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SOUTHERN NEVAD A'S ODDEST NEWSPAPER ?........ Established in 1905 A weekly newspaper published every Sunday morning for general circulation in lias Vegas, Nevada, and entered in th e Postoffice as second-class matter. CHARLES P. SQUIRES__________ _______________ _____ _______ Editor 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 sems to hinge on the assumption that, be­cause of the long summer drouth, the artesian water supply is near depletion. This is cou­pled with the threat, or at least the implica­tion, that the city of Las Vegas should acquire the water system of the Las Vegas Land and Water company and should also buy from the government the great pipe line and pumping system which bring a water supply to the plant at Basic Magnesium. There are two assumptions in the propos; which may or may not be borne out by fact ~ n e /!S » because of the past summer Ctr0Uj m, e artes‘an water-supply is endar gered. The other is that the Basic Magnesiur plant is being permanently closed. Many times in the past we have, like othe communities, suffered from lack of rah However, just as often we have seen thi decline in water fully replenished by thi swrng of the weather cycle from dry to wet. . Furthermore, the assumption that the wai is about ended is not warranted and thi future may show that the full output of th« Basic Magnesium plant will be very neces­sary to keep the supply of magnesium flow­ing into the war activities. And following the war, when -mdustrial plants begin to work Z f P f ° < i u c t s , it will very probably be found that all the magnesium BM I can turn out will be needed by the robust air­plane and automobile plants already being and magnesium has established itself as one of the basic metals of industry. . v l^ iere is one feature of the controversy that may give us temporary unrest. That is the charge that Las Vegas Land and Water 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. As 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 Riyer 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 filing 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 file facilities they already own. O FFICE O F .. yrann n V E ASSSSrAW* OCT 2 4 1 :44 I/nft A M Q ltf fifty Q&t&s . s'* S'