"Toilet to tap" water used to alleviate drought shortages...brilliant or disgusting?

Sure. My county does it all the time, hundreds of millions of gallons each day.

Household water goes through the sanitary sewers and is pumped to one of three water treatment plants. There it is cleaned, filtered, chemically treated, and then pumped back into Lake Lanier (the lake which is our water supply).

yesterday’s urine s tomorrow’s scotch-and-water.

We have had treated and recycled water here for 20+ years. Don’t know why California took so long.

I have also wondered that (why CA took so long). I think it’s way past time, personally.

As @elbanditoroso said, recycling water is not new. I don’t think any cities are doing it yet in Australia. I know Toowoomba, which was heavily in drought, rejected the idea a few years ago. The reality is we don’t have never-ending supplies of water so many places will eventually have to start to recycle. I guess it’s better than being thirsty and after the first glass or two, people will get used to the idea.

My Q is specifically about addressing the perceived “ick” factor. Recycling water isn’t new, you’re right, but the publicity and catchphrase here have brought a new dimension to the awareness. I have had conversations with people who are gagging at the thought, not believing that filtration will render the water cleaner than most bottled water.

@canidmajor – there is no “ick” factor – it’s a given. You live in Atlanta, your water is recycled. The only people who think it’s “icky” are people who aren’t used to it.

Exactly @elbanditoroso. After people have had to try it, they’ll get used to it or commit to buying bottled water from then on. They’ll still have to shower in it and wash their clothes in it so eventually they’ll have to get over the ick factor.

“Brilliant or disgusting?” How about “necessary or expedient?”

Brilliant of course. I thought this has been happening for many years. The only new thing I assume is the media reporting on it and unknowing people being surprised by the idea. When I learned about it I was young and it was simply a given that our drinking water went through a purification process. I don’t always know if some of the city water I drink comes from lakes or waste water, all I know is it is purified and treated.

It would be nice if grey water was used on lawns at people’s homes. I don’t know how expensive it is to rig your house that way.

In the city I just moved from there is an entire infrastructure of reclaimed water done by the city that is used for irrigation of lawns. You tie right in. The reclaimed water is much cheaper, and I think it doesn’t increase your sewer costs. It’s much cheaper to set up than digging a well. We water all year in FL south of the pan handle. ½ an acre of grass and some landscaping is watered for about 3 hours every other day in the summer to give you an idea. Winter time it goes down by a third more or less depending on how north or south you are.

Calling it toilet to tap is a bad idea. We should get rid of that catch phrase. Just like most people don’t think about sweet Besse the cow being sent to slaughter when they buy their sirloin wrapped in plastic at the market; the public can do just fine drinking their water without knowing where the water was before it arrived at their tap. I don’t really mean that. I think the more you know the better, but presenting information as matter of fact rather than in an alarming way I think is always better.

@JLeslie, I agree that “toilet to tap” sounds disgusting. How about calling it recycled, refreshed or renewed water?

Brilliant or disgusting? Both! But it’s an idea whose time has come.

Huge “ick” factor for me, I’m not going to trust someones word that my toilet water is all nice and pristine and ready to toss some ice cubes in. I have well water and we already are doing massive amounts of recycling. Our gray water from the master bath goes to our garden where we have scaled back on our growing this year. We bail out the duck and goose kiddie pools and that water keeps a low water clover crop instead of grass, green on our back lawn, doubles as wonderful grazing for our birds as well.

We have drip systems on timers in our cherry orchard and are watering sparingly, enough to keep the trees alive but no waste.
We have installed expensive automatic waterers in our horse barn that refill a small basin so there is no waste in having to dump and scrub large plastic watering containers. Same with the buckets in the bird barn, they are dumped and recycled to various areas that need the water. We take 2 minute showers, leave no water running and run the dishwasher when it is at capacity, do small loads of laundry on the “quick” cycle and the washer is a high water efficient model.

Good enough.

We’re seeing only the beginning of the myriad of huge changes we’re going to have to make in the coming years and decades on a planet that’s changing not for the better before our very eyes. The “ick” factor won’t rank very high on the scale of survive vs. perish.

Have to adapt to climate change somehow if we can’t slow it down, eh?

One of my friends (who is, admittedly, a bit of a conspiracy theorist) mentions that it is interesting that although any thinking person would indeed embrace this concept, so many would put their entire trust in either a corporate structure and/or the government for clean, safe, potable water.
I think he may have a point. I would love to see the development of affordable, individual filtering systems for homes and businesses, as a last measure before entering the site.

@canidmajor I have also wondered that (why CA took so long). I think it’s way past time, personally.
For what I know we are not new to treatment plants here. There have always been treatment plants here since I was a kid (and that was a long time back). I have read in some areas they pump the water back into reservoirs, whether the water goes back to houses, out to farms or used municipally for parks and other public watering I don’t know, but there have been treatment facilities here almost forever.

It isn’t an ”ick factor” for me, I seen a Webinar on how they can take the most foulest waste water and treat it in as little as 45 minutes to have the water look like it came out of a mountain stream and be more drinkable. We should do that anyhow just to keep the planet from being polluted in a given area. We have more than half the planet filled with water; it is not like we are going to run out. If mankind ever knuckles under and focus on desalination we will have all the water we need for everything, even if you have to pump it inland like oil.

@Hypocrisy_Central: Treatment plants have been around forever, yes, but full-on recycling-to-tap with this high high level of purity and potability is much newer. As I understand it, de-salinization is a more expensive infrastructure to implement.

@canidmajor As I understand it, de-salinization is a more expensive infrastructure to implement.
One has to start somewhere, look at all the things we enjoy today that if we had to start from scratch would be expensive and time consuming. Imagine trying to replace the cable or fiber optic network, or replacing all the cell towers, or better yet, erecting all of them as if there were none at all. What if we had to build the interstate from scratch? We enjoy the benefits of them today, but someone in the past started them, and some did not get to enjoy them, but they worked on implementing them anyhow.

Oh, I definitely agree, and I think a multi-stage approach makes the most sense. Efficient and comprehensive recycling, desalinization, xeriscaping, whatever conserves (in all meanings of the word) water would be good.

Why call it anything? To me it’s just public water. City water isn’t typically run directly from springs to the tap. Not in most places. We clean it, treat it, and analyze it.

Desalinization requires considerable energy. Solar energy alone cannot do the job. The generation of additional energy creates byproducts such as carbon dioxide. Desalinization also creates other environmental problems. The process produces large quantities of salt and minerals that should not be returned to the ocean. The cost of separating everything that is not water into useful materials is greater than the expense of desalinization.

@Bill1939 Yet, they do it productively in Israel and have been for years.

@janbb, at what economic and environmental cost? I will have to look up the method Israel uses. Perhaps they have an effective technique that avoids these costs.

@Bill1939 – there was an article just within the last week-10 days

link

that discusses the Israeli water situation. Yes, it’s costly, but highly effective.

They should just call it “recycled water”. The word “toilet” grosses people out.

@elbanditoroso, thank you for the link. The most valuable information provided was the recycling of grey water for farming and conservation of the water that the public used, which largely was encouraged by raising the cost to the consumer.

I follow links in the article, but found limited specifics as to the method of producing the energy needed for reverse osmosis. Also, there was no information about what is left after clean water was separated from the seawater. The only concern mentioned was to aquatic life that was drawn into the plant’s intake.

The cost of clean water will soon exceed that of oil and natural gas. As the article illustrated, water is a significant aspect of the politics behind the Israeli-Palestine conflict. It is a foreshadowing of future conflicts over access to potable water. Hopefully, better technologies than distillation and reverse osmosis will be devised. Until then, recycling and conservation remains the only viable options.

@Bill1939 Here’s a video that shows one of Israel’s desalination plants and there are more many more articles and videos that are more specific if you Google it. The truth is that when we are desperate enough for water, we will develop these plants no matter what the cost – financially or environmentally.

^^ Also, there was no information about what is left after clean water was separated from the seawater.
Can’t be any worse than what is left over in landfills from rampant consumer spending and consumption, or when an oil well gets out of control.

Thank you for the link @janbb. In the U.S., it is not likely that Federal or State Governments will finance construction of plants similar to Israel’s, though they may provide tax incentives for commercial development if environmental concerns are met. I have not Googled desalination, but will soon. Again, thanks.

@Hypocrisy_Central, while environmental costs of desalination may not be worse it will add to the problems caused by consumer waste and petroleum disasters that already has reached epidemic proportions.

Yes, disgusting. On top of the psychological factor, city water also tastes terrible – like it’s been filtered out of shit and is full of chemicals. Maybe because it has been…?

You know what’s not disgusting, and conserves more water than recycling/filtering? (Plus turns waste that would otherwise pollute the oceans into valuable fertilizer) – Composting toilets.