Las Vegas fell 20 places to #47 in a sustainability index published by the website SustainLane.com. The ranking measures a number of categories such as street congestion, air and water quality, and green building (LEED certification). According to the index, Las Vegas ranks high in energy and climate change policy, green building and low natural disaster risk. Our issues with our tight water supply, metro street congestion, and air quality overwhelmed the positives and pushed us towards the bottom of the list.

The top five cities included Portland, San Francisco,  Seattle, Chicago, and New York City. Among other desert cities, we ranked ahead only of Mesa, AZ (#50), with Albuquerque leading the list at #18.

The Las Vegas Valley Water District is reporting today that over the past two weeks, its customers used 574 million gallons less water compared to the same two week period last year. We have the recent rain to thank for the drop in consumption (and all of you who turned off your irrigation systems during the rains). Even with the rain, July’s total was below number, as measured by the National Weather Service. For the month, we officially received .29 inches of rain, .15 below the norm of .44 inches