vegas Land and Water 1 company is protesting the drilling of artesian wells in Las Vegas valley by all land owners except itself. W'e cannot admit any right of monopoly. It surely is the duty of the company to provide water for the commun­ity but not at the expense of the private prop­erty owners of the valley. A s to the great pipe line from Lake Mead owned by the government, we should enter upon negotiations to establish a reasonable rate to be paid for Lake Mead water deliv­ered at the reservoir above the Basic Mag­nesium plant. It should be borne in mind that the State of Nevada, under the Colorado River Compact, -is entitled to take and use the stored waters of the Colorado river to the amount of 300,000 acre feet, which w ill be-sufficient for our use for all time to come. It would be the reasonable and natural thing to expect us not to buy the immensely costly pipe line and pumping plants, but to contract with the government agency to de­liver our water at the top of the hill through the facilities they already own. ?^0#' Mm, dv* -o*