Would you drink toilet water?

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. -- State health and regional water quality officials signed off Thursday on the start-up of a purification system that will turn highly treated sewage into tap water, a water district spokesman said.

Approval for the $490 million Groundwater Replenishment System came from the California Department of Public Health and the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, Ron Wildermuth of the Orange County Water District said.

The system, which has been under construction for nearly four years and was developed by the Orange County water and sanitation districts, will initially inject some 35 million gallons a day into an expanded seawater barrier to prevent ocean water from contaminating the groundwater supply, Wildermuth said.

Later, after another approval by the state Department of Public Health, another 35 million gallons will be pumped to the water district's spreading basins in Anaheim, where it will mix with Santa Ana River water and other imported sources and percolate into the groundwater basin to be drawn on for tap water, Wildermuth said.

http://www.knbc.com/news/15078468/detail.html



Orange County, CA has opened what is likely the largest sewage purification plant for drinking water in the world. The community is on board, and the idea is already being copied elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. Living on Earth’s Ingrid Lobet reports.

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




By Dan Weikel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

As a hedge against water shortages and population growth, Orange County has begun operating the world's largest, most modern reclamation plant -- a facility that can turn 70 million gallons of treated sewage into drinking water every day.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-reclaim2jan02,1,732425.story?coll=la-headlines-california

It's freshwater, made purified by carbon and other chemicals... including the ammonia remover crystals...

I'd prefer seawater removed of salt, but clean water is what counts in the end. Just preferably not fron the end, but whatever...

Their well has been contaminated with TCE.... mmmmmm. cancer.

:puke:

I'd rather not think about what it was BEFORE it was clean water, but whatever.

It's got electrolytes!

.

Another Idiocracy fan here.

an idiocracy! :)

Wonder if a Director's Cut will ever emerge.

people like my neighbor who water their lawns in the early a.m. and in the evening, we will shortly have no choice.

And as previously stated, if it can be purified to the point of being safe, it's a moot point.

who unknowingly drank a glass of toilet water that another friend had filled for him while we were playing eukre one night. He said it was the best glass of water he'd ever had.

:puke:

Note to self, don't invite people over to play cards. lol

My sister and I watched with fiendish glee as he drank the water. He loved it, too.

*slapping my own hand* BAD Me!!!! :evilgrin:

It is funny isn't it.

we all live in giant biosphere...

I suspect I'd drink sea water.

toilet bowl water. loL!

and then we'd die of dehydration, that's what salt water does to people. kills em dead...

and if it's good enough for her it's good enough for me.

Oh whatever

If dogs licking their private parts is good enough for them, I'm pretty sure it's not good enough for you!!

Or the dog's private parts? Because I do have standards after all.

LOL!!!

The water needs to run through my PUR filter too,
to take out all the chlorine they dump in it.

Btw; that plant is located approximately two miles from
where I live. It's right off the 405 and Euclid in Fountain Valley.
Driving by the plant is one stinky experience, especially on a
warm day.

estrogens out of the water??

http://xiaodongpeople.blogspot.com/2005/12/estrogen-in-wastewater-affecting-ocean.html
LONG BEACH - A male fish off the Southern California coast is getting in touch with its feminine side.

And that has some scientists worried.

Kevin Kelley, a professor of environmental endocrinology at Cal State Long Beach, is part of a team studying a species of male flatfish in Southern California waters that has been found to have high levels of estrogen, which appear to be causing feminization.

Kelley and other researchers believe that the treated wastewater draining through underground pipes into waters off Santa Monica, Huntington Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula contains human estrogen hormones expelled in human urine.


http://watercenter.unl.edu/WaterSciLab/Estrogens2007.asp
Estrogens in Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluent

By Daniel D. Snow,
Manager of Laboratory Services
UNL Water Sciences Laboratory

University of Nebraska, Omaha environmental toxicologist Alan Kolok and University of Nebraska-Lincoln environmental chemist Daniel Snow, along with their graduate students, are in the second year of a two-year study to determine whether estrogenic compounds are released from wastewater treatment plants in Nebraska and whether these compounds occur at sufficient levels to feminize male fish.

Estrogens and other compounds that mimic female sex steroids control development of female reproductive systems including those of fish. For example, male fish exposed to estrogenic compounds can develop feminine traits such as production of egg proteins. Recent studies worldwide have found that estrogenic compounds may occur in wastewater effluent throughout Western Europe and North America at high enough levels to feminize male fish. The environmental implications of these findings are only just beginning to be understood.

In the first year of this Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality-funded study, specially designed passive samplers and caged fish were exposed to water above and below the effluent discharge from wastewater treatment plants in Hastings, Columbus and Grand Island, Nebraska.

The passive samplers, designed to simulate and measure exposure of aquatic organisms to a variety of contaminants, were extracted and analyzed at the UNL Water Sciences Laboratory for a suite of natural and synthetic steroid hormones.

Elevated levels of several natural estrogens were found in the passive sampler below the Hastings plant effluent. Lower, but still detectable, levels of these compounds were also found in samplers exposed to effluent below the Grand Island treatment plant while none were found in the sampler exposed to the Columbus plant effluent, as well as three control sites not impacted by wastewater.

People pass whatever prescription drugs they are on in their urine. Antidepressants, ritalin, birth control, whatever. I wonder how they get that out?

"We are screwn".

That explanation has been at number one longer than The Dark Side Of The Moon.

the earth? I mean, what were the odds that its rotation would exactly match the time it takes to revolve around the earth?? Just curious.

The Earth has a strong effect on the moon. However, you gotta seek out someone expeert in such matters, I can only claim to have seen a cople of TV shows on it.

I had another Dark Side Of the Moon in mind. One that was on the Billboard Top 200 album chart for about 28 decades.

the concert in fact, much smoke there.

It's called being tidally locked, and it's quite common for satellites and their planets.

There's even a mathematical formula to calculate how long it takes a satellite to become locked.

No magic, elves, voodoo, or other mystical explanations. Just plain old raw science.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking

a in the equation is the semi-major axis, or essentially the maximum distance between the bodies.

93,000,000 miles from the Earth to the sun vs. 400,000 miles from the Earth to the moon. That number is raised to the power of 6 in the numerator of the equation, thus incredibly increasing the amount of time it will take for the Earth to become tidally locked with the sun. I'm going to guess it will take longer for that to happen than the sun will last.

But do read the Wikipedia entry. There are many examples.

moon is travelling in a straght line alongside the earth. That theory makes sense to me.

The moon travels in a straight line alongside the Earth?

No, it revolves around the Earth just as the Earth revolves around the sun.

work.

http://www.thefinaltheory.com/scienceflaws.html

That person is highly confused.

I think the answer is, they don't!

Countries in Europe (France notably) have had sewage treatment plants in areas that are subject to drought ever since the 60's.
They work fine...

We need to get creative on how we make use of our natural resources. The water than falls from the sky could have evaporated from a cess pool somewhere. The only difference is that the purification system was natural vs. man made. I don't see the difference other than doing it ourselves could be quite beneficial.

for decades. Assuming you are connected into a municipal sewer line, where do you think the water/waste goes when you flush? In Chicago it is estimated the turnaround time between the toilet flush and it coming back out your kitchen faucet is three days. The sewage is treated, the water sent out into Lake Michigan, sucked back into a water purification plant and then sent into the city's water lines. Drink up.

upriver from the city of Sacramento's intakes... :P

Eventually, even the SHITTIESTTTT of water returns to the atmosphere as rain after its own natural filtration process, and returns to our reservoirs.

As long as the purification technology works, then what's the problem? Ya gotta open your mind.

Much (most?) of the effluent from a septic tank percolates through soil bacteria which purifies it (eats the pathogens) and eventually into the water table.

bucks to have a pump back septic system, so that there is less chance of the "runoff" running into the lake.

The county also requires us to clean out the septic tank every two years, and would love it if we did it every year.

I don't mind. We swim in the water, and it's clean, so we want to keep it that way.

My husband used to run an old refinery/gas storage terminal on Lake Michigan, and he was required by the EPA to purify any water discharged into the lake to be cleaner than the actual lake water was. They were very strict, and the company was very adamant that the wastewater treatment must be in compliance, and it was.

Many places are in for severe water shortages.

This won't even be given a thought in the future.

is probably cleaner than the water that comes out of the faucet now.

You've seen the California aqueduct, right? You think pesticides and animal shit don't get in there?

Think again...

I'm a Dasani person myself. Can't drink the tap water here. It stinks to high heaven with all that shit in it...literally.

Not a bad idea in fact.

yup, drinking lake water here...local water district does a good job of delivering decent drinking water

piss and shit in the water we drink now.

Natural and man made purification processes are actually quite effective.

The natural ones just don't use harsh chemicals or great amounts of energy.

Water purification is a well-understood process from an engineering standpoint.

There are even systems which can safely work on small scales - such as space vehicles, recycling water from waste VERY safely.

I understand your concern, but I'm currently using tap water that's drawn from a well that's only about 70' from my septic bed. And I'm perfectly confident in that system.

And if my water tests should show that my water is contaminated, there are backup systems such as UV sterilizers or reverse osmosis filters that can solve it.

But it's never happened to me or thousands of my neighbors.

But facts trump opinion.

"Those who don't support reclaimed wastewater projects aren't convinced. Daniel A. Okun, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says, "Epidemiological studies are not sufficiently robust to reveal the connections between the contamination and disease, which takes decades to show up. greatest objection is increased health risk." Okun also remarks that the proposed method does not include any processes specifically directed at removing trace organic contaminants, a dangerous omission in the opinion of many opponents."
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2000/108-10/forum.html

But you go on thinking engineers and other scientists and their works can't fail.
Katrina.
O-rings.
TWA 800.
Etc.

Happens all the time.

Get your water from the river, purify it, drink it, pee it, clean it, back into river for next town downstream. Don't forget the ones upstream that are doing the same thing. Treated, is fine.

Sorry, another Idiocracy moment.

All water at some point is "toilet water." It cycles endlessly. If Los Angeles is going to re-cycle water more quickly and stop draining the fresh water from the state and dumping it into the ocean, that is a very good idea.

the bowl.

Where I live they already do that. It's what sewage treatment plants basically do. I don't see the big deal.

The large particulates are filtered out first, then it goes through a couple of reverse osmosis filters. That is followed by intense UV filtration and deionization (which they are not using). The end result is water so extremely pure that, if you let it stand too long, it pulls CO2 out of the air and becomes acidic. They dissolved the bottom out of a stainless steel pan using a similar system in another lab (over a long time use, of course).

While their water isn't laboratory grade pure, it is probably healthier water than what they pull from the rivers or from an aquifer. It won't have the pollutants leached through the ground or from runoff. If they went to this system in the Florida Keys, it would help in saving the reefs.

I'd love for Florida to go with systems like these in conjunction with conservation measures. It'd lessen our water shortages and help remove a lot of pollution that makes it's way into the environment. A lot of the extracted waste could be processed into fertilizer and/or biofuels.

Yep. I'd drink it.