It’s kind of a comfortably received academic truism that, yeah, yeah, we Las Vegans drink, cook with and bathe in recycled water. You know it, I know it, sure, but do we really know it? I mean, have you really considered the industrial circle-of-life stuff going on with our water, from flush to tap to flush again? I kind of think that learning and appreciating, up close and personal, how we alchemize wastewater into drinking water should be on the Vegas citizenship checklist right up there with playing live craps, seeing Mystere and eating pancakes for dinner at 3 a.m. (And knowing what “battle-born” means, and watching the Fremont Street Experience light show on a three-beer buzz, and seeing the valley from Turtlehead Peak ... but I digress.)
The Clark County Water Reclamation District held an open house Nov. 14, hosting public tours of its water recycling plant, a sprawl of hulking pipes, pumps and buildings just east of Sam’s Town that does a rinse-and-repeat on about 100 million gallons of water a day. After running a gantlet of info-booths and “Don’t Be a Pain in the Drain” tchotchke tables, we hopped on a shuttle for an hourlong tour, which had frequent walking stops to check out the equipment up close.
Sure, an hour gets you but a thumbnail sketch of a complex mechanical, chemical and even biological process, but again, even if you know about recycling water, you don’t know until you’ve seen a gigantic mottled mech claw screen threshing out the eww-gross solids from raw sewage, or a collection of eerily beautiful clarifying ponds dotted with placid floating ducks, or the velvety rippling murk of a bacteria-munching microbe pool, or streams churning through UV light banks glowing the spectral green of an evil wizard’s fireballs as it gives the water a final disinfecting scrub.
More than that, though, the tour gives you a glimpse into a beneficial mass civil technology — an industrial enterprise that protects public health and the environment and that, you know, makes it possible to live in a desert where, fortunately, there’s no drought of human ingenuity. My verdict: I heartily raise my glass!
The Clark County Water Reclamation District regularly offers tours to schools and civic groups. Info: 702-668-8888.