Water isn’t the only challenge. As a city built in the middle of the desert, a concerted effort must be made to counter the urban heat island effect. Asphalt, concrete and other components of urban infrastructure absorb and retain the heat from the sun much more than natural landscapes and can significantly raise surrounding air temperatures. Las Vegas has the most intense urban heat islands of any city in the country with temperatures 20 to 25 degrees hotter than the surrounding desert. One of the best strategies for countering this effect is planting trees. The Master Plan outlines the goal of planting 60,000 native, drought-resistant trees throughout the city and ensuring that 85% of the population live within 1/3 mile of green spaces that provide cooler temperatures, like a park or tree canopy, by 2050. Other tactics include painting roofs white (another conservation characteristic of City Hall) and reducing use of asphalt and concrete.
The strategies are bold for a reason. They work. Over the past decade, the city has reduced its annual municipal water demand by 2.25 billion gallons and has cut per-person water consumption in half since 2000. The city already met its previous goal of planting 40,000 trees by 2020. But bold strategies can make gaining public support a challenge. While water and rising temperatures are a top concern of Vegas residents, so is affordable housing, crime, access to public parks and open spaces. By inviting community input early in the planning process, Velotta and his colleagues at City Hall have been able to respond to community needs while weaving sustainability into everything they’re doing. Velotta is leading the East Las Vegas project, Nuestro Futuro Este de Las Vegas (Our Future East Las Vegas), which will turn a city-owned water-consumptive golf course into a mixed-used neighborhood that meets the Master Plan’s sustainability goals while developing a vibrant new neighborhood.
“This is where all these things come together,” Velotta said. “We can repurpose this Pete Dye-designed course to have two-thousand mixed-income and affordable single-family and multi-family housing units, a park, water-efficient landscaping and drought tolerant trees, a community center, a training center through College of Southern Nevada, opportunities for community-serving retail – we’d be checking all these boxes. We can really make it a neighborhood.”
“I consider Nevada to be my home. It doesn’t matter what end of the state ... We need to be future-proofing our urban communities and building resilience into our systems. We have to be of like mind in dealing with a lot of these things."
Each opportunity outlined in the Master Plan, from resource conservation to equitable education, environmental justice to historic preservation, presents its own unique challenges. As City Planner, it is Velotta’s job to untangle the web of potential solutions, weave together competing priorities and incorporate public opinion in a plan that best serves the future of the city he grew up in. As a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno, he hopes his college home will take note of the progress made in Las Vegas. In 2022, the nonprofit research group Climate Central named Las Vegas the second fastest-warming city in the country. Reno was the first. While Reno isn’t reliant on Lake Mead for its water, the dwindling snowpack doesn’t offer the Biggest Little City much assurance. As Reno continues to see increased population growth, there is an opportunity to borrow from the lessons learned by its neighbors to the south.
“I consider Nevada to be my home. It doesn’t matter what end of the state. This is home for me,” Velotta said. “The water issues are the same. The conservation issues are the same. With climate projections the way that they are, there might not be a Sierra snowpack one day. You can hope for an atmospheric river, but that’s not something you want to be banking on. We need to be future-proofing our urban communities and building resilience into our systems. We have to be of like mind in dealing with a lot of these things. And when it comes to legislation, we’re playing under the same statutes. Climate resilience is something that needs to be addressed and planned for.”
Velotta is driven to continue to fight for the future of Las Vegas and Nevada. His reasons are personal, as they are for so many looking toward a future impacted by climate change.
“This work is about livable spaces, livable places and creating a sustainable future for our kids, my kids,” Velotta said. “No one wants to live in a place where the air is polluted, or there’s no water, or it’s so hot and it doesn’t need to be. I don’t want to take my kids to Sand Harbor only to tell them, ‘This was once a special place.’ Mark Twain himself said about Tahoe, ‘This is the air that angels breathe.’ I want that to remain true for my kids, too.”
