After reading this; you’ll feel like the bad dog.
Ok, hear me out. You flush your toilet, the waste makes it its way to a sewage-treatment plant. The water is super filtered until it is cleaner than rainwater. The “new” water is pumped into a lake, percolates down into the earth and local utilities pump that water and put it into our homes for reuse. The technical term for this is indirect potable reuse.
But if your still disgusted then I guess you can call it toilet water.
Well this is the case in Santa Ana, California. They opened the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System in January of this year. It cost $480 million to build, and it will cost $29 million a year to maintain it. The biggest obstacle for this project wasn’t how it’s going to be built, but it was how is anyone going to support this.
If your against this whole idea, then I guess your going to feel bad for the residents of Orange County because this was their only option. Saltwater was entering the county’s water supply because of overpumping from the groundwater basin. So after some amazing marketing techniques and a lot of pizza and ice cream, the citizens of Orange County are now drinking purified waste.
With the demand for water growing, snow packs thinning and the climate changing what will we do about our water supplies?
These plants are geared to purify the water to be as good as new. Just to give a brief overview of what the water goes through when it is being treated at a plant like the one in Orange County. The water is gathered into a large tub, where it seeps through layers of gravel and sand which are natural filters. It is then treated with chemicals, it passes through fibers as thick as dental floss, ran under a UV light to kill more bacteria. They really go to town on treating every drop of water.
Even after all this, there are still doubts. The water that is entering the plant is 100 percent wastewater and is given a T.D.S which stands for total dissolved solids. Now you could imagine that it isn’t good when it is waste water. But after microfiltration and reverse osmosis, the T.D.S is down to 30. On average Poland Spring water has a T.D.S of between 35 and 46. Raw untreated water has a T.D.S of 600. So which do you think is better?
Just because the water cycle starts from the toilet doesn’t mean the water can’t be used again. This water comes out purer than bottled water and people still are hesitant to drink it. When you think about it all water on earth is recycled. It falls on all the trees and drips from the fur of animals. Microfiltration can be a valuable resource for everyone in the long run.
What about in New York? The city won’t be the same in 20 years. This idea doesn’t sound too farfetch’d. If people started drinking wastewater think of the changes that will come of it. Cleaners will be biodegradeable, industry might start to use nontoxic material. Farms will stop using harmful antibiotics.
Just because a sophisticated water system like this could be in place doesn’t get polluters off the hook. There could be real changes here.
Would you drink water that came from your toilet? Think about it next time you flush.
-Desfargeg
2 Comments
May 21, 2009 at 11:37 am
Really nice article you have here. I will drink any water as long as it taste right. By taste I mean like nothing; if it taste like something than it’s bad. I hate when people wont drink filtered water only bottled water. Who knows what the hell was put into that bottle?
May 21, 2009 at 1:00 pm
This is an interesting article and the information given here is slightly uneasy to digest. Nevertheless, it’s true about the rain when you actually think about it – what’s in the lakes and etc. If the water is truly ok to have within our system then drinking it should be no problem and if it’s the only thing left for a community to resort to then all I can say is “bottoms up!”