LAS VEGAS — 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.

Saying it’s the first on the Las Vegas Strip to do so, the Bellagio will pilot a hybrid cooling system in one of its towers, using both evaporative and dry technologies, to save an estimated 18 million gallons of water per year. That’s enough water to last about 110 single-family households an entire year.

The new tower, one of several that cool the resort, began operating in February.

Evaporative cooling highest ‘consumptive use’ for resorts

Inefficient water coolers are the top of MGM’s list for “consumptive” uses of water, meaning water that is not recycled, Gulich said.

What makes it hybrid is the combination of both dry and wet cooling technology. When the load demand is lower in cooler months, the tower will only use a dry method that cools the system without using water. In peak demand months, such as the summer, some evaporative cooling will still be used, making it hybrid.

As previous Las Vegas Review-Journal reporting has shown, resorts remain among the highest water users in the region. But the sector rapidly adapted to the valley’s needs by leaning into water reuse and whittling down other consumptive uses.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which paid for some of the costs associated with MGM’s project, has had in place a ban on new constructions with evaporative cooling systems since last year. A similar ordinance prohibits any new water features, such as fountains, from gracing the Las Vegas Strip.

The other two big consumptive water uses at MGM properties are irrigation for landscaping and water features, Gulich said.

That notably doesn’t include the famous Bellagio Fountains: they are not tapped into the Colorado River system, instead exclusively pulling water from underground wells.

‘We hope not to be the last’

While the new hybrid coolers do require more energy and physical space to operate, the water benefits make it worth exploring, Gulich said. The size constraints of the Strip are a roadblock for other properties to consider the technology.

Still, Gulich said he finds there’s room for innovation as water becomes scarcer throughout the Colorado River Basin.

“There’s some risk being the first,” Gulich said. “We hope not to be the last, and work with the Southern Nevada Water Authority to share what we can and to catalyze other large commercial operations who have cooling towers to evaluate and maybe make the shift to hybrid cooling.”

Michael Bernardo, the water authority’s enterprise conservation manager, praised the project as a boon to the agency’s progressive conservation goals in a statement.

“This type of investment in hybrid cooling technology is critical to the long-term sustainability of our community,” Bernardo said. “MGM is helping lead the way.”

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