Leaving the sink on for hours or forgetting to turn off the shower in a Bellagio hotel room doesn’t waste even a fraction of the water that the resort’s air-conditioning system does.
Every drop of water used indoors on the Strip heads to a wastewater plant in East Las Vegas, where it’s treated and sent back into Lake Mead, allowing Southern Nevada to use more water each year than its tiny share of the Colorado River.
That’s why casino executives are taking a harder look at so-called evaporative cooling systems, which use millions of gallons of water annually that cannot be repurposed for the community.
“MGM cooling towers are our biggest consumptive use, and it’s a tough challenge,” said Michael Gulich, MGM Resorts’ vice president of sustainability, in a Monday interview.
