Yum, Sewage: LA Aims to Add Wastewater to Drinking Water Supply

Los Angeles is one of many cities facing water shortages, and it’s bound to only get worse over the next decade as the city’s population grows ever larger. Enter Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa’s solution: recycling ‘heavily cleansed’ sewage water into drinking water.

From The New York Times:

Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who opposed such a plan a decade ago over safety concerns, announced the proposal on Thursday as part of a package of initiatives to put the city, the nation’s second largest, on a stricter water budget. The other plans include increasing fines for watering lawns during restricted times, tapping into and cleaning more groundwater, and encouraging businesses and residents to use more efficient sprinklers and plumbing fixtures.

The move comes as California braces for the possibility of the most severe water shortages in decades.

Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, which supplies about a third of Los Angeles’s water, is short of expectations. At the same time, the Western drought has lowered supplies in reservoirs, while legal rulings to protect endangered species will curtail water deliveries from Northern California.

Before you wrinkle your nose and decide it’s absolutely disgusting, consider this: not only will the water be purer than tap water, it won’t be introduced directly to taps: it would be injected into the ground and gradually filter down to aquifers, making it much cleaner. The only problem is that the chemicals that are set to be used to cleanse the water haven’t been independently tested for safety, so hopefully that will happen before action is actually taken on the plan.

Props to LA for dealing with the problem now instead of waiting until they’re in the midst of a severe crisis, like our federal government likes to do.

Link [New York Times]
Photo credit: Flickr user Elsie esq.

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