Advocacy group gets donations on World Water Day

After St. Patrick's Day and still in the throes of March Madness, World Water Day might have slipped right under the Las Vegas radar. Instead, it turned into a $2.3 million pledge.

Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, said Thursday that Cirque would donate a week's worth of revenue from five of its Las Vegas shows, about $1.3 million, to the One Drop advocacy group for water issues that he founded in 2007.

And MGM Resorts International decided to "up the ante a little bit," in the words of company Chairman and CEO Jim Murren, by pledging an additional $1 million over the next five years.

One Drop finances the technology to improve access to water and management and loans money to water programs in developing countries.

The announcement came on the same day that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a new U.S. Water Partnership and described as "sobering" a report on water security by the National Intelligence Council.

The report said that beyond the next 10 years, the use of water as political leverage, a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

Laliberte, the Canadian head of the Montreal-based Cirque, said he wants One Drop to follow the apolitical lead of Cirque. "There are a lot of political issues related to water, but we're not activists," Laliberte said after making the announcement.

"The technology is all there," he said of clean-water initiatives. "What it needs is commitment, global concern and global cooperation."

"It's the right thing to do," Murren said of MGM's contribution, joining Laliberte in a news conference in the Bellagio lobby for "O," Cirque's water-themed spectacle. "For too long, we as a community have held a somewhat hostile, maybe even belligerent attitude to the fact that we live in the desert."

Murren cited CityCenter, "the largest green project in the world," as an example of the company's commitment to sustainability.

Four of the titles donating a week's worth of revenue to One Drop are at MGM hotels; a fifth, "Mystere," is at Treasure Island, where owner Phil Ruffin has pledged a separate, unspecified donation.

The brief news conference might not have lived up to Las Vegas party standards, but Laliberte hinted that could change next year.

"Our intention is to make this week blue from the first step of the Strip to the end," he said.

The next World Water Day also will be marked by a gala featuring special material created by Cirque artists. "We reinvent(ed) circus, and in Vegas we would like to reinvent fundraising night."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.