MGM Resorts International spokeswoman Yvette Monet describes the operating cost of the $40 million water feature as "priceless," noting that "maintenance is performed cost-effectively by internal engineers and divers." In case you read in Bloomberg News that the water in the fountains is recycled, you were fed incorrect information. "The water is from a private well that used to serve The Dunes golf course at that location," watering the greens, Monet reports. (Bet you didn’t know Bellagio had its own well.) Monet’s boss, Alan Feldman, adds that the amount of water in the Bellagio only represents a fraction of the wellspring. "In fact," he notes, "In fact, the fountain feature water uses only a small amount each year that is lost to evaporation." Furthermore, according to MGM, less water is used by the fountains than was previously required to water the golf course. So what looks like conspicuous consumption is actually thrifty use of H2O, at least relatively speaking.
While the evasive official response leaves us as in-the-dark as ever with regard to the actual figure for operating them, we can reveal from our own research that the fountains employ a team of no less than 30 specialists, including engineers, pool experts, and maintenance divers. Presumably not all of them work full-time, but that’s still a workforce larger than that of many small companies, and a highly skilled one at that, so we figure payroll must be not insignificant.
As to the power bill, your guess remains as good as ours, although some technological innovations that are employed by this exhibit help to keep down the tab for whatever the upkeep and operations so cost. Bellagio's lake-in-the-desert attraction uses 135 miles of wires and cables, 4,500 lights, and 1,200 nozzles, some of which can fire water 460 feet into the air. When all the hydraulic special effects are doing their thing to the max, the water level in the eight-acre fountain drops by a whole quarter inch! We don’t want to get too technical, but many of the individual fountains that make up Bellagio's dancing display rely more on compressed air than water pumps to shoot water, which saves energy, and hence money, and also helped cut down both on installation costs and on hardware space.
While we still can’t tell you what the operating costs are for this installation, we can share the good news that, for a mere $250,000, you can get to open the magic golden box and press the red button that will have the fountains dancing to your beats (as long as they’re on the official play list, obviously), a spectacle which you'll get to enjoy from the best seats in the house at Hyde nightclub (which overlooks the lake in the spot that used to house Fortuna Lounge), while sipping on your 30-liter bottle of Midas Ace of Spades champagne (that's the equivalent of 40 regular bottles, so you might want to invite a few friends along to join you in this experience).
