Reclaimed Water

Reclaimed water is normally the largest and most predictable contribution of water to the Wash. As population increases in Southern Nevada so does the demand for water to homes and businesses. You don't need to have lived in Las Vegas for very long to see the changes to our city as homes and buildings are built to accommodate our new neighbors. The water that we use every day in our homes and businesses makes its way down the network of underground pipes to one of three water reclamation facilities: the Clark County Water Reclamation District, the City of Las Vegas Water Pollution Control Facility or the City of Henderson Water Reclamation Facility. At this point, the water is cleaned by a variety of methods to meet federal and state water quality regulations, and is then reused for irrigation, or is discharged into the Wash.

So you can now see how as our population grows, so do the flows that enter the Wash. But this is not a new situation, the Clark County Water Reclamation District and the City of Las Vegas began discharging water into the Wash in the mid 1950's and as the population grew, the City of Henderson built a treatment facility and began discharging water into the Wash in 1994. The chart below shows the contribution of water from the three treatment facilities in the Wash to million gallons per day (mgd).

CCWRD Channel October 2000