Are we 'urbanites' finally ready to consume water that not long before was flushing down assorted turds of differing morphology and dubious composition? To be honest, I am not sure. But according to one memorable Denver Post article from November, 2014:
"Front Range utilities will soon push the practical limit in re-using water to the maximum potential and that includes implementation of 'toilet to tap' recycling".
The soon to be announced 'Colorado Water Plan' is expected to mandate that Colorado residents must "re -use all available waste water as a pre-condition before state officials accept new trans-mountain projects".
The plan we learned most recently is already being implemented in Aurora and Castle Rock and will surely be here in the Springs within the year if not sooner. In the meantime the lingo has already been changed from the noxious "toilet to tap" to "direct potable re-use" - which sounds more sophisticated. According to a Denver 9 news report from late last year:
'Colorado's water quality agency gave unanimous preliminary approval to regulate direct potable reuse — the process of treating sewage and sending it directly to taps without first being dispersed in a larger water body. Pending a final vote in November, the state would become the first to adopt direct potable reuse regulations, according to WateReuse, a national group advocating for the method."
Look here, this is serious shit! NO laughing matter! But a few major obstacles remain including:
- The huge costs of water cleaning using multiple filter cleaning systems
- The legal obligations in Colorado to deliver water downstream
- The disposal of the contaminants purged from waste water - mainly thousands of gallons a day of super -concentrated salty mixes that must then be injected into deep wells or buried. The mixture is so toxic it can destroy skin on contact.
- The "Ick" factor - i.e. when consumers know the water ingested was only recently used to flush the effluent of another's bowels.
- Safety and monitoring - This entails installing water monitoring and testing systems sensitive enough to track a wide array of pathogens (including E. Coli. cryptosporidium etc), suspended particles and hard to remove specialty chemicals (i.e. tossed out contraceptives, diet pills, laxatives, anti-depressants, pain killers etc. found in waste water - not to mention synthetic chemicals such as in herbicides.
How did we reach this sorry state?
FRACKING! The frackers for the past 8 years - have been allowed
to run amuck, drilling up to 50,000 frack wells across the state with each one
consuming up to 5 million gallons each to enable hydraulic fracturing of
the soil to release shale oil and natural gas. Do the math and you will
see that the total water lost to fracking actually exceeds the shortfall noted
earlier by nearly 37 billion gallons! (Using a 4 million gallon per
well average consumption) Note again, this is going on in an already arid state
that has suffered over seven years of drought.
Colorado is already implementing limited re-use in places like Aurora, which
entails filtering partially treated waste water through river banks. This
water is then treated again at Aurora's state of the art plant. At all times,
as the Post piece noted, the challenge is ensuring that any engineered
water-cleaning system is just as good as what nature provides with its slow
settling and filtration.
State PR honchos also desperately want to change the language - getting rid of
the god-awful (but accurate) "toilet to tap" description in
favor of something like "sequential water modification". Once
they can finally get people to start using the correct lingo, they believe they
can mostly remove the 'ick' factor from suspicious brains.
But in LA, as we learned Monday in the LA Times, the language change is already well established. (While California doesn't have the massive fracking problem of Colorado it has been in the midst of a decades long drought which necessitates alternative water sources. Enter now "direct potable re-use" which many Colorado municipalities have also adopted. In the words of Heather Cooley, a director of research at the Pacific Institute:
“We’re creating a new source of supply that we were previously discharging or thinking of as waste. As we look to make our communities more resilient to drought, to climate change, this is really going to be an important part of that solution.”
Cooley isn't wrong and we also learned (ibid.) "Many areas in California have been treating and reusing wastewater for decades, often piping effluent for outdoor irrigation or to facilities where treated water soaks into the ground to replenish aquifers."
Cooley (and other water experts) also are quick to say that it’s inaccurate to call this “toilet to tap,” a term that was popularized in the 1990s by opponents of plans to use recycled water for replenishing groundwater in the San Gabriel Valley. (They insist the sewage undergoes an extremely sophisticated treatment process, and scientific research has shown that the highly purified water is safe to drink.)
So, ok, I am willing to drop the use of the phrase "toilet to tap" in the interest of getting more here in Colorado to accept it. As Ms. Cooley goes on to point out:
“This is really about recovering resources, not wasting precious resources. This is really, I think, an exciting opportunity for helping to realize that vision of a more circular sort of approach for water.”
Meanwhile, the process of developing the regulations for the
process – required under legislation
-has
taken over a decade in California. This is understandable given no one wants a
mass outbreak of cholera, dysentery or any other gastrointestinal plague as a
result of this recycling format for water use.
It would be the nightmare PR scenario.
To be sure building plants to purify wastewater is expensive
and according to the California experts it “may be years before Californians
are drinking treated water.” The
treatment technology itself is similar to desalinating seawater. In addition,
it’s already been in use in other water-scarce parts of the world, including
Namibia and Singapore. Here in the U.S.
some communities
in Texas are already doing it, and Colorado – where I reside – has rules
in place allowing potable reuse (as in Aurora).
The California expert, Darren Polhemus, deputy Director of the
State Water Board’s Division of Drinking Water, already has bold predictions to
make in respect to this recycling trend, telling the LA Times:
“Someday, it could be 25% to 40% of some communities’ water
supply. At some point, we could recycle the majority of wastewater that now
flows to the ocean just as treated wastewater.”
Let’s hope it works out, though it can’t if idiots like Elon
Musk are granted their wish to generate a “trillion” people on Earth - in which case our global water supply would
dry up in days. See e.g.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk: Human population not nearly big enough | Fortune
See Also:
PotableReuse101.pdf (awwa.org)
And:
Water Treatment: Direct Potable Reuse Explained - YouTube
And:
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