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texas recycling sewage into tap water?

brainhulk

brainhulk

Diamond Member
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44036601/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/

The drought in Texas has gotten so severe municipal water managers have turned to a once untenable idea: recycling sewage water.
"When you talk about toilet-to-(water) tank it makes a lot of people nervous and grossed out," says Terri Telchik, who works in the city manager's office in Big Spring, Texas.
Water for the town's 27,000 residents comes through the Colorado River Municipal Water District, which has broken ground on a plant to capture treated wastewater for recycling.
"We're taking treated effluent (wastewater), normally discharged into a creek, and blending it with (traditionally supplied potable) water," district manager John Grant told Discovery News.
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wtf
 
geez didnt anyone play sim city? yeah they really have that...

i mean reallly it's not so much different, waters water.. the amount of water on the planet doesnt change, the water you drank today had shit in it at some point in time...
 
We have one of the original groundwater replenishment systems here in OC and our water situation is slightly better than Tx
 
I honestly thought that all places did this. Where does sewage water go, then?

(Yeah, the op says "normally discharged into a creek" but that surely can't apply everywhere.)
 
HamburgerBoy said:
I honestly thought that all places did this. Where does sewage water go, then?

(Yeah, the op says "normally discharged into a creek" but that surely can't apply everywhere.)
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Usually it gets treated and dumped in lakes / rivers / ocean as it's not considered drinkable last I checked.

That's if you are lucky as more then not raw sewage gets dumped often in the ocean.
 
zanejohnson said:
waters water..
the amount of water on the planet doesnt change, the water you drank today had shit in it at some point in time...
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Are you saying that fresh water wasn't being delivered by extra-terrestrial life for millions of years? 😵
What water there is, has always been?
 
Blain said:
Are you saying that fresh water wasn't being delivered by extra-terrestrial life for millions of years? 😵
What water there is, has always been?
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yep, hard to believe it, we needz to call up E.T. tell em to teleport us some more cloudz yo
 
They should at least let it sit in a large body of water for a while. Any water we drink was probably once piss or poop, but it just seems cleaner to filter it, dump it in a lake/river, let nature do the rest, then filter it again.
 
Red Squirrel said:
They should at least let it sit in a large body of water for a while. Any water we drink was probably once piss or poop, but it just seems cleaner to filter it, dump it in a lake/river, let nature do the rest, then filter it again.
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it'd actually probably be safer not to sit in a large body of water.... any bacteria then would have time to multiply 😱
 
That just seems odd. Google is telling me that the average person urinates ~1.5 liters a day, and with flush toilets at 6 liters a flush, that's got to be at least a few gallons of what is pretty much just water wasted every day. If it's treated (which I assume means cleaned up to the point that it would not make those in said lakes, rivers, and oceans easily sick) I don't see why it can't be further processed just to take the free water portions. You've turned me into a pinko environmentalist faster than any P&N person has managed to do.
 
Red Squirrel said:
They should at least let it sit in a large body of water for a while. Any water we drink was probably once piss or poop, but it just seems cleaner to filter it, dump it in a lake/river, let nature do the rest, then filter it again.
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EPA has certain discharge requirements for waste water so you can't dump it anywhere without treating it. But many agencies utilize natural treatment basins (more or less swamps) to treat storm water run off.
 
HamburgerBoy said:
I honestly thought that all places did this. Where does sewage water go, then?

(Yeah, the op says "normally discharged into a creek" but that surely can't apply everywhere.)
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Are you REALLY that naive?

0.jpg


http://wn.com/Hollywood_Sewage_Outfall

I helped build a couple of large sewage outfalls over the years, both on-shore and off-shore.

Ideally, the solids are removed from the sewage stream in a sewage plant, and the water that goes out into the ocean, river, stream, etc., is relatively clean...but I damned sure wouldn't drink it.
I helped a crew run a ROV camera through the San Mateo/Foster City outfall into SF Bay many years back. Visibility was pretty good...actually better than in the bay itself...but there were still lots of "solids" being pumped into the bay...24/7.
 
zanejohnson said:
it'd actually probably be safer not to sit in a large body of water.... any bacteria then would have time to multiply 😱
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Anaerobic bacteria break down organic materials, and the ground act as a filter, or purified by evaporation.

ie, septic field & open/close cesspit.
 
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Potable reclaimed water is nothing new. Australia has done it. California and Florida are pursuing it.

I design water/wastewater systems and have designed specific components for reuse/reclaimed water. I have no problem drinking it when treated properly.
 
Our city doesn't do that because we have no need for more water. As long as the water is treated properly though it doesn't matter. Think of the space station, every bit of water is precious to them and they recycle urine and waste.
 
zanejohnson said:
it'd actually probably be safer not to sit in a large body of water.... any bacteria then would have time to multiply 😱
Click to expand...

You want the bacteria to multiply, the more the better. That is how septic tanks work in rural areas. It is just a concrete tank in the ground connected to long pipes 25ft+ long with holes in them . The waste enters and the heavy stuff sinks to the bottom of the tank where bacteria consume it. At the top the water flows into the pipes where it leeches back into the ground. People with septic tanks that wash a lot of clothes often have septic issues because the detergent and bleach lowers the bacteria levels and harms the performance of the system, that is why things like ridx is sold. It is a box of bacteria.

Same way a properly set up aquarium works. I have a tank that I haven't cleaned the filter in months because the bacteria inside are doing all the work of destroying waste, if I clean it out then I have to establish bacteria all over again.

To those looking for a career I see jobs for waste water engineers all the time, may not be glamorous but it looks like it pays well.
 
Any modern waste water treatment plant is probably putting out effluent water that's cleaner than what you're getting in your tap anyways.

In fact, where I live, they had to build a multi-million dollar reverse osmosis plant, just in order to be able to use water from one of the lakes, because of it's saltiness. Before they built the plant, they were mixing ~10% of our water with that nasty stuff, and it was BAD. Everyone in town knew exactly when they turned it on, and I'm betting that Brita sold a shitload of water filtering pitchers that week! 🙄
 
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