LETTER: Southern Nevada water officials falling down on the job

The Las Vegas Valley Water District and Southern Nevada Water Authority should be ashamed. They assign us common folk meager watering days, watering hours, issue fines if we — heaven forbid — need to water on Sunday and send a mean letter if we need a few extra gallons for a tree. Meanwhile, the rich and irresponsible are building mountainside and lakeside multi-multimillion-dollar, zillion-square-foot homes.

The Sunday’s Review-Journal real-estate section featured a 15,000-square-foot home with three interconnected pools, a living room surrounded on three sides by water, nine bathrooms, two outdoor kitchens (we assume there’s one inside) and … need we say more? Seriously? Members of the Clark County Commission, the water authority and the water district do not see a problem here?

Well, we commoners sure do.

Many of these multimillion-dollar mansions are lived in only a small part of the year, which adds to our grief because everyone knows you can’t leave a home vacant without flushing toilets and running showers, faucets, dishwashers while maintaining the landscape and filling pools and fountains.

It’s reprehensible to have a Golden Knights player scowling at us to conserve “or else” while irresponsible building is occurring all around us. How about water officials call it what it is: pay to play. Billionaire homes that are showcases for art are shattering all-time Vegas sales — they are also shattering water usage records. Build an art museum, instead. This is egregious.

New leadership with conservation-minded integrity is needed to reverse this lack of planning and to inform architects and builders that it’s a desert out there.