The water Bump used to make Revival came from the northwestern edge of Los Angeles, where the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District recently opened a small demo facility as a showcase for the public to learn about potable reuse. Las Virgenes depends entirely on water from the California State Water Project, a 700-mile system of canals, dams and pumps that transports fresh water from the northern part of the state. After that water passes through toilets and drains in the district, it goes to a traditional waste treatment plant; from there, it’s either discharged into a local creek (and eventually into the Pacific Ocean) or sent through specially designated purple pipes to irrigate parks and golf courses. Three years ago, Las Virgenes began piping a small fraction of the plant’s outflow — about 1 million gallons a day — into the demo facility, where it is put through the additional steps of ultrafiltration (UF), reverse osmosis (RO) and an ultraviolet-advanced oxidation process (UV AOP) to be brought up to state’s standards for recycled drinking water. Each step in this alphabet soup of water tech removes increasingly small contaminants, from bacteria to viruses to salts and hormones.