The case for recycling our, gulp, drinking water
This week's column.
As yet another drought turns what once were local lakes into vast plains of cracked red clay, how serious — really serious — are we willing to get about conserving water?
Serious enough to raise a toast with the same water in which we bathed or washed dishes — or worse?
Science says it's possible. In fact, you've probably already wet your whistle with at least traces of reclaimed wastewater.
Winston-Salem draws its water from the Yadkin River. The Yadkin River contains treated wastewater from other communities upstream. Winston-Salem sells water to Greensboro and, well, you get the idea. Even when the Randleman reservoir comes online, probably by 2011 as a regional water source, part of its contents will include treated wastewater.
It may sound perfectly icky, but so would many of the things we regularly consume, if you took time to trace their origins. And it's eminently doable, says Greensboro Water Resources Director Allan Williams.
"With the technology we have now, you could probably do it and be safe," Williams said. "But it's a PR nightmare."
It doesn't help that such initiatives have been popularly described as "toilet to tap."
Of course, drinking water supplies inherently contain impurities and contaminants that have to be scrubbed before they reach the tap. (If you're having breakfast you may want to stop here.)
Those impurities include run-off that potentially is tainted with oil, fertilizer, heavy metals and animal excrement. Not to worry, Williams says. The city uses "water biology" and filters to clean Greensboro's drinking water. It also adds chlorine to disinfect the water, corrosive inhibitors to prevent it from picking up lead from fixtures and, yes, fluoride. ("If you write that," Williams says, "we will get calls. Some people still think it's a communist plot.")
Wastewater, by contrast, consists of more organic material such as feces and ground-up food. It, too, is cleaned and disinfected, but not to the extent that drinking water is. In other words, if you were crawling out of the Mojave Desert and absolutely needed to drink Greensboro's brand of treated wastewater, he says, you likely could with no serious side effects.
Probably the best way to make that water more drinkable is to flow it through the current cleaning process typically used for wastewater, then into a lake, then through the cleaning process used for drinking water. "You'd want as many barriers as possible," Williams says.
Of course, there are more concerns now about wastewater pollution, among them "emerging contaminants" such as "birth control residue" and other drugs.
Yet a recycling program not only is working elsewhere, but has received the public's stamp of approval. Choosing to call its process "groundwater replenishment," Orange County, Calif., is building a massive new treatment plant to recycle wastewater. Officials there tout the finished product as four times as pure as a mountain stream.
Williams says the idea of wastewater recycling can't be dismissed over the long term. Odds are, he believes, we haven't seen our worst water shortage yet. Droughts have been measured only dating back 80 years, he says. Who knows how bad things could get?
Another way to stretch fragile water supplies is to create separate water systems for irrigation and for drinking. And yet another is giving up our addiction to grass — um, the kind we grow and mow. "We're going to have to seriously rethink how we use water for irrigation," Williams says.
Meanwhile, Gov. Mike Easley seems strangely reluctant to call for mandatory statewide water restrictions even though all 100 counties are suffering from one stage or another of drought. The governor may be worried that word of a statewide water emergency would dry up economic development as well. "But if Greensboro or Raleigh or Durham ran out of water for one day in North Carolina," Williams says, "you can forget economic development."
I'll drink to that.
Comments (3)
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I had a professer back in the 60s that warned us of gas and water shortages. That was when gas stations where having gas wars. He said America had no vision, he used Greensboro as a example. Here in Caswell County, most have a well and a septic tank, in my 40 years we have never had money enough to work on this problem, However we have always had money for high speed internet shams, to pay two lawyers to do one part time job,Doubling the good ole boys pay. Of course Mr. Tate used Geensboro as a example. So I know we have had over 40 years to work on this.So if you are going to be stupid , you damn well better learn to be tough,next time you hear we need to put 10 million in to the Civil Rights Museum, think how this money could be used to help solve the water problem.Do not hold your breath,solving water problems, do not buy votes, giving your tax dollars to special interest groups, buys you good press.That means votes!
Posted on October 14, 2007 8:31 AM
The City of Fayettville, while not yet to the point of recycling waste water to drinking water gets their water from the river that Reidsville, Greensboro, Burlington, Haw River, Graham, Hillsboro, Carboro, Chapel Hill, Durham? and many other NC cities dump their wastewater into but Fayettville returns wastewater to the river that is cleaner than the drinking water they take from the river. Perhaps that could be considered wastewater to drinking water.
Another option for water purification is solar distillation which costs almost nothing after the purchase of very simple equipment.
You can bet that when I'm elected Mayor of Greensboro we will be looking into a lot of ways Greensboro can save water and energy.
Posted on October 14, 2007 10:03 PM
You claimed mentioning "fluoride" would get you letters and I didn't want to disappoint. However, fluoridation and commie plot is so retro - not to mention unscientific.
An October 6, 2007 report in the British Medical Journal said of the 3200 world-wide studies concerning fluoride and fluoridation, none of them proves that water fluoridation is safe or effective.
You can save yourself money and the quality of the water supply by ending water fluoridation. Use that money to preserve the water supply not medicate it
Fluoridation was supposed to eliminate tooth decay when introduced in 1945. Neo-fluoridationists claim it just reduces tooth decay. But it's doing neither.
After 60 years of water fluoridation, tooth decay is going up, untreated tooth decay is going up, fluoride overdose symptoms (discolored teeth called dental fluorosis) is going up and Dentists' income is going way up.
So fluoridation has not reduced tooth decay and might have played an important role in dentists' rising income and their rejection of low-income people.
Dentists make so much money doing cosmetic work - some of which is covering up fluoride stained teeth - that they don't have to bother treating low-income individuals for the paltry amount of money that Medicaid offers them.
Let them eat fluoride!
Posted on October 15, 2007 6:58 AM