Citizens up in arms are calling it toilet to tap. The actual term for this is potable reuse. It’s understandable for people to be alarmed and averse, but this has been the norm in many places for years.
Note: Coining a lurid, sensationalistic term for something is a great way to marshall opposition, or support, as the case may be. Popular political rhetorical tactic, use it for the good or not.
Here, in our place of generous rainfall (for now — till we finish killing the local water cycle dead-dead through egregiously bad land management practices), if we would stop wasting water this won’t even be needed, could just be a technological knowhow we keep in reserve for extreme emergency.
We get 49 inches of rainfall a year historically. We can be collecting that rainwater off of every building and using it on the landscape, cutting down on demand for piped water.
(On that note, anyone worried about giant Amazon warehouses and big data centers etc. – at least if nothing else those buildings have huge roofs! And a roof is a giant collection surface for rainwater! Even my modest 988-square-foot house can, if rainwater collection were 100% optimized, collect over 30,000 gallons of water a year!)
We can also be planting appropriate plants instead of thirsty yet useless ornamental landscaping. Also not cutting down forests & wetlands in the first place.
Stop incentivizing the sprawl development with its huge wasteful yards.
Reclaimed water can be part of the equation as well. We should not be using potable water to irrigate ornamental landscaping, period — including lawns.
If we collected rainwater off of every building, it wouldn’t be necessary to use piped-in irrigation (whether with reclaimed water or not) except maybe for extreme drought.
Also part of the problem are people who insist on only drinking bottled water, even though the tapwater is drinkable. (This admonition does not of course include people living in coal camps, fracking areas and so on whose water has been made unsafe to drink.) Some of the strongest opponents of potable reuse are also people who insist on drinking only bottled water even though the tapwater is fine as is, or they could use a filter. This is called being #PartOfTheProblem. (Look up the story of bottled water video on YouTube – part of the story of stuff series by Annie Leonard.)
BTW the whole planet is one big water recycling system. Water is constantly recycled through rainfall, transpiration, percolation into the aquifer, etc. By protecting the natural sponge and rainfall cycle we protect the natural filtration system.
Banning potable reuse won’t fix things. Making it our top priority to restore and protect the natural water cycle will. We should set the bar as high as possible. As a model, I highly recommend the Drinkable Rivers Project.
Imagine all the things you have to have in place for your rivers (and springs) to be drinkable! Sure would solve a lot.
Also, we should all embrace the concept of “sponge cities,” as Singapore and China and so many other places further along the curve have done.
PS. Drought, flood, and fire are three sides of the same coin. It’s all about restoring the water cycle.
PPS. Added later to my comments on my Facebook post. After a public official chided me, essentially asked if I felt that people should feel lucky for not having to drink sewage water:
Let me be perfectly clear in case my earlier comment may be misunderstood.
Clean safe drinking water is a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT!! Nobody should ever be in jeopardy of having to drink contaminated water.
And yet, worldwide, something like 2 billion people lack access to basic safe drinking water. This includes several million people right here in the USA.
That’s what I’m talking about when I say we’ve been living in a bubble.
We needed to be more aware all along of what other communities have been struggling with for YEARS, and if we had put more effort into prioritizing this BASIC HUMAN RIGHT everywhere for all, we wouldn’t be dealing with it here.
Because we’ve got a much easier situation relative to lots of other places. Lower population density, higher rainfall, natural wetlands and forests, etc.
PS. Have you heard that saying to the effect that instead of just rescuing drowning people from the river, we need to look up stream and find out who’s throwing people in the river in the first place. On that note, if we don’t want “poopy water” (another lurid phrase coined to muster alarm), we need to STOP POOPING INTO WATER. Read the humanure handbook by Joseph Jenkins. I have often mentioned it in my book, blog, and elsewhere.