Communities turning wastewater into drinking water
By Wendy Koch, USA Today
Drinking wastewater? The idea may sound distasteful, but new federally funded research says more Americans are doing so — whether they know it or not — and this reuse will be increasingly necessary as the U.S. population expands.
Treated wastewater poses no greater health risks than existing water supplies and, in some cases, may be even safer to drink, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Research Council, a science advisory group chartered by Congress. “We believe water reuse is a viable option” to deal with growing water scarcity, especially in coastal areas, says Jörg Drewes, an engineering professor at the Colorado School of Mines who contributed to the report.
“This can be done reliably without putting the public at risk,” he says, citing technological advances. He says it’s a waste not to reuse the nation’s wastewater, because almost all of it is treated before discharge. This water includes storm runoff as well as used water from homes, businesses and factories.
Of the 32 billion gallons of wastewater discharged every day in the USA, the report says 12 billion — equal to 6 percent of total U.S. water use — is sent to an ocean or estuary and is thus a lost resource.
When S.T.P.U.D. first started it had a system that purified the waste water to drinking water, they even had a fish tank in the lobby that was filled with purified waste water. They changed back to the old method because of the expense, watch out, your sewer bill will be doubled if they go that way again.
Why the heck are we allowing our population to explode? Just because the worlds population is growing by the billions, doesn’t mean the USA has to follow. More people = less freedom.
STPUD did not “switch back” because of the expense – they did it because the Porter Cologne Act mandated that all wastewater be exported out of the Tahoe Basin. Get your facts right.
X Local, there is nothing STPUD can do that is more expensive than pumping waste over a mountain. The League and Lahontan supported Porter Cologne because it ensured an upper limit on population growth. None of this had anything to do with money.
John
Your wrong, Check the records, it was done and the reason they stopped was because of MONEY
X Local, then why does the League include the pumping of all municipal waste out of the Basin as one of their major accomplishments?
see this link:
http://keeptahoeblue.org/aboutus/accomplishments/#year1969
in Carsor City they use the waste water to irrigate the 7 golf courses, so dont lick your Tee’s
do you remember the building permit bamboozel back in 1989 and how it was tied to the sewer system?
STPUD’s, 3 stage treatment was stoped for numerous reasons. One was no matter how we treated it it still had to be pumped out of the basin, i.e. P.C., so why spend the extra money to treat it. You would have to change P.C. to use it in the basin. Its almost too late to do that because we would have to replace that water that flows into the carson river, from our sewer flows, with water from the carson river watershed which would cost more, than pumping it over luther pass.