Paving over the Bellagio Fountains (long)

[Cosimo]

Yeah man, listen to Paver, if you don't use water sparingly then it will be all gone and your children won't have any water ever.

Water conservation isn't about saving water For The Children™, it's a distribution scheme. Only those uses approved by a government bureaucrat can use water. In a free market, the only way someone's lawn would dry out would be if they didn't want to pay for the water. The water lost from the fountains due to evaporation is not comparable with the amount consumed by a local neighborhood.

Precious Natural Resource? Please. It's a commodity good, limited in supply over time, but unlimited in the long run.

One average home consumes half an acre-foot (AF) per year. Near as I can get from scanty reading, the Bellagio fountain loses about 2-5AF per month. Not sure on this. More numbers would help. Anyway, a hotel that houses 3000 people and a casino that packs a similar number in, in addition to their kitchen, showers, baths, sinks, and toilets, is consuming maybe 60 households' worth of water a year from a fountain.