Quote of the Day: Elizabeth Royte on Drinking Sewage
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08.11.08
If you are a fan of Elizabeth Royte's writing, you will want to drink up her story in the New York Times magazine about her visit to the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System, where they take sewage, clean it and pump it back into the ground to top up the water supply.
"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." ::New York Times
More on Elizabeth Royte in TreeHugger:
Book Review: Bottlemania
Garbage Land- a Review
TreeHugger on Toilet to Tap
Recycling Water for Drinking
Care for a Drink... of Toilet Water?
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I can't understand why more communities don't do this.
I'm not opposed to this. I think it's great actually. I wonder if they could even gather all the waste they collect through the filtration process and recycle that into compost or biogas energy generation or whatever.
It seems like a pretty high tech operation and the article also notes that the water filters through the ground for 6 months before ever reaching your sink.
It's not like we were storing our waste in Yucca Mountain before... although one could also say that one of the positives with this system is that there's less chance that you're drinking decomposing people!
Stradric,
I work at a waste water treatment plant in one of the 20 largest US cities. We composte the sludge, and use some of the methane captured for heating buildings and water. Unfortunately we are currently flaring off the rest of the gas, but there is supposidly work under way to capture the rest. I haven't heard yet what they will be doing with it. As I stated early I don't understand why the water is just sent downstream. I haven't been working here terribly long, so maybe I will be able to find a better answer for that soon.
This approach works for the whole of the UK and most of Europe; why on earth shouldn't it work for the US?
In Singapore, there is brand named NEWWater, whose products are produced from reclaimed water. 3 factories on the island produces 20 million US gallons per day, %6 is used for indirect potable use (contributes %1 of total water consumption in Singapore) and the rest goes to industries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater
That is a good quote but this cycle is nothing new, in London the water coming out your tap has most likely been through a few others before and until we stop daefecating in our drinking water our drinking water will not stop coming from sewage. A lot of plants use anaerobic digesters to power the more energy intensive cells of the wastewater treatment process but it s normally not enough to be neutral or even give back to the grid.
This seems awfully energy intensive.
Shouldn't we be focusing on just not using water for waste removal? There's some pretty simple technology for that. Composting toilets and vacuum toilets are both viable options.
I live in Orange County and have been drinking tap water since I moved here. I'm not dead yet so I don't understand why they don't do this in more places... especially those that have drought problems.