Making Water

By Rachel Zollinger

Albuquerque

August 30, 2016

Scott Salvas, chief engineer of surface water, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, says (in passing), “I make water.” How strange to think about, making water. As if our planet’s closed hydrologic system is something from which we can add or subtract. We followed the path of the 84 million gallons a day that pass from the river through the treatment plant, from diversion, to coagulation and flocculation, to ozonation, to carbon filtration, and out to the city. We drank from the water fountain in the lobby of the treatment plant. It tasted fresh and clear, hardly resembling the muddy, turbid river we watched a couple hours before. I suppose water can be made.