"Toilet to Tap" - Your Thoughts on Orange County's Plan to "Recycle" Purified Wastewater as Drinking Water?

Question

The squeamish call it "toilet to tap." The correct term is "indirect potable water reuse." Your thoughts?

See http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=08-P13-00003&segmentID=5

See http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_7896813?nclick_check=1

Answer 1

I like what Signer said YUK!!!!! talking about having a potty mouth that would be like drinking right out of the toilet then kissing your spouse or even worse your own mother THATS SICK.....!!!!

Answer 2

it is safe that is what astronauts drink

Answer 3

The idea of this is really really REALLY gross... and like that other guy said, we don't drink our bathwater.. or the water we do our dishes in... or the water we wash our cars with... fill up the swimming pool... basically all our water doesn't have to be super-pure... but I also would prefer it to not have my poo in it.

Answer 4

When I was in elementary school, I just assumed that was what happened.  The term "toilet to tap" makes it sound really gross.  However, there is a long process, and ultimately, it gets filtered by the ground just like all our other drinking water, except in this case, it is purified first.  Naturally occurring ground water flows over animal f***s, lawn chemicals, petroleum, and all kinds of other nasty stuff before it seeps into the ground to be pumped out later.  That is not filtered or purified first (it is done later, of course).  The point is, as long as the water is clean of yucky stuff and chemicals, it is all the same, and I'd drink it.  Especially since in my state, we have an overabundance of people and not enough water to go around.  In fact, some areas pump water from far up north of their municipalities, draining those areas so much that it causes the homes in the northern local to fall into sinkholes.  Gee, I'd rather use purified recycled water than to have my home fall into a giant hole, or worse, suffer from thirst!

Answer 5

Reduction in population would get humanity back to a life style in which these kinds of questions would be non-issues.

Answer 6

yuk!!! but then how do we know they dont already do it.

Answer 7

I think that is a great idea. But I think it would actually be better not to pump drinking water direct to every house. A huge percentage of water gets flushed down the toilet or runs out of the bath. If people want drinking water they should either buy it in a shop or filter what comes into the house. This would be a huge energy saving and the purchase of drinking water would be far cheaper than purchasing the same water to be pumped to your house and flushed down the toilet....again and again, and lets face it, how many of us drink their bath water?

  I have desalinate and also an emergency hand operated water filter that can make urine drinkable. I live on a yacht and am therefore very aware of water consumption and I think that this is going to be a huge issue in the future. As a personal experiment I have 'survived' on only rain water for over 6 months.

Answer 8

Well, there's a problem with these schemes.  The one that scares me most is "aquifer recharge", even more than toilet to tap.

We are many generations away (perhaps an infinite distance away) from such a complete understanding of the natural world that we could substitute artificial / synthetic systems for natural systems.

In closed systems, the problem becomes residual contaminate buildup.  With each pass through, the system becomes more contaminated with toxins.

Now you might say that purification technology is good, can purify to five nines or whatever, but there are always unknowns, equipment failure and human error.  

I can see the press releases now from the "water reuse" authority.  The problem was minor, the releases are within EPA limits, no studies have shown correlation between this level of contamination and any health problem, etc. etc.

Once the genie is out of the bottle, once we contaminate an entire aquifer and the strata, then what do we do?

How about we start consuming less?  Like some of the other posts suggested.  

You can buy a composting toilet that uses NO water at all.  You can solve 90% of your home cleaning issues with ammonia, vinegar and baking soda.  The other 10% can be solved with vegetable oil based products.  

Industrial waste should be entirely site treated with zero discharge, in any case be kept separate from sewerage, and the cost of treatment / reclamation / recycling included in the cost of purchasing the product.  This is an example of internalizing currently un-monetized external environmental costs.  

The solution is to solve the long term problems of population and consumption, not more dubious schemes that extend our current unsustainable lifestyle.

Answer 9

Not a lot. Tea Lager Whisky thats been drunk before then turned into water YUK!!!!!!!!

Answer 10

Yuck!!  Talk about a "potty mouth"!