A Tall, Cool Drink of ... Sewage?

[groovedaddy]

Before I left New York for California, where I planned to visit a water-recycling plant, I mopped my kitchen floor. Afterward, I emptied the bucket of dirty water into the toilet and watched as the foamy mess swirled away. This was one of life’s more mundane moments, to be sure. But with water infrastructure on my mind, I took an extra moment to contemplate my water’s journey through city pipes to the wastewater-treatment plant, which separates solids and dumps the disinfected liquids into the ocean.

A day after mopping, I gazed balefully at my hotel toilet in Santa Ana, Calif., and contemplated an entirely new cycle. When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The “new” water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap.

Opened in January, the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System is the largest of its type in the world. It cost $480 million to build, will cost $29 million a year to run and took more than a decade to get off the ground. The stumbling block was psychological, not architectural. An aversion to feces is nearly universal, and as critics of the process are keen to point out, getting sewage out of drinking water was one of the most important public health advances of the last 150 years.

Still, Orange County forged ahead. It didn’t appear to have a choice. Saltwater from the Pacific Ocean was entering the county’s water supply, drawn in by overpumping from the groundwater basin, says Ron Wildermuth, who at the time we talked was the water district’s spokesman. Moreover, population growth meant more wastewater, which meant building a second sewage pipe, five miles into the Pacific — a $200 million proposition. Recycling the effluent solved the disposal problem and the saltwater problem in one fell swoop. A portion of the plant’s filtered output is now injected into the ground near the coast, to act as a pressurized barrier against saltwater from the ocean. Factor in Southern California’s near chronic drought, the county’s projected growth (another 300,000 to 500,000 thirsty people by 2020) and the rising cost of importing water from the Colorado River and from Northern California (the county pays $530 per acre-foot of imported water, versus $520 per acre-foot of reclaimed water), and rebranding sewage as a valuable resource became a no-brainer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10wastewater-t.html?th&emc=th

[Warpy]

1. Creatures have been turning water into sewage

for at least the past 542,000,000 years. The planet has been recycling it into fresh water for that long. Sewage treatment plants just hurry the process along a little, but every drop of water on the planet was once contaminated by something's shit.

As for that mop water, why not dump it on plants outdoors? Grey water, the water from cleaning, is perfectly fine for outdoor use. The plants can use what we deplore, the grey scuzz that is lifted off our clothing, dishes and floors and mixed with soap. They thrive on it.

Just send the black water, the stuff from the toilet, down to the sewage treatment plant. The bacteria in the settling ponds like that much better than they like scuzz and soapsuds.

[groovedaddy]

4. I love your J.K. Galbraith quote! n.t

[Buzz Clik]

2. People like being ignorant of the processes that keep them alive.

Treated sewage is dumped into rivers across the planet, and that water may travel only 25 miles before being piped into the drinking water system of some other municipality. When the squeamish hear of this, they insist that their city use ground water. So, they install wells a few hundred yards away from the river, and tap into the aquifer closest to the surface -- that would be the alluvial aquifer which is directly fed by the river. They're drink river water anyway, but they don't know it, so they're happy happy. Or they pay $1 a bottle for water they buy from the store which is no cleaner. But they don't know that, either.

[CrispyQ]

5. I've always thought a required grade school field trip should be to a local water

treatment facility. We should know what the impact of our daily lives has on Earth & the other creatures we share our planet with. Hell, I would find a field trip like that educational & fascinating at my age!

I don't have children -- do they even allow field trips anymore or is it too much of a liability issue?

[kestrel91316]

3. Los Angeles is planning to meet its increasing water needs in the coming decades in large part

by recycling wastewater. As someone who has formally studied the wastewater treatment process in far greater detail than most of you could ever imagine (all those fascinating bacteria and their oxidation/reduction processes, lol), I am COMPLETELY on board with the plan.

Oh, yeah, and what Warpy said.

[depakid]

7. Cionsidering some of the things that fall (or wash) into the California aquaduct

Not to mention what's leached into wells in various parts of the states, I agree.

Missing scribe's SUV found; remains inside

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117478285.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

[kestrel91316]

8. After the aqueduct water travels to the reservoirs here and the bodies settle out,

they treat it so heavily with flocculants and chlorine and whatever the hell the stuff is that makes it smell like garlic when it rains, that I have to run it throu a Brita filter to be able to drink it. It tastes like pool water to me.

And if there are some residual molecules off the dead guys, I figure it's all nutritious anyway.

[XemaSab]

6. Water?

Fish f*** in that stuff! x(

[NNadir]

9. It is way cheaper and way cleaner than desalination.

In fact, most of the river water in the United States gets used many, many, many times before (and if) it gets to the sea.