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Las Vegas Water Patrol

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 8, 2025| 2 Comments »

Photo: RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images.
Above, Las Vegas Valley Water District Water Waste Investigator Devyn Choltko puts a water waste violation into the computer system outside a home in north Las Vegas, Nevada.

When water is seen running into the gutter from a lawn in a desert city, Water Waste Investigator 9393 steps in. The good news is, water conservation efforts like those in Las Vegas are paying off.

Yvette Fernandez reports at National Public Radio by way of the Mountain West News Bureau, an NPR regional hub, in collaboration with Nevada Public Radio in Las Vegas. 

“About two dozen investigators patrol neighborhoods throughout Las Vegas every day searching for signs of wasted water. They’re known as water waste investigators who are part of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. For more than 20 years, they have been helping conserve water in the growing desert city.

“Devyn Choltko is one of the investigators with the Las Vegas Valley Water District, which is part of SNWA. … On an early July morning, she stops her patrol car in a neighborhood where water flows onto the street.

” ‘Water Waste Investigator 9393,’ Choltko reports into her cell phone to record the incident. ‘Some misaligned sprinklers as well as over-irrigation causing some run-off,’ she continues. …

“Choltko says ‘spray and flow’ violations are among the most common problems. This is when water from a sprinkler head sprays out onto the sidewalk or street, and that’s considered wasted water.

“Choltko marks a yellow flag with the date, time and alleged violation, then places the marker on the property to notify the resident. The investigators can only leave the yellow flag if they have actually witnessed the violation.

” ‘Most people don’t even know they have a problem,’ Choltko says. …

“Residents get a few notices to take corrective action. If they are ‘repeat’ violators, a fine ‘is recommended,’ says Choltko. They face a fee of $80 initially, which can continue to double if ignored.

“Choltko says some homeowners may have issues they aren’t aware of. A homeowner, for example, may have taken proactive steps to conserve water by removing their grass and switching to desert landscaping. Succulents and drought-resistant plants should be watered using drip irrigation to get water directly to the roots and reduce evaporation. But faulty or worn-out tubes can result in water spewing onto sidewalks. …

“For low-income homeowners who cannot afford repairs, the SNWA can provide financial assistance to make necessary repairs. It will also provide help in detecting leaks.

“More than twenty years ago, drought gripped the Colorado River Basin. … By 2003, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a not-for-profit water provider with a half dozen water collaborative agencies in southern Nevada, responded with several water conservation efforts, which included starting the water patrol. …

“Says Bronson Mack, a spokesperson with the SNWA, the goal [is] to educate people about the importance of water conservation and encourage people to change their behavior. That change can be as small as people taking shorter showers or reusing water for plants or cleaning.

” ‘We collected in the neighborhood of about $1-$1.5 million over the recent years in water waste violations,’ says Mack. The Las Vegas Valley Water District uses those dollars to support conservation programs, such as incentives to remove turf and rebates to install smart irrigation systems. …

“Just east of Las Vegas, receding ‘bathtub rings’ are etched into one of the country’s largest reservoirs, Lake Mead — a reminder of how much water there once was. The reservoir provides water to Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County. Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at less than 35% normal capacity.

“The Southern Nevada Water Authority … has a significant effort to recycle water that’s already been used by treating it and putting it back into use. According to SNWA, it returned more than 245,000 acre-feet of water to Lake Mead in 2024. …

“The population of Las Vegas has grown by over 800,000 people since 2002. And, the city has seen over 40 million visitors during that time. Despite that growth, ‘we have reduced our consumption of Colorado River water by more than 30% over the past two decades,’ Mack says. …

“Low levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell are expected to continue, according to the latest data released by the Bureau of Reclamation. The Department of the Interior’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, Scott Cameron, said in a news release: ‘forward-thinking solutions’ that prioritize conservation will be increasingly important.”

More at NPR, here.

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Nudging Kids toward Independence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 13, 2024| 3 Comments »

Photo: Jackie Valley/The Christian Science Monitor.
Fifth graders at Dennis Ortwein Elementary School in Las Vegas, Nevada, and their Let Grow posters.

Ultimately, you want your children to grow up able to take care of themselves. Love and convenience give parents plenty of temptation to do things for them beyond the point where the help is beneficial. That’s why a school in Nevada is lending a hand to kids and parents alike to so that fledglings may have a good chance to fledge.

Jackie Valley has the story at the Christian Science Monitor.

“Walking the dog. Wrapping a package. Cooking dinner.

“For adults, these activities often represent mundane to-do list tasks. But for fifth graders in Las Vegas, they offered something different this past school year – a taste of independence. 

“ ‘I can do things by myself more instead of having my dad or my mom do them,’ says Deven Doutis, who learned his dog goes a little nuts when he spots another canine out for a stroll.

The small steps toward greater – and lasting – independence came about in a very intentional way.

“Deven’s teacher, Amy Wolfe, sensed students were entering higher grades with more needs than in past years. Some couldn’t open a water bottle, for instance, or navigate minor conflicts with their peers. So when Ms. Wolfe heard about a program called Let Grow, she decided to pilot it within select classrooms at Dennis Ortwein Elementary School in Las Vegas.

“The program’s premise is simple: When children gain independence, they grow into more confident and capable people. …

“But what, exactly, are kids allowed to do by themselves nowadays? Terms such as ‘helicopter parent’ or ‘overparenting’ have become shorthand to describe adults who are overly involved, sometimes to the detriment of their child’s developmental growth. …

“A poll conducted last year for C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan found that three-quarters of parents say they have their children do things for themselves; however, the percentage of parents who report their children do specific activities independently is lower. Only a third of parents, for example, allow their 9-to-11-year-old child to walk or bike to a friend’s house. A similar portion say they encourage their 5-to-8-year-olds to decide how to spend their own gift or allowance money.

“Safety concerns emerged as the top reason those same parents don’t allow their children more free rein. The results did not come as a surprise to Lenore Skenazy, president of Let Grow and author of Free-Range Kids. For years, she has been on a mission to unleash children in a society where they increasingly have little independence in the physical world. …

“She says the backlash stems from a pervasive, heightened sense of danger built by media narratives and litigious tendencies. …

“In a commentary piece published by the Journal of Pediatrics last year, researchers pointed to evidence showing a correlation between children’s dwindling independence and increasing mental health problems over several decades.

” ‘We are not suggesting that a decline in opportunities for independent activity is the sole cause of the decline in young people’s mental well-being over decades, only that it is a cause, possibly a major cause,’ the authors wrote. (The lead author, Peter Gray, is a research professor in psychology at Boston College and a founding member of Let Grow.)

“In Ms. Wolfe’s classroom each month, students chose an independent activity, loosely tied to a theme, and completed it by themselves. Then they reported back to their classmates and teacher about the experience. There were no grades or critiques. If Ms. Wolfe asked any probing questions, it was to suss out how her students felt after, say, baking a cake or pulling weeds. …

“ ‘It’s more about developing the conversations with students to where they see independence … as a value,’ she says. …

“For her first project, Giwan Istefan’s 11-year-old daughter, Aria, decided to make miniature lemon-and-blueberry cheesecakes. Ms. Istefan says it turned into an exercise in parental restraint as well.

“ ‘I was like, “Oh my gosh, I see the disaster happening,” ‘ she says. ‘But I had to step back. It was growth not just for her, but it was growth for also myself.’ “

More at the Monitor, here. What are some of the ways you have encouraged independence in children, not necessarily only as a parent?

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He Was Once a Dancer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 10, 2024| 7 Comments »

Photo: Safeed Rahbaran/New York Times via the Las Vegas Sun.
“George Lee at the Four Queens Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, on Jan. 16, 2024. Lee was the original Tea in ‘George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,’ ” says the New York Times. “A documentary filmmaker found him and a lost part of ballet history in Las Vegas.”

Several of my good friends from college are Chinese. I don’t know if I am stereotyping my friends, but having come from a throughly impractical family, I was impressed at once with what seemed to me a startling level of practicality. Practicality about what kinds of courses to take for what kind of well-paying jobs; even practicality about potential marriage partners.

So one of the things that struck me about the mother in today’s lovely story was the way she helped her son earn rice during the Japanese occupation of China and her advice to him when they headed to America.

Siobhan Burke reports at the New York Times, “Among the blaring lights and all-hours amusements of downtown Las Vegas, in a sea of slot machines at the Four Queens Hotel and Casino, George Lee sits quietly at a blackjack table, dealing cards eight hours a day, five days a week, a job he’s been doing for more than 40 years.

“Lee, 88, was likely in his usual spot when the filmmaker Jennifer Lin was sifting through old photos at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2022, wondering what had become of a dancer with a notable place in ballet history. Pictured in a publicity shot for the original production of ‘George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,’ in the role known as Tea, was a young Asian dancer identified as George Li.

“For Lin, a veteran newspaper reporter turned documentarian, the picture raised intriguing questions. In 1954, when the photo was taken, it was rare to see dancers of color on the stage of New York City Ballet, the company Balanchine co-founded. Who was this young man, this breaker of racial barriers, this pioneer? Was he still alive? And if so, what was he up to?

“ ‘I became absolutely obsessed with trying to find out what happened to George Li,’ Lin said in a video interview.

“In just over a year, that obsession has blossomed into a short film, Ten Times Better, that chronicles the unexpected story of Lee’s life: from his childhood in 1940s Shanghai, where his performing career began; to a refugee camp in the Philippines, where he fled with his mother, a Polish ballet dancer, in 1949; to New York City and the School of American Ballet, where Balanchine cast him in ‘The Nutcracker’; to Flower Drum Song on Broadway, his first of many musical theater gigs; and ultimately, to Las Vegas, where he left dance for blackjack dealing in 1980. (He changed the spelling of his last name in 1959, when he became a United States citizen.) …

“ ‘So many years I haven’t done ballet,’ Lee said over coffee at the Four Queens on a recent Sunday, after his shift. ‘And then suddenly Jennifer comes and tries to bring everything up.’ …

“Lin was not the only one who had been searching for Lee. In 2017, while organizing an exhibition on ‘The Nutcracker,’ Arlene Yu, who worked for the New York Public Library at the time and is now Lincoln Center’s head archivist, was puzzled by the relatively few traces of him in the library’s vast dance collection. ‘Whereas if you look at some of his peers in ‘The Nutcracker’ in 1954, they went on to careers where there was a lot more documentation.’ …

“Lee, in his heyday, was a dancer to know. At just 12, he was already winning public praise. In a preview of a recital of the King-Yanover School in Shanghai, the North China Daily News called him an ‘extremely promising young Chinese boy, whose technique is of a very high standard.’ A reviewer wrote that he ‘already may be said to be the best Chinese interpreter of Western ballet.’ (Lee saved these newspaper clippings and shared them with Lin.) …

“Lee’s mother, Stanislawa Lee, who had danced with the Warsaw Opera, was his first ballet teacher; as a child, he would follow along with her daily barre exercises. Shanghai had a significant Russian population, and with that a robust ballet scene. To earn money, Stanislawa arranged for her son to perform in nightclubs — ‘like a polka dance, or Russian dance, or sailor dance,’ Lee said. The clubs would pay them in rice. …

“In 1951, an American friend of Lee’s father sponsored them to come to New York, where he introduced Lee to the School of American Ballet, City Ballet’s affiliated school. As Lee narrates these twists and turns in the film, one memory anchors his recollections. Before they immigrated, his mother issued a warning. ‘You are going to America, it’s all white people, and you better be 10 times better,’ he recalls her saying. ‘Remember that: 10 times better!’

“The footage of Lee in his 20s suggests he took that advice to heart. In television appearances — with the company of the ballet star André Eglevsky, and in a number from Flower Drum Song on the Ed Sullivan Show — his power and precision dazzle.

“ ‘He was good; he was really good,’ [Phil Chan, cofounder of Final Bow for Yellowface, an initiative focused on ending offensive depictions of Asians in ballet] said. ‘Clean fifth, high jump, polished turns, stick the landing — the training is all there. He’s already 10 times better than everybody else.’ …

“In a 1979 interview heard in the film, the former City Ballet soloist Richard Thomas, who took over the role of Tea, raves about Lee’s peerless acrobatic jumps: ‘He was wonderful! Balanchine choreographed a variation for him that none of us have ever been able to equal.’

“As Lee remembers it … the City Ballet makeup artist put him in full yellowface, and Balanchine insisted he take off the makeup. ‘He is Asian enough! Why do you make him more?’ he remembers Balanchine saying. Lee was costumed in the Fu Manchu mustache, queue ponytail and rice paddy hat often associated with the role, now widely critiqued as racist caricatures. But he said he didn’t take offense. ‘Dancing is dancing,’ he said. …

“He pieced together jobs for more than 20 years, often unsure of what would come next. He was dancing in a Vegas revue, ‘Alcazar de Paris,’ now in his 40s, when a blackjack dealer friend suggested he go to dealer school. ‘I can’t dance all my life,’ he remembers thinking.” More at the Times, here.

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Pigeons Wearing Cowboy Hats

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 29, 2020| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Twitter/kassandraqueenn
Social media users have been reporting sightings of Las Vegas pigeons in hats since early December 2019.

The New Yorker magazine used to have a bottom-of-the-column feature called “There’ll always be an England,” which highlighted the quirkiness of that country. After you read the following story, you may want to recommend naming a feature “There’ll always be a Las Vegas.”

In December, the Guardian‘s Martin Belam reported on Las Vegas pigeons wearing hats.

“Two pigeons have been spotted in Las Vegas wearing tiny cowboy hats. While many have been amused by the sight of the birds, with social media users excitedly reporting sightings since a video was first posted to Facebook in early December, there are concerns for the welfare of the animals. …

“Mariah Hillman, who works with the local animal rescue charity Lofty Hopes, said the hats were glued on to the pigeons. ‘When we saw them today, you could see some loose feathers in the glue around the hat. It’s definitely a concern,’ she said. …

“Observers have named the two birds Cluck Norris and Coo-lamity Jane. Cluck Norris can be identified by the red hat he is wearing, as opposed to Coo-lamity Jane’s pink headgear. There are unconfirmed reports that a third pigeon has fallen victim to the trend and is sporting a brown hat. The Las Vegas Metropolitan police department told the New York Times it ‘does not appear to be a police matter at this time.’ …

“Hillman’s group has been attempting to capture the pigeons to remove the headgear, with little success so far. They said the birds had been difficult to trap as they were being fed repeatedly by people curious about their appearance, making luring them with food difficult.” More at the Guardian, here.

Meanwhile on Facebook, Lofty Hopes put up a message before Christmas to encourage animal lovers to make toys for their temporary residents: “Lofty Hopes is hosting a holiday get together to play Santa’s Helper and make toys for the many rescued pets who live here until they are adopted. Toys are an important part of their well-being and we want to provide new, enriching toys as gifts for the holidays.

“We will be purchasing all the toy parts such as bells, wood parts with holes pre-drilled, plastic chain pieces, etc. Come join us. This will be fun for all ages … We will be providing vegan hot chocolate.”

Want a follow-up? Check out the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where you will learn that Lofty Hopes, some volunteers, and a vet safely removed pigeon hats. Reporter Max Michor concludes with some tips: “Anyone who finds a sick or injured pigeon should first catch the bird to keep it from further harm, [Mariah Hillman, founder of the rescue group Lofty Hopes,] said. Humans can’t contract any diseases from touching a pigeon with their bare hands, she said, but a shirt or towel can be used to wrap and move the birds.

“Hillman said people should never try to force feed pigeons or drip water into their mouths, as they breathe through a hole under their tongue that can easily be blocked or filled with liquid.” Never say I don’t give you useful advice!

This is actually a Boston pigeon. We don’t do cowboy hats out East.

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Getting Rid of Lawns

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 6, 2013| 2 Comments »

It was good to have a little lawn when Suzanne and John were kids, but we gave up the hassle after they grew up. In place of a lawn we have a lovely ground cover called vinca. In spring the yard is entirely purple.

On the East Coast as fall approaches, many homeowners are thinking about taking advantage of cooler weather to rev up their lawns. But in the Southwest there’s a concerted effort to move away from the green carpet.

Ian Lovett writes at the NY Times that since 2009, Los Angeles “has paid $1.4 million to homeowners willing to rip out their front lawns and plant less thirsty landscaping.

“At least the lawns are still legal [there]. Grass front yards are banned at new developments in Las Vegas, where even the grass medians on the Strip have been replaced with synthetic turf.

“In Austin, Tex., lawns are allowed; watering them, however, is not — at least not before sunset. Police units cruise through middle-class neighborhoods hunting for sprinklers running in daylight and issuing $475 fines to their owners.”

In Las Vegas “in the last decade, 9.2 billion gallons of water have been saved through turf removal, and water use in Southern Nevada has been cut by a third, even as the population has continued to grow. …

“The idea that extensive grass lawns are wasteful has now taken hold with many people in this region, especially the young and environmentally conscious.

“And municipalities, hoping [the] savings can be expanded, have tried to entice more residents to dig up their lawns by offering more money. Last month, Los Angeles raised its rebate to $2 from $1.50 a square foot of grass removed. Long Beach now offers $3 a square foot.” Read more here.

Photos: Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Top, Flowering artichoke plants in Mitch and Leslie Aiken’s drought-tolerant yard in Pasadena, Calif. Below, the couple survey the effect of desert plantings.

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