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Earth United States

New Regulations Will Turn California Wastewater To Drinking Water (cbsnews.com) 109

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
The future of water may be changing in California. The state Water Resources Control Board has signed off on regulations to turn more recycled wastewater from our homes into drinking water. From a report: The regulations were approved unanimously by the board on Tuesday and now give the go-ahead for local water agencies to plan to turn wastewater into water we can drink through a process called Direct Potable Reuse. Darrin Polhemus, the division of drinking water director with the State Water Resources Control Board, said this approval was a very big step for California. "It really will be the highest quality water delivered in the state when it's done," Polhemus said.

California's new rules would let, but not require, local water agencies to take wastewater from toilets or showers, treat it, and then put it right back into the drinking water system. "Direct potable reuse is just a really critical strategy for our state to have as we move to this new hydrology that we have, and as everyone has already said, increasing our resilience and reducing our reliance on imported water," said Laurel Firestone, board member for the State Water Resources Control Board.
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New Regulations Will Turn California Wastewater To Drinking Water More

New Regulations Will Turn California Wastewater To Drinking Water

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  • They better set some extreme guidelines for safety checks, it's going to be expensive. Nuclear is so expensive to build a plant for all the required safety equipment, designs and regulations surrounding it.

    This should be treated the same. If something happens and somehow untreated water starts flowing, it will containment their entire drinking supply for that water system and create an immediate emergency, and potentially people getting and sick and dying before proper remediation can take place.

    So this is

    • I don't think water reclamation is any fancy new technology. Expensive to be sure, but considering the serious problems with diminishing groundwater, it's a route a lot of jurisdictions are going to have to take.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        If memory serves correct, San Diego (or something thereabouts) already treats sewage for water to drink.

        • Re:It's great until it contaminates the entire sys (Score:5, Informative)

          by taustin ( 171655 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @02:57PM (#64094073) Homepage Journal

          I am sitting, right now, less than five miles from a "toilet to tap" facility that's been operating for many years. The only difference is the existing facilities have pumped the cleaned water into the ground water reservoir, where it was actually more pure that what was there naturally. This program will allow it to be used more directly, and it will still be cleaner than natural ground water.

          This is well proven technology that has been in use for decades.

          Nothing to see here, boys and girls, move along.

          • thanks for this info. I mean, it only makes sense that this technology would have been around for decades... I mean, in the very grand scale, that's how planet earth maintains it's drinking water supply.

      • Re:It's great until it contaminates the entire sys (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tyr07 ( 8900565 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @02:55PM (#64094063)

        It's not about the technology, it's about the competency of the people implementing it.
        Nuclear technology isn't new, and it's quite safe, when executed under the proper safety standards. I'm hoping as much care and attention is given to the drinking water as they expand the use of that technology into drinking water.

        • This feels a lot like a non sequitur. Water filtration and reclamation is nowhere near as complex as a nuclear facility. It's apples and oranges.

          And in many parts of the US, there isn't going to be much of a choice. It's either drink filtered black and grey water, or move, because long term drought means groundwater levels are dropping precipitously.

          This isn't rocket science, it's a solved problem.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

            What a perspective.

            First of all, water filtration and recycling is used in many parts of the world and the US for drinking water. This isn't some global techno taboo hide under my tinfoil hat, but we've seen a lot of situations where people are not properly handling things and people die. This is one of those things that if they execute this wrong, people die.

            The technology isn't new. The complexity for controlling reactions like a nuclear reactor isn't there either, but if you don't take it seriously, and

            • Stop with the fearmongering, asshole. As others have said water from sewage facilities is often cleaner than regular water going into treatment plants. I am in northern AL and we get water direct from TN River. Would much rather water from sewage treatment be used instead since it is much cleaner. This is easy-peasy stuff and nothing as difficult as nuclear energy. Take some CE classes and learn something instead crying about something you know nothing about.

        • I'm hoping as much care and attention is given to the drinking water as they expand the use of that technology into drinking water.

          LOL. Of course they won't. They can buy bottled water and let the facilities serve the masses.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

        P.S Competency is per region not global, so you can't use proof that one place did it properly that they will as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mendax ( 114116 )

        I don't think water reclamation is any fancy new technology. Expensive to be sure....

        Indeed, it is not new technology. Municipalities have been doing it for decades. But it is not expensive. The water that is discharged into rivers, streams, and oceans (at least in California) from sewage treatment plants has long been drinkable.

        I seem to remember a story from years ago where the folks in Humboldt County in northern California needed to build a new sewage treatment plant and elected to recreate some wet

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sodul ( 833177 )

          I've briefly fished in Palo Alto, CA by the bay and in a spot very close to the water treatment plant. That water being released in the bay is the wrong color to be called drinkable. Last year we got a red tide that killed literal tons of fish, the cause is attributed to the outdated sewage treatment plants that do not process the nitrogen in the waste water.

          https://www.npr.org/2022/09/08... [npr.org]

    • Re:It's great until it contaminates the entire sys (Score:5, Informative)

      by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @02:30PM (#64093969) Journal

      Reclaimed (recycled) water is already used in the region. They have separate pipes (light purple) designating non-potable water:

      https://archive.kpcc.org/blogs... [kpcc.org]

      Also, regarding drinking water contamination... that unfortunately can happen at any time due to water line breaks, drops in water pressure that draw in contaminated water, etc. Boil notices are endemic in regions where there's flooding because of the possibility of water supply contamination.

      https://dhss.delaware.gov/dhss... [delaware.gov]

      To go full closed system, the water will probably be treated to a higher level of purity than water from the existing water system - which in Southern California mostly comes from open canals and reservoirs. Los Angeles, for example, has contaminated groundwater, which previously precluded the use of wells for the municipal water supply, although there are efforts to bring that source back online:

      https://www.latimes.com/califo... [latimes.com]

      Basically put... if you're concerned that municipal authorities are too incompetent to treat water that they're already generating to a higher standard, in order to inject that into the water supply, you should be concerned that they're too incompetent to treat existing water supplies. Given what happened to Flint MI, I can't say that you're wrong, but it's not like there's more risk than is actually already present.

      • That's not really what people are worried about (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @02:42PM (#64094003)
        what they're worried about is something like Flint, Mi, where a corrupt politician handed a water treatment contract to one of his buddies who didn't know his ass from a hole in the wall and cut back on treatment so save money.

        None of the people involved in that scandal suffered any consequences whatsoever and it took nearly a decade before the problem was fully solved (ironically by Joe Biden rather than Obama)

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

          Yes this.

          Everyone is taking as if I said the technology wasn't ready. No we can 100% do it, it's about the people executing it to be competent and safety minded when they implement, and not going 'Eh it's good enough, I drink bottled water anyway'.

          • that I'm worried about. Nepotism is a thing and it's easy for incompetent or malicious people to be put in charge of public resources. It doesn't help that Americans *love* privatization. So we privatize shit that should *not* be privatized.

            • I mean... you could drill your own well and set your own private water treatment like many people do in the US where they are not served by a municipal water supply?

              Likewise, put in septic and refuse to be connected to a municipal sewer connection (in areas where such construction is allowed or grandfathered in.)

              Or found your own municipality, and thus have control over who gets to provide electricity, water sewage, and garbage collection?

              We live in areas that are in various states of democracy and free mar

        • (ironically by Joe Biden rather than Obama)

          You left out a president in the middle. Was he ignoring the problem also or working overtime to try and fix it? Members of both political parties screwed up in Michigan, and members of both parties worked to fix it.

          And people did face consequences. 79 lawsuits, 4 firings, 15 indictments, 1 conviction, etc. Maybe not the outcome you wanted but that's a lot different from
          "none ... suffered any consequences."

          • Obama seemed to be ignoring it. I'm not a huge Obama fan. From what I can tell most of the good stuff we got out of him was either Biden or Pelosi's doing.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by jonadab ( 583620 )
          > something like Flint, Mi, where ... [someone] cut back on treatment so save money

          That's not what happened. The source of the incoming water is what changed (from a lake to a river). Further, the incoming water itself would have been safe on its own, but putting it through the existing distribution pipes was problematic (because it interacted differently with lead pipes, resulting in lead in the water, which is not great).

          It was a major screw-up, you got that part right. But the screwup didn't have a

        • I personally prefer the flavor of distilled water, but of course everyone's tastes vary.

          There is a lot of confusion online about whether or not this is healthy to do. People are afraid that the absence of minerals in the water makes it poisonous. I can clear some of that up.

          The minerals found in tap water are essential for human health. However, they occur in trace amounts. It isn't anywhere near enough to make a difference. You get the minerals you need from food, not from water. One bite of broccoli

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

        At what point did anyone imply we think they're competent with the current system? And even if they were, why would that mean they'd be competent in executing additional complexities to the system. Being competent isn't global either, one region will have competent people handling it, another may not, that's where strict standards and regulations come in.

        All I'm saying is, what I said. People should read it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        The only difference between the closed loop and what we have today is the closed loop doesn't involve the weather.

        Right now all water systems are closed loop - your effluent gets treated then is dumped into a river or other body of water. The Earth's water cycle then takes it and it falls back to the Earth either as surface or ground water and then you treat that water and it comes out of your tap.

        All the closed loop system avoids is the Earth - which given weather patterns can mean your water supply is mor

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sl3xd ( 111641 )

        A fair number of municipalities treat their sewage, and dump the treated water back into the Colorado river hundreds of miles and several states upstream.

        The sewage is regulated to be "cleaner" than the river water it's being dumped into, per the clean water act.

        Sewage treatment is remarkably effective, and it's got a good track record.

        Flint, MI is a different matter entirely - there's a HUGE difference between wastewater treatment, and drinking water treatment. It's not just a case of a black box with diff

    • completely separate, and it's just us pleebs that'll have to drink used pee.

      • completely separate, and it's just us pleebs that'll have to drink used pee.

        I presume you jest.
        As a California resident, I applaud this. While my EOH degree goes largely unused, it get me a pretty good peek into Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant near LAX, and to think we ship that much water a couple dozen miles off the beach instead of into our aquifer is strange to me.
        Orange County puts a lot of their water back into the aquifers starting a couple decades or so ago, thanks to their water treatment plant.

      • In the future, everybody will wear stillsuits for fifteen minutes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by davidwr ( 791652 )

        t's just us pleebs that'll have to drink used pee.

        Us pleebs may not be able to afford a joyride into outer space, but at least now we can drink like an astronaut!

    • A super big deal, which is why everyone completely jumped on Detroit's water problems and fixed them quickly, right?

      I honestly don't think it can be worse, post-treatment, than untreated reservoir or ground water.

    • Congratulations on realizing the entire planet is a sealed terrarium with us in it years after everyone who touches grass regularly did.

    • They better set some extreme guidelines for safety checks, it's going to be expensive.

      they do this already, it's just that the way they do it now is that the sewage treatment plant releases the treated wastewater back into the river, and the intake at the next town downstream takes it out and drinks it.

      • If one city dumps processed waste water into a river for some other city further down to take the water out then that means the river has done some of the processing.

        Anyone ever hear a phrase like "sunlight is the best disinfectant"? It is often used metaphorically to refer to corruption not lasting long when expose to public scrutiny but it comes from a real world observation that sunlight does kill a lot of what makes people sick.

        This works similarly for wastewater that is allowed to leach out into the g

    • Yeah. Don't they know you're supposed to dump your sewage into the river and let the NEXT town reprocess it?

      In case it didn't come through, that was sarcasm. Unless you're at the very top of the watershed you're already drinking reprocessed sewage. River water. Well water. It's all flowing downstream from the sewage treatment plants above you. Reprocessing it into potable water locally just means you get to use it multiple times before the next town in line gets their chance.

      • The saying "sunlight is the best disinfectant" isn't just metaphorical, there's real life basis for this saying.

        Dumping water into a river for some other city downstream to use means that the water has been exposed to sunlight to kill off diseases before the disease has an opportunity to kill people. Also part of the process is exposure to air for that to allow for the breaking down of many bad things that could cause harm to people. Remove the river from the process and something as powerful and reliable

    • Forget it, Jake - it's Chinatown!
    • So we should use nuclear power plants to treat waste water. Which is exactly what Arizona does with Palo Verde. Two birds with one stone.

    • Uhh . . . [checks calendar . . . yes, it *is* 2023!] . . .

      You, and California, are *so* late to the party as to be amusing.

      This is *not* new technology, nor is it untried, etc.

      Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas area) hit 100% full reprocessing of sewage *long* ago.

      And by that, I mean cleaning *every last drop* of sewage, and testing it, to the point that it is returned Lake Meade.

      I'm kind of surprised that California hasn't bothered to do the same (but then, I have to remind myself that it *is* California!).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by unrtst ( 777550 )

        Just curious... has anyone tried (or ran the numbers for) running two separate water feeds to all homes in an area? One potable, and one not? Seems like there's a LOT of potable water wasted on things that don't need that. Just doing toilets would be a HUGE savings, but obviously other things too (outdoor water spigots, laundry, maybe shower, etc..). It would take a considerable investment up front, but you wouldn't need as much refinement on the filtering.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          I've never seen an attempt, but I suspect local (by house) greywater recycling might be less expensive.

          Right now, there is an *extremely* long (more than a decade) sewer replacement going on. You'd have to do it all again to add a second set of water lines.

          There *are* aquifers here that are not only not-potable, but that can't even be processed into it. Years ago, the "Las Venice" proposal would have used one to run a canal down Fremont street, but the hullabaloo about "water!" overwhelmed that little det

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      > They better set some extreme guidelines for safety checks

      Honestly? They're *supposed* to be doing that already. Wastewater is treated and then released into the environment, usually into rivers where people play and swim and fish. This dilutes it, of course, so maybe chemical contaminants are not as big a deal as they would be if you send it directly to the tap. But the kind of biological contamination you're probably a lot more worried about (like, say, cholera) would still be a very serious issue

    • This is not a new process. We have been treating waste water for a long time.

      We used to dump untreated waste directly into the rivers, lakes, and oceans. That didn't work out so well as populations increased. So we started treating the water before dumping it into the rivers, lakes, and oceans. There were still problems occasionally, but we learned and got better at it.

      In modern times, we do pretty well at treating wastewater. It is commonly used for watering plants, etc.

      In my area we have a project-pl

  • 1. Clean wastewater/sewage so it is clean enough to return to the river.
    2. Return it in the river.
    3. Next town down the river takes water from river.
    4. Clean the water to drinking-water standards.

    The new plan is to skip steps 3 and 4.

    The only surprise is that this isn't widespread practice already.

    • Re:We do this already (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sid crimson ( 46823 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @04:48PM (#64094390)

      1. Clean wastewater/sewage so it is clean enough to return to the river.
      2. Return it in the river.
      3. Next town down the river takes water from river.
      4. Clean the water to drinking-water standards.

      The new plan is to skip steps 3 and 4.

      The only surprise is that this isn't widespread practice already.

      The irony is that, in your example, the river's ecosystem may suffer because the water is too clean.

    • Thank you, Jonadab, for the correction [slashdot.org]. I did mean "skip steps 2 and 3."

      I'll chalk that up to having either too much pre-Christmas eggnog, or not enough, depending on how you look at it.

  • about climate change causing sea level rise they should invest in desalination plants, help keep the ocean from rising by desalination

    • I assume that is intended as satire, since it makes no actual sense.

      ha ha.

      • both a little humor and practical solution to fresh water shortage, i would trust desalinated water before i would trust filtered sewer water

        • both a little humor and practical solution to fresh water shortage, i would trust desalinated water before i would trust filtered sewer water

          Why would you trust it more? Is the sea life house trained in your part of the world?
          In my part of the world, they pee and poop wherever they want...

        • If you think about all the water we've pumped out of the ground which either through evaporation or runoff makes its way to the ocean desalination might not be bad idea. Of course that generally takes a tremendous amount of electricity if I'm not mistaken.

  • Scientist: This is not safe for human consumption!
    Politician: It is now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      Can you name a single scientist with any credentials in the field who has said this isn't safe for human consumption? No, you cannot, because there are none.

      This is decades old technology, and has been in use for that long to pump cleaned up sewer water back into the ground water reservoirs by the same people, in the same place. The new program just allows it to be used more directly.

      It's literally cleaner than the ground water they are using it to replenish.

      Moron.

      • Can you name a single scientist with any credentials in the field who has said this isn't safe for human consumption? No, you cannot, because there are none.

        This is decades old technology, and has been in use for that long to pump cleaned up sewer water back into the ground water reservoirs by the same people, in the same place. The new program just allows it to be used more directly.

        It's literally cleaner than the ground water they are using it to replenish.

        Moron.

        He really is a moron.

        The issue that's glossed over is that decisions tend to be political, which led to the Detroit issue that has been cited elsewhere. Well run systems are hardly noticed, such as the one in Orange County, CA that replenishes the Anaheim Hills aquifer... and has done so for a couple of decades now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          I've toured that facility (as a guest of one of the board members of the city utility, at the time). One of the arguments for pumping it into the ground (and not that strong of one) was that the R/O water is so clean, it can be a tad unhealthy to drink (water that's too pure can leech certain minerals out of your bones, if that's all you drink). Certainly, it's cleaner than the naturally occurring aquifer.

          • I've toured that facility (as a guest of one of the board members of the city utility, at the time). One of the arguments for pumping it into the ground (and not that strong of one) was that the R/O water is so clean, it can be a tad unhealthy to drink (water that's too pure can leech certain minerals out of your bones, if that's all you drink). Certainly, it's cleaner than the naturally occurring aquifer.

            Water with some impurities also tastes better - taste testing proves it over and over again. ;-)

      • The fact that you explode so violently over a simple joke says more about the matter than the joke ever could have, you know that, yes?

  • I think it was Sheryl Crow that came out as a single square of toilet paper per toilet visit type of a girl, suggesting that it should be mandated. I remember something about her washing toilet cloth between uses or some such nonsense as well. Then they came out with eating bugs for protein (I am a vegetarian for health reasons, glad I don't need to care about that).

    Now they will treat sewage and put it back into the drinking water supply. I suppose if it is actually clean after then there is no difference

  • By doing what other states have been doing for a long time. Of course California will strut around and pretend they're blazing the trail and try to claim righteous indignation, but I digress. https://www.wateronline.com/do... [wateronline.com]

    • Re:California is leading the way! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @03:01PM (#64094101) Homepage Journal

      There's nothing new or innovative about this. It's technology that's been in use - in California - for decades. Only difference is not pumping it underground before reusing it.

  • California needs to desalinate water to meet their water needs. They will need a large supply of reliable energy to make this happen, and only nuclear fission will do that.

    In the UAE they were able to get a gigawatt scale nuclear reactor online in about 10 years. Putting a solid timeline on the project is difficult since it is easy to set different milestones for when things start and when they are completed. Construction started in 2012 but there was planning that was done before that. The reactor was

    • Unfortunately (fortunately?) I think these were just guidelines that would allow municipalities to implement plans to do toilet to tap, not any actual plans (with funding) to do so.

      So more likely than not, municipal utilities will be the ones to do any actual implementation, and any role that a politician might play would be as a spoiler for votes, rather than as a champion, for exactly the reasons you laid out.

      The only high profile example I can give for a statewide, state-driven initiative, that had a pol

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

      How about instead California stops letting most of their rainwater and snowmelt run into the ocean? Snowpack on the Sierras alone averages 150% of the state's water needs (and some years much more than that). The past couple years have been mondo rainy, to the point of flooding, but 95% of the rainwater was allowed to simply run off. (Farmers wanted to pump some of it back into the aquifer, and were denied.) Money was allocated for more reservoirs 40-some years ago but none have been built. And so on. Calif

  • It used to be you'd treat waste water to be 'good enough for nature' then dump in into a lake or marsh to let nature finish the job.

    If you do the job properly, we're now better at it than nature. Dumping that processed water anywhere but back into your clean water system means that you're doing more testing and more treatment at your intake pipes - because you can't trust what nature provided to be safe in the first place, never mind before whatever waste local humans have dumped into it.

    Keeping the whole

  • This is nothing new. Lake Mead is where Las Vegas gets their drinking water. It's also where they dump their treated sewage.

    https://lasvegassun.com/news/2014/aug/24/how-our-water-goes-toilet-tap/
    https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/east-valley/how-the-las-vegas-water-treatment-district-keeps-sewage-out-of-your-tap-water/
    https://tataandhoward.com/reclaimed-water-from-toilet-to-tap-infographic/

  • and people think nothing of it as they happily drink the water
    But for some strange reason, they get upset by recycled sewage, that is cleaner than the stuff from lakes or rivers

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      There is actually a difference there. Different animals are subject to, or carry, different communicable diseases. One of the reasons dogs make great pets, is because they don't carry very many of the same diseases as humans, especially not most of the really serious ones. The most notable exception is rabies, and we vaccinate pets for that, religiously.

      Fish, in general, are even more dissimilar to humans than dogs are, and are subject to even fewer of the same communicable diseases.

      You wouldn't want to

    • Well, to be fair, sewage contains a lot more crap than.... well.... crap.

      I don't know about everyone else, but the thing that concerns me is not so much the human waste, it's the people dumping chemicals down the drain...

  • If California can't regulate Pacific Gas & Explosion--then what chance do they have of self-regulating themselves. We need a line-item vote.
  • not to go/live in California.

  • I'm only drinking Brawndo from here on out.

  • Obligatory WC Fields quote:

    "I don't drink water; Fish shit in it!"

  • Seriously.

  • Why bother with an amount of water consumption that is almost insignificant? Indoor household water usage represents about 2.5% of all water usage in California. The reason we think about any of these measures is due to the 50% dumped or allowed to flow into rivers and the ocean and the 40% used by agriculture. Address those two uses, and the water scarcity problem goes away. Ignore them, and nothing else matters. The reason the California government spends time thinking about and publicizing the effor

    • This is about economics. The municipalities already have rights to the water they have... and this gives them more options to stretch that out.

      Fighting everybody else for water is a losing proposition (and we're talking more than ranchers, farmers, fisheries, hydropower, and ecologists - we're talking about other states and Mexico). California had already been stonewalling the other states with regard to a renegotiated Colorado River agreement.

      https://calmatters.org/environ... [calmatters.org]

      "After nearly a year of inten

  • There's a thought. Stop wasting rainwater.
    Imagine all the drugs in the wastewater, now being sent to other homes.

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