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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFrom today's LA Times: Toilet to Tap.
It's a technology with the potential to ease California's colossal thirst and insulate millions from the parched whims of Mother Nature, experts say.But there's just one problem the "yuck factor."
As a fourth year of drought continues to drain aquifers and reservoirs, California water managers and environmentalists are urging adoption of a polarizing water recycling policy known as direct potable reuse.
Unlike nonpotable reuse in which treated sewage is used to irrigate crops, parks or golf courses direct potable reuse takes treated sewage effluent and purifies it so it can be used as drinking water.
It's a concept that might cause some consumers to wince, but it has been used for decades in Windhoek, Namibia where evaporation rates exceed annual rainfall and more recently in drought-stricken Texas cities, including Big Spring and Wichita Falls.
All of it at the link: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-toilet-to-tap-20150525-story.html#page=1
RichGirl
(4,119 posts)With so many people taking so many prescription drugs I'd be concerned about that. And of course the poop factor.
Major Nikon
(36,827 posts)Matariki
(18,775 posts)lame54
(35,293 posts)CaliforniaPeggy
(149,629 posts)The result is a purified substance that is cleaner than most bottled waters, according to WateReuse California, a group that advocates for water reuse and desalination. However, it is still sent to a traditional water treatment plant, where it is blended with other sources of water, processed and pumped to household taps.
In an indirect potable reuse system, the water is placed in an "environmental buffer," such as an underground aquifer or surface water reservoir, where it is stored for a period of time before getting processed in a traditional water treatment plant. It is this type of system that was defeated in Los Angeles.
Looks quite thorough to me.
packman
(16,296 posts)at one of these treatment sewage plants being offered a glass of purified water and the absolute horror in his eyes. He was touting the Clean Water Act and touring the plant when the manager opened a tap at the end of the line and presented it to him. One of those, "Oh, shit" moments.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,629 posts)Lionel Mandrake
(4,076 posts)the same way I felt in 1968 and 1972 about Nixon as President.
petronius
(26,602 posts)have an unsavory experience somewhere in their history - that glass of so-called orange juice this morning may have been dinosaur pee for all you know! It would be interesting to calculate the percentage of Earth's water that passes through a excretory system in any given year/decade/century/millennia...
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,629 posts)Ick factor notwithstanding.
MindPilot
(12,693 posts)The foes (being a foe of recycling water seems odd, but whatever) coined the term "toilet-to-tap" and it stuck. And it seems like the media, once again unable to explain simple science, falls back on emotional appeal.
Then lets build pipelines to dump it back in rivers and reservoirs or if that still has too much ick factor, build pipelines to irrigate with it.
hunter
(38,317 posts)... for anyone who has a well and a septic tank, or drinks water from a river downstream of any larger urban area.
In many ways being downstream of industrial agricultural "farms" is worse. Somebody is supposedly responsible for monitoring the discharge of sewage treatment plants, but industrial agriculture is often like "Who me? Shucks, I'm just a farmer!"
Even giant multi-billion dollar agricultural corporations with executives wearing $10,000 designer suits and flying around in private jets play that farmer card.
It's silly to consider desalinization of seawater any better, considering all the crap we've dumped in the ocean, and are still dumping in the ocean.
Hell, Los Angeles used to dump sewage they'd simply screened out the worst of the garbage they didn't want on their beaches directly into the ocean, including waste from chemical manufacturers. The poor brown pelicans almost went extinct from the waste of DDT manufacturers, and PCB got into everything including nursing mothers' milk.
Heck, Los Angeles sewage may have made me the man I am today, a lowest tier mutant superhero sidekick with some very peculiar and mostly useless talents.
The sewage from my house gets recycled as "good enough to drink, bathe, or swim in" agricultural water. Some of the food you eat may have been irrigated with sewage from my house.
It's actually one of those odd "conservation" things in my life. I don't feel too bad about water that runs down my drain because I know it won't be wasted.
We have these last few years let our backyard lawn die, and we replaced our front lawn with low & no water plants way back in the twentieth century.
Okay, I'll confess, I'm not sure how much of the back lawn abandonment was for noble environmental reasons, or the fact that we adopted a husky from the animal shelter who likes to dig, most especially in the grass.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)http://www.seattletimes.com/business/turning-poop-into-clean-water/
~snip~
Under a headline How to turn poop into drinking water, Bill Gates last week posted a video on his blog that showed him drinking a glass of the poop-borne water immediately drawing world attention to the latest brainchild from Peter Janicki of Sedro-Woolley.
Previously known for his groundbreaking innovation in aerospace and marine engineering, the ever-inventive Janicki now has set his sights on improving sanitation in undeveloped regions of the world, starting with Africa and India.
~snip~
Janicki said the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation poured multiple millions of dollars into his development of a new machine designed to produce clean water and electricity from raw sewage.
What Janicki calls the OmniProcessor looks like a small chemical plant about the size of two school buses. A conveyor belt feeds sewage sludge in one end and steam rises from gleaming steel pipes as the machine works its magic.
Janickis machine essentially powers itself.
Bill Gates Raises A Glass To (And Of) Water Made From Poop
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/10/376182321/bill-gates-raises-a-glass-to-and-of-water-made-from-poop
http://www.breakingskagit.com/uncategorized/press-release-proposed-use-northern-state-hospital-campus/