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New Water-Filling Station At Lake Mead National Recreation Area Helps Cut Disposable Plastic Water Bottle Use

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Jacob Vanlue, 17, from O'Fallon, Missouri, fills his water bottle at the water refilling station at the Alan Bible Visitor Center at Lake Mead National Recreation Area. NPS photo.

Editor's note: Due to concerns from the Haws Corporation, which has trademarked the phrase "Hydration Station," this story has been edited to remove those two words as they appear back to back.

A new water-filling station at the main visitor center for Lake Mead National Recreation Area has been in service for six months, and in addition to reducing the use of disposable plastic water bottles, use of the filtered water is proving popular with visitors. Since it's installation, the station has been used to fill 13,600 water bottles.

You'd expect to find a drinking fountain at any park visitor center'”especially one in the desert'”and this filling station does that job nicely, plus a little more. It works just like a standard drinking fountain but also has a shelf for easy filling of water bottles. A sensor initiates the water fill, and every time a bottle is filled, that action is automatically counted and displayed on the station.

'œWord is getting around that this is the place to stop and refill your water bottle, which with the heat and everything else, that'™s a really good message to have,' said Michelle Riter, a Lake Mead NRA district interpreter.

Riter said installation of the water-filling station at the Alan Bible Visitor Center is part of the Lake Mead NRA'™s Climate Friendly Parks action plan to cut down on plastic water bottle waste. This plan includes initiatives to increase visitor use of refillable water bottles, increase number of filling stations in the park and collaborate with the visitor center store to sell less expensive refillable water bottles.

Once the water-refilling station was installed, Riter said they stopped selling bottled water at the visitor center store and began selling more varieties of refillable water bottles. She said the least expensive water bottle is only $2.99 and has the Lake Mead NRA logo on it along with facts about the park.

The Vanlue family, from O'™Fallon, Mo., visited the store in early August, purchased a refillable water bottle and filled it at the station. After Jacob, 17, filled up his bottle, his mom, Barbara, said she was thankful for the station and the reduction of plastic water bottle waste in landfills.

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A counter automatically records how many times the water bottle portion of the station has been used. NPS photo.

It'™s not just popular with families and individual visitors. Gabriel Kelsey-Yoder, Western National Parks Association (WNPA) bookstore manager, said large tour groups often stop by the visitor center and have been receptive to purchasing and using the refillable water bottles. She said she has seen campground users come to refill their water bottles at the refilling station as well because they prefer the cold, filtered water.

Park visitors, especially local hikers and bicyclists who use the trails, have been spreading the news about the new refilling station by word of mouth and through social media, Riter added. They are excited to see how many water bottles have been refilled and want refilling stations to be installed in other areas of the park.

Funding for the refilling station was provided by the WNPA. The Alan Bible Visitor Center is located just of US 93 between Boulder City, Nevada, and Hoover Dam.

 

Comments

Ec, re insurance rates and seat belt usage, rates for those ticketed for not wearing a seat belt could see their rates go up:

But that is totally different from Lee's fabricated claim that insurance rates are "much higher" in states without seatbelt laws - which was demonstrably false.

PS - Welcome back - looks like you had a great trip.


I was going with what my insurance agent had told me. So I called her to clarify. Insurance rates are higher in states -- like Utah -- where failure to wear a safety belt is a "secondary offense." That means an officer may write a ticket only if he has stopped the vehicle for some other violation. Insurance companies also look at enforcement rates in a state. Those that aggressively enforce enjoy lower rates. Safety belt use in only one of many factors involved in setting rates. Other things include vehicle safety inspections, volume of traffic, accident rates and so on. Rates may vary not only from state to state but from city to city within a state.

Apparently, if Utah were to change safety belt violations to a "primary offense," our rates would drop by 10% - 15%. Pretty significant, I'd say. The same sorts of things apply to motorcycle helmet laws, texting and using cell phones while driving, and other activities on our highways that cause larger payouts by insurance companies.

So, "fabricated" or not, I'll stand by the fact that we all pay for the slothfulness of others.


Contrary to your experience, the town recycling is not taken to the dump - hence the handfill savings. Additionally, while the city has provided the recycling cans, recycling is completely voluntary; we do not have city workers going through our trash to ensure that we are recycling. While you have to pay more, I pay no additional charges and soon the town will be spending less to provide the same services. I'm very sorry that your town/city does not not know an economically sensible way to recycle. For you to assume that every other juridiction is as mindless as yours is a generalization that does not stand, whether you accept it or not. We actually have a very large recycling company here that turns a tidy profit for its shareholders. Yes, it is a commercial venture and yes, their stock is increasing in value.

You don't understand the changes that individuals can make in the world, or believe that they are possible. I feel sorry for you. It is possible to change the world, one person at a time, but you have to start somewhere, with some person.

Recycling doesn't make me feel better, it reminds me that I am not doing enough. For every 96 gallons of recycling material I generate, I also generate about 50 gallons of trash. My family is working to minimize that even further, but it isn't easy. One or two or a hundred people is a start.

This "thread" isn't about the choice of buying bottled water; you are still more than welcome to buy bottled water all you want, just not in this particular location. This "thread" is about reducing the use of disposable plastic water containers to reduce landfill mass and littering.


dahkota - thanks for the insights into the recycling program in your town.

ec - If, in your town, customers pay an extra fee for curbside pickup of items intended for recycling, only to have those item end up in the same landfill as unsorted garbage, there's an word it that: fraud. Sounds like more oversight is needed of that operation, along with some penalties for those responsible.


Thanks again, Dahkota, for yet another in a long line of very insightful and excellent comments.


We're in a small town surrounded by National Park and National Forest lands, 8 miles from Canada. A couple of items [glass and aluminum] are recycled by the town, with most other things going into our incinerator. Our house is heated by a woodstove, so many burnable trash items go there. In our town there is an active committee of both citizens and municipal employees working on increasing the in-town recycling. Operating the incinerator is not cheap, and it needs to be rebuilt every few years. Most of us load up plastic and cardboard and and other items, and add a stop at the recycling cener to our next shopping trip in a town 100 miles away in the Yukon - every month or two.

Everyone has their own motivation for what they chose to do. Personally, I don't care who makes the pennies off of my recyling. I just want to lower my impact on the environment.


Contrary to your experience, the town recycling is not taken to the dump - hence the handfill savings.

Then please explain to me why my trash company charges me more if I seperate my recycle materials than if I just put it in the trash can. Obviously the "recycle" cost must exceed the landfill savings. Perhaps your "municpality" is subsidizing that difference, but the reality is recycling doesn't save money. Nor does it have a material impact on overall energy usage.

And stopping sales of water bottles at Mead has even less impact.

every other juridiction is as mindless as yours

Mindless it is, but not in the way you envision. Our Mayor is an avowed socialist and most of the city council plays along. They just "leased" 3 acres of prime real estate to a fly by night solar company for 50 years for $10 so that company could sell subsidized solar power to local residents where it will take 20+ years for them to recover their investment under the best of scenarios. So far they haven't fooled enough residents so the town is buying the bulk of the power. Mindless is right.


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