peepee water

[charlie knighton]

Parched Texas town turns to sewage water to keep city flush with water

By By Marice Richter 1 hour ago





By Marice Richter



DALLAS (Reuters) - When the going got tough due one of with worst droughts in a century, the parched Texas city of Wichita Falls got going with its program to recycle sewage water for drinking.
The city this month opened the spigots on a $13 million system that mixes 5 million gallons a day of treated waste water with area lake water to keep drinking water flowing for its 105,000 residents.
Convincing them to drink it is another matter.
"Everyone I know is buying bottled water," said Ronna Prickett, co-owner of Polka-Dot Penguin gift shop.
"People at the city have been telling us to have faith in the system but there is a stigma attached."
The reservoirs that serve Wichita Falls, about 100 miles northwest of Dallas, have dropped below 25 percent of their capacity and are expected to run dry in two years.
Residents said the treated water is clear but a bit soapy tasting.
While other areas have recycled waste water for years, Wichita Falls bills its plan as a pioneering program for a U.S. city of its size to treat household sewage and pump it directly back to residents.
Other cities facing shortages have been keeping a close eye on the program in case they have to adopt similar measures.
"The water is now cleaner and clearer than the water that came just from our lakes," said City Manager Darron Leiker.
The system has been thoroughly tested and carefully monitored to make sure the water stays clean, he said.
The city that bakes under the hot Texas sun has banned lawn watering to save water. It has tried to seed clouds to bring about rain and use chemicals in reservoirs to slow evaporation.
"We don't have any alternative sources. We don't have ground water. We can't build a pipeline to a reservoir that is close to us," said Russell Schreiber, the city's director of public works.
But Sabrina Hayes said in a letter to the local Wichita Falls Times Record News she had no plans to drink the water.
"I do not wish to come into any contact with what we refer to as 'peepee' water," Hayes wrote in a letter to the editor.
(Reporting by Marice Richter; Editing by Jon Herskovitz and Eric Beech)

SWAT might have to wait

[John Pratt]

Welcome to the Southwest. Luckily we haven't had to go that far just yet (I am 45 minutes north of Wichita Falls).

[Prashun Patel]

I heard a very enlightening Radio Lab podcast on this subject.
New York City used to dump its sewage into the Hudson until 1975. Over the next decade+ they started treating and speed-composting the waste underground. The fully processed waste is tested, safe, and clean for composting. They tried to sell the fully composted solids to different states, but nobody close by would take it. Hence perfectly good food-growing compost is now just buried near by. (Colorado was buying it for a while and had record crop yields, but it was too expensive to ship that far).

Eventually, we will have no choice but to drink and eat recycled waste. The guy who figures out how to market this truth will be a tycoon. For the rest of us, the sooner we get over ourselves, the better.

[Raymond Fries]

Yuck! That does not sound safe to me. I am glad we have a reverse osmosis system in our home. Water is so precious.

I would be interested to know if any big company like Nestle has a water facility in Texas. There have been reports of areas where Nestle pumps the water for their bottling operations and it actually lowers the water tables making it difficult for the residents to get water; Pakistan is one example. I am sure that Nestle is ready to sell it back to any that have the money. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, their global CEO was quoted as saying in a televised interview that water was not a human right and it is a commodity that should be sold. Really?

I read sometime back that I believe it was Coke that was ordered to stop pumping operations at one of their water plants because of lowering the water tables.

Good Luck with the clean water. Hope it really is safe.

[Charles Wiggins]

Eventually, we will have no choice but to drink and eat recycled waste. The guy who figures out how to market this truth will be a tycoon. For the rest of us, the sooner we get over ourselves, the better.

You know, no one ever seems to question where the food replicators in Star Trek got the raw material to make the food and dishes.

[Moses Yoder]

I am not sure how long humans have been around, but we have always been drinking peepee water. It's a closed system; where do you think the stuff goes?

[ray hampton]

recycle or not , I hope that NO medicines or drugs are added to the water that are recycle

[ray hampton]

maybe someone will add a chemical to the water that will turn everybody skin brown or black

[Chris Padilla]

I am not sure how long humans have been around, but we have always been drinking peepee water. It's a closed system; where do you think the stuff goes?

All my water comes from a bottle, Moses.

[Mike Henderson]

I heard a very enlightening Radio Lab podcast on this subject.
New York City used to dump its sewage into the Hudson until 1975. Over the next decade+ they started treating and speed-composting the waste underground. The fully processed waste is tested, safe, and clean for composting. They tried to sell the fully composted solids to different states, but nobody close by would take it. Hence perfectly good food-growing compost is now just buried near by. (Colorado was buying it for a while and had record crop yields, but it was too expensive to ship that far).

Eventually, we will have no choice but to drink and eat recycled waste. The guy who figures out how to market this truth will be a tycoon. For the rest of us, the sooner we get over ourselves, the better.

Out here, the treated solid waste is used as fertilizer, but only for crops that are to be fed to animals. While treated solid waste is probably safe as fertilizer for crops for human consumption, the risk is that some pathogens might be in it that would be transferred to the crop, and then to a human. It's safer for animals because most pathogens that would come from humans do not infect animals.

Our waste water is treated as described, through reverse osmosis, but it is then injected into the local aquifer. So the "toilet to tap" aspect of it is kind of hidden from people. But the water is very pure, a lot purer than the other water that is used for our water system.

As someone else said, all water is recycled. And a lot of it over the millions of years has gone through some animal or human.

Mike

[Brian Elfert]

recycle or not , I hope that NO medicines or drugs are added to the water that are recycle

Someone could add contaminants to drinking water no matter if the water is recycled or not.

[Wade Lippman]

All my water comes from a bottle, Moses.

Where do you think the water in your bottle comes from? They create it by burning hydrogen?

[Chris Padilla]

Where do you think the water in your bottle comes from? They create it by burning hydrogen?

The store, Wade!!! The same place I get my steaks from. (You realize I'm being facetious here....)

[Prashun Patel]

Nope, it was used to grow wheat for bread for humans.

[Jim Becker]

Where do you think most, if not all, of the drinking water comes from on the International Space Station?