Orange County, California’s Sewage to Drinking Water Treatment Plant Finished

Here in America, we have a water problem – and I’m not just talking about shortages. We waste incredible, mind-boggling amounts of it. There are so many things we can do to use water more wisely, and in parched Santa Ana, California, officials are getting creative in a way that has some residents angry and disgusted. They’re recycling toilet water. Like it or not, people might as well get used to ideas like these – it’s wasting so much water that’s really disgusting.

From The New York Times:

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.

Recycling sewage into potable water was a no-brainer for Orange County; an ever-rising population meant that a new $200M sewage pipeline would have needed to be built, and they over-pumped their groundwater basin to the point of drawing seawater into their water supply. So, the sewage to water plan works out for a lot of reasons. It sounds gross at first, but the process used to clean the water really is incredibly thorough.

If you think about it, though, why are we flushing so much fresh, clean, potable water in the first place? Greywater systems that at least divert used water from the bathroom sink and/or shower could be used to flush toilets instead. It seems absurd to foul perfectly good drinking water in such a way. The way we use water is so messed up and backwards. Hopefully we’ll do a lot of catching up in the coming decades as people realize how precious a resource it really is.

To read about the full treatment process that transforms the sewage into drinkable water, read the full piece in The New York Times.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Flickr user Oracio Alvarado

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