It is important to our survival, crucial to civil life and fundamental to living in modern society, but wastewater treatment is just not very sexy. The topic is, well, not a usual topic for polite company.

But wastewater treatment is the subject of a very high quality interactive graphic explanation in Getting it Clean: Recycling LA Wastewater. Produced last year by a graphic design company, Rusty Pony, the graphic explanation of the treatment of water in LA combines news text and graphics to explain the topic and process used.

During the 1990s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spent $55 million to build a water-recycling system that would introduce treated wastewater into the underground drinking water supply. Community concern and political pressure killed the project in 2000 just when it was about to begin operation. LA Mayor Antonio Villaragigosa wants the city to revive plans to supplement the drinking water supply with treated and recycled water.