In his most brutal job yet, Review-Journal reporter works in a water reclamation unit

Watch the Video Corey experiences waste treatment MP4 | MOV | AVI     click on the photos to enlarge them... Clark County Water Reclamation worker Advergus "Slick" Taylor displays what is euphemistically called "sludge" or "organic material." Photos by Ronda Churchill Reporter Corey Levitan evens out piles of debris filtered out from the raw sewage — including used condoms, sanitary napkins and diapers — in the bed of a landfill-bound truck. Levitan changes a cloth filter through which raw sewage passes. Taylor (right) gives Levitan a ride to the solids-handling area.

So you think your career's in the toilet? I'm working at the main treatment plant for the Clark County Water Reclamation District, changing a giant cloth filter through which raw sewage passes, leaving solid matter behind. If you live in one of the unincorporated areas of Clark County, which include the Strip, this plant near Flamingo Road and U.S. 95 is where every flush ends up.

Wait. I haven't even gotten to the gross part. A small chunk of what my co-workers euphemistically call "organic material" has flecked off the top of the filter and landed in my unguarded mouth.

"Tastes like chicken, huh?" asks operations supervisor Advergus "Slick" Taylor, 36.

I've taken (expletive) at work before, but never like this.

An average of 95 million gallons of effluent — another of the water reclamation district's many understandable euphemisms — arrives at this plant every weekday. It's squeezed through several layers of filtration, then introduced to ultraviolet light and soil bacteria that enjoy eating organic material substantially more than I do.

What results is a) nearly drinkable water that's piped seven miles downhill to Lake Mead, where it's further cleaned before returning to your faucet, toilet or shower, and b) a big, steaming pile no one likes to think about.

On weekends, tourism increases the effluent flow to 130 million gallons per day. (New slogan: What gets flushed in Vegas stays in Vegas.) And as many as 150 million gallons arrive on what can rightly be called Super Toilet Bowl Sunday.

Fortunately for sewer workers, they're no longer waist-deep in waste, like Ed Norton from "The Honeymooners." Everything's automated these days, and there's no wading unless a pipe bursts. But there are equally revolting equipment-maintenance tasks to perform.

My day begins in the bowels — a metaphor that is rarely stretched this little — of the 160-acre plant, directly under the first treatment process. The bar screen is a wall-size grate separating out solids bigger than half an inch wide. These include used tampons, condoms, diapers and other stuff your mother taught you better than to flush. (Wedding rings are too heavy to make it this far, in case you were wondering. Oh, and toilet paper really does dissolve — even Charmin Ultra.)

Words cannot adequately describe the smell in the room where bar-screened solids fall from chutes onto the beds of landfill-bound vehicles. Suffice to say that passed gas would serve as air freshener.

"Smell?" Taylor asks. "What smell?"

I'm told that odors no longer escape this or any other area of the plant, however. Pipes up top marked "foul air" pump them out for separate treatment (perhaps to a room with a giant match). However, local Realtors are still fond of telling prospective Stallion Mountain buyers that the block-long building just over their backyard fence is only a water reclamation "office."

As I rake the mountainous piles of gag-inducing debris, ensuring that the truck beds fill evenly, I joke about spotting a human head.

It's no joke, it turns out. Every few years, an aborted fetus must be fished out of one of the piles. Taylor found one during his first year at the plant, as a 14-year-old summer hire in 1984.

"I don't really want to talk about that," he says.

(And that works out, because you don't really want to read about it.)

Taylor has a respectable answer to an obvious question: Why would anyone in his right mind want this as a job?

"It makes me feel good because I'm doing my part in helping the environment," he says. "A lot of people don't understand how important what we do every day is."

Via chauffeured golf cart, my VIP tour of Doody-land departs Tampax Mountain. I ask about our next destination, something called solids-handling, and receive only sinister giggling in response. Operator trainees like me, who would normally earn $17 an hour to start, are made to work in every area of the plant before their probation ends.

"If they can't do all the tasks that are necessary — maybe the smell gets to them too bad and they lose their cookies every time they get into a certain area — then it's not a job for them," says compliance and regulatory affairs administrator Bill Shepherd.

Solids-handling is where fecal particulate goes after settling out of wastewater for about an hour in holding tanks. Here, it's pumped through a battery of giant cloth filters, which isolate the "sludge cake" so it, too, can be carted off to a landfill.

"Welcome to the bakery," Taylor jokes. "You ready to make some cake?"

The smell in here is not only more rank, if that's possible, it's amplified by a temperature exceeding 110 degrees.

"You should have been here before I put the air conditioner on," says senior officer John Edenburn.

I wish the temperature were only 110 degrees inside my yellow Hazmat suit. It's made of a nonporous DuPont fabric called Tychem. No worker wears this suit in this heat. But when the choice to expose my body to air also meant exposing it to Indian food digested three weeks ago, my choice was clear.

The 450 press cloths must be changed either every year, or as they rip, like the one saved for me. Why prisoners aren't offered this work in exchange for five years off their sentences, I have no idea.

I step up to the platform, making a vinyl swishing noise like John Travolta's character in "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble." Following instructions, I prepare to change this diaper for a million babies. I clip the plastic fasteners off the sides and bottom.

But I find it hard reaching the top of a 7-foot-tall cloth caked with stool, even with the aid of a stool.

"Close your eyes!" Edenburn shouts as I lift the cloth off its frame while standing on my tippy-toes.

It cannot be overstated how badly I wish Edenburn had added "and mouth" to the end of his warning. If you haven't guessed yet, this is the point at which I taste my first hot sludge sundae.

Even the guy on the Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" never had this happen.

I immediately consult my doctor, Jay Kohn of Sparks Family Medicine. (And when I say immediately, I mean after scouring my mouth and entire body like a rusty pot in the on-site shower.)

Dr. Kohn tells me that E. coli infection is a real possibility.

"And if you ingest someone's stool who has hepatitis A," he says, "then you will probably get hepatitis A."

Out of all the times I've gotten in trouble for opening my mouth, this takes the (sludge) cake.

"You're asking me theoretically, right?" my doctor adds.

"I mean, you didn't actually do this?"

Fear and Loafing appears every Monday in the Living section. Levitan's previous adventures can be found at www.fearandloafing.com.