Southern Nevada Water Authority

Voters in Nevada's two most populous counties told lawmakers in the state with the largest percentage of smokers in the nation that they don't want kids and cigarettes in the same building. Clark and Washoe counties approved virtually identical advisory measures Tuesday to toughen local restrictions on smokers beyond state law and ban smoking entirely in places children are likely to be. Both issues will be submitted to the next Legislature.

The federal government Thursday ushered in a new era of shortage on the Colorado River, adopting a blueprint for how it will tighten the spigot on the West's most important water source. The guidelines, more than two years in the making, come in the eighth year of the worst drought in the century-long historic record of the Colorado River, which supplies water to 25 million people and 1 million acres of farmland.

After nearly two decades of busily converting desert into sprawling metropolis in the fastest-growing region in the nation, southern Nevada finds itself beset by a four-year drought and straining against limits in the water that it can pump from nearby Lake Mead. Las Vegas is turning to rural counties to the north to quench a thirst that the nation's largest man-made reservoir can't sustain.

Mining claims threaten to mar the borders of 10 iconic national parks and wilderness areas, particularly the Grand Canyon, where uranium claims have increased 2,000% since 2004, according to a new report by the Pew Environment Group. Mining companies have filed claims to the rights to copper, gold and other metals in addition to uranium in areas around Mt. Rushmore, Joshua Tree National Park and other famous refuges at an increased rate in the last five to seven years because of rising global prices, the Pew report said.

Every month, the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan area adds about 6,000 residents, and some experts see no end to expansion for the city that disdains limits of any kinds. The Las Vegas area is expected to be home to nearly 2.8 million residents by 2035. In fact, the area is growing so rapidly, no one really knows where the horizon lies. From 1990 to 2000, the valley grew 83.3% to more than 1.5 million, according to Census Bureau figures.

Not surprisingly, this special Vegas Issue is laced with examples of hedonism and tackiness: the $2,000 martini, complete with bejeweled swizzle stick, at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino; the $15,000-a-night stay at the MGM Grand; the forested mountain that has risen up not from the hand of God but, rather, from the wallet of Steve Wynn. Yet of all the extravagances in Sin City, one surely tops the rest: water. The desert metropolis, remember, typically gets a mere 4 inches of rainfall annually.

On a rocky patch of desert, federal and state officials Tuesday began construction on a $172.2-million reservoir that will store water from the Colorado River that otherwise would be "lost" to Mexico. The reservoir will mean more water for coastal Southern California, southern Nevada and central Arizona -- where water agencies have agreed to split the cost.

Don Barsky has nurtured some of this desert valley's greenest landscape -- the three golf courses spread over 450 acres in a Sun City development on the west side of town. Now he faces the unpopular task of removing 20% of the turf that makes up his fairways, greens and tees.

Long chided by politicians and environmentalists for its water-hogging ways, Southern California is withstanding the current drought better than many other Western cities--partly because people are using less water for everyday tasks. Though a four-year dry spell has severely shrunk Denver's once-grand reservoirs and so parched Santa Fe, N.M., that the City Council is debating a prohibition on new development, things here are comparatively rosy.

DESERT NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Nev. -- Water is not what comes to mind in this sun-bleached landscape of crumpled mountains and creosote-coated basins. But that's what Las Vegas thinks of when it glances across its northern border at this sprawling bighorn sheep refuge, the largest federal wildlife sanctuary in the lower 48 states.