EMERGENT WETLAND
Cattails, river bulrush, American threesquare: offers the highest value to wildlife, cleans and retains water.

COMMON REED
A monoculture plant which helps retain and clean water in the wash. Less valuable for habitat.

RIPARIAN
Streamside plants such as Goodding willow, cottonwood and mesquite. Offers wildlife habitat.

UPLAND
Mohave Desert scrub: creosote bush, four-wing saltbush, desert holly and shadscale. Little support to wildlife.

TAMARISK
This monoculture (single species) plant wastes untold gallons of water through evaporation and does not help purify the water flowing through the Wash or provide diverse wildlife habitat.

STRAND
In the sparsely vegetated eastern part of the park, strand communities contain jimsonweed, big saltbush, Fremont cottonwood, Goodding willow, Russian thistle and cocklebur. Offers little support to wildlife.

PLANTS:
ABSORB TOXINS, 
REMOVE BACTERIA
Our pollution is nutrition for plants. Reed and cattail absorb nitrogen, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and heavy metal salts, toxic to humans. Clean water flows out of the marsh and back into our water supply. Water teemi ng with bacteria as it enters the marsh is cleaned to zero bacteria by the time it leaves. Many viruses are eliminated. The wetlands efficiently and thoroughly decontaminate runoff. Cattail are a key to the beneficial processes of the marsh, but only a few small stands of cattail now grow in the marsh. When the erosion control system, with dams and ponds, is complete, the cattail can come back in one season.

PLANTS:
SLOW WATER SPEED
and FORM A DENSITY CORRIDOR 
When tons of wastewater flow into the dense acres of reed and cattail the water movement slows to less than two feet per second. At that rate the water drops its sediment before it arrives at Lake Mead. Marsh plants distribute the valley's water runoff evenly over a wide course, preventing erosion. Slow moving, shallow water has no chance to become an eroding force. Even floodwaters are no match for the stopping power of the marsh. Water cools as it slowly flows for miles in the shade of reed and cattail. The cooler water molecules are closer together, making the water denser and heavier than the warmer surface water of Lake Mead. Wash water flows to the cool bottom layer of the lake, taking residual pollution with it, away from the Water District intake pipeline in the center layer.