LETTER: Grass in Las Vegas Valley parks is indeed ‘functional’

John Steffen Las Vegas September 4, 2026 - 9:00 pm In a City Cast podcast last April, John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, referring to turf removal in the Las Vegas Valley, stated “we haven’t gone after parks.” This statement is not true. Many thousands of square feet of turf has been and is slated to be removed from Las Vegas Valley parks as “non functional.” According to Mr. Entsminger’s statement in the same podcast, “We’ve taken out enough grass here in the Las Vegas Valley to lay an 18-inch wide piece of sod around the circumference of the globe at the equator and started our second lap … that’s a lot of grass.” Yes, it is. And thousands of our legacy trees are dead and dying because of it. As the cooling effects of all that turf and trees are gone