No one wants to see brown water coming out of their tap. But getting your water to come out crystal clear requires sending it on a circuitous route that requires a tour guide to navigate.

That guide is Vee Miller, Manager of Treatment Operations at the Los Angeles Aqueduct Filtration Plant in Sylmar.

“I think a lot of people don’t see what we do,” he says as we set out on a tour.

Water flows into this plant from a number of locations, including the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains hundreds of miles away. Along the way it collects, dirt, leaves, even a duck or two.

“Not exactly what you want to drink,” says Miller.

All of that will have to come out before the water goes into the plant. And they put things in as well, like fluorosilicic acid to help prevent tooth decay.

Another ingredient is ozone – which helps tiny dirt particles clump together, making them easier to filter out. Miller directs our camera to look inside a window to see a myriad of tiny bubbles.

“In water treatment, much as in champagne,” he says, “high quality is in terms of small bubbles.”

Those bubbles clean the water and help improve its taste.

It’s a really big plant and hidden way underneath is the most unlikely of security systems.

“Essentially we have some goldfish,” he explains.  Not what you expected, right?

If something is wrong with the water, the fish will instinctively swim away from it, through a hole, which lets workers know they have a problem.  

Eventually, all of the treated water gets filtered through six feet of anthracite coal and a few inches of gravel, which help trap those bigger clumps of dirt and germs. And since the plant can process up to 650 million gallons a day, at least once a day, those filters have to get cleaned. And what comes out looks like a latte.

“And that’s what didn’t make it into your drinking water,’ Miller points out.

Let’s be honest, clean drinking water is probably something you take for granted. And that’s just how Miller likes it.

“If nobody is thinking about their water and the water quality, I’m thinking I’ve done my job.”