Question of the Day - 20 March 2024

Well, some consideration by some penny-pinching accounting department in some casino might have been given to some decision to pull water fountains out of casinos. It's not hard to believe. But we think there are other reasons. 

First, drinking fountains used to be so ubiquitous that most people took them for granted. They first caught on in England in the mid-1800s and actually created a sensation; thousands of people lined up to drink from the first public fountain, installed in a church in London in 1859, and by 1880, 300,000 people were drinking from 800 fountains around the city every day. Fountains in Paris soon followed and some, designed by sculptor Charles-Auguste Lebourg, are still in use today.

They found their way to the U.S. in the 1870s. Soon, a factory supervisor, in order to combat dysentery in his workforce, invented the "bubbler" water fountain, which dispensed a stream of water in an arc, so drinkers' mouths didn't touch the faucet and come in contact with microbes from previous drinkers. We'll come back to that in a bit.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, public drinking fountains were so important that most municipalities passed ordinances requiring public buildings -- libraries, schools, banks, airports, hospitals, government offices, etc. -- to have them. 

Fast forward to the 1970s and the concerns with water pollution that gave rise to the bottled-water industry. This was the first step in the decline of water fountains; people started to become more comfortable carrying bottled water to remain hydrated than to rely on fountains. As the fountains got less and less use, they fell into disrepair and many were no longer reliable. Concurrently, hydration was seen more as a personal, not a public, responsibility, so fewer fountains were installed in new construction. 

And the ones that remained tended to be poorly maintained, so they were, well, not inviting at best and a source of bacterial and viral contamination at worst, with nasty microbes infesting both the bubblers and the push buttons. Vandalism also took its inevitable toll on public fountains, especially in high-traffic public buildings and outdoors in parks.

Enter COVID. The pandemic rang the death knell for many fountains in places like shopping malls, movie theaters, hotels, even fitness centers and spas, and yes, casinos. 

These days, though, the tide might be turning a bit back to fountains, though not the old-fashioned bubbler kinds. Due to the consciousness of single-use plastic overwhelming landfills (and winding up in oceans), refilling stations are becoming more and more popular, where you fill reusable water bottles, many with hands-free operation and antimicrobial plastic components.

Still, bubblers aren't going away anytime soon. In fact, Fontainebleau has both, two bubblers at different heights and a refilling station, on the way into the lobby from the self-parking garage. 

Whether or not other new casinos start adopting this technology, and existing ones reinstate them, remains to be seen. We wouldn't bet on it; again, they're not inexpensive to install and maintain, casinos make a nice profit on selling bottled water, and is anyone complaining? Probably not, if the number of questions we've received about them (exactly one in 20 years) is any indication.