Constantino, Annika. “What’S in Your Drinking Water? If You Live in One of These States, It Might Soon Be Recycled Sewage.” Cnbc, 19 Aug. 2022, www.cnbc.com/2022/08/19/direct-potable-reuse-why-drinking-water-could-include-recycled-sewage.html. Accessed 29 Jan. 2023.
This article talks about DPR or Direct Portable Use which sends highly treated wastewater into our drinking water after a purification process. California is in the process of legalizing it as it meets all federal drinking quality standards. Although this method meets all safety standards they still need to work to overcome people’s perception of “Drinking sewer water”. Some cities like San Diego have indirect potable reuse that has been in use for over 2 decades.
I definitely understand the “yuck” factor, however this is the first article that had a solution already built waiting for approval that could actually contribute to solving the problem. I could see a large transition to a system like this having massive positive impacts on reducing our contributions to global warming. I also see other potential uses for this outside of the U.S. potentially helping countries with less access to clean water find a way to “recycle” their water. I support the integration of these systems and believe that without practical solutions like this simply telling people to “use less water” will never work.
I completely agree. We’re switching to renewable energy sources and reusable plastics, and that means we should also be reusing water as much as possible. I know that I’d be fine with drinking the treated sewage water as soon as I understood how the water was being treated, but I doubt a majority of the country would be okay with it. If there was a popular vote, do you think most people would approve this?
I think education should be a main focus I think once we are able to remove a lot of the stigma we will be able to have people more widely accept using this kind of water.