We recycle many things, from ordinary paper and plastic to batteries and ink cartridges, so why not recycle a scarce and necessary resource such as water?
This has been proposed to the citizens of San Diego and other major cities, but the source of the recycled water has the people feeling a bit queasy: sewage.
I've gotten the same disgusted, you've-got-to-be-kidding-me expression on the face of everyone I've mentioned this story to, but living in heavily-populated desert cities, alternative sources for water need to be discussed.
Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times ran an article describing the process of recycling wastewater to turn it into safe and clean drinking water. Looking at the process and reading about the quality of the drinking water, it seems that the water is perfectly fine, but people can't get over the idea that the water was once flushed down the toilet.
Even in the midst of a notable water shortage, San Diego's citizens aren't warming up to the idea of drinking water that was once sewage. The Colorado River and Northern California's San Joaquin Delta, the city's current sources of water, are drying up and being restricted to protect the ecosystem and wildlife, respectively.
The excessive use of water puts a great strain on freshwater sources especially during drought and harm wetland environments. The Associated Press recently reported that the United Nations Secretary General thinks that the issue of water shortages is important enough to be one of the top issues of the global agenda for the year, mentioning that the drought was a factor in causing the current conflict in Darfur.
Of course, the best way to help preserve our water resources is to use less water in general. Let the lawn get brown and crispy in the summer, shave off five minutes from your showers and turn off the water while brushing your teeth could be a good start. However, having more ways to renew water sources instead of just preserving them is also important.
A less objectionable source of producing fresh drinking water is desalination, the process of purifying ocean water. If you think a little more about the state of the ocean, it's one big toilet for all the animals living there, and even we dump untreated sewage into the ocean.
The process of desalination is also more expensive than recycling wastewater. According to Orange County water officials, the cost of one acre-foot of water (which is around 325,000 gallons) of desalinated water is from $800 to $2000 and recycled wastewater is only $525.
Tap water everywhere also contains different contaminants, regardless of where it comes from. Recently in Paradise Valley, drinking water was contaminated with higher than acceptable levels of the cancer-causing chemical TCE.
We do use recycled water for non drinking needs such as irrigation and watering golf courses in Arizona, but even with our smelly, nasty tap water, we don't want to consider drinking recycled water either.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been researching the quality of recycled water in cities such as Denver and San Diego and found that recycled water is often cleaner than other drinking water.
It's hard to believe that sewage could become clean enough to drink again, but science has made it possible, and sometime in the future I think we're going to have to accept it. Even with its technical purity, a stigma is still attached to getting water from a previous bathroom break.
I'm sure at one point all water has been considered "waste" and was filtered through the ground or purified some other way by the earth and transported back to a freshwater source. So, even if it makes you want to gag, just think about recycling water as speeding up that natural process. And if you don't want to drink sewage, well, start conserving.
Take a picture of your reaction of disgust to this technique of getting water and email it to her at: monique.devoe@asu.edu.
