Can Wastewater Help Us Adapt to Climate Change?
8/27/23: LA Progressive: Treating wastewater is a powerful solution, finally gaining more public support.
Don’t call it ‘toilet to tap’ — California plans to turn sewage into drinking water
Cal Matters, 8/1/23: Waste would undergo extensive treatment and testing before it’s piped directly to taps, providing a new, costly but renewable water supply. The state’s new draft rules are more than a decade in the making.
Reno’s breaking new ground in wastewater recycling, and other communities are watching
KUNR Public Radio, July 5, 2023: The Reno area doesn’t have a history of threatened water supplies, and historic snowfall this past winter eased drought conditions in Nevada and across parts of the Mountain West. But that could shift quickly with climate change.
NASA Achieves Water Recovery Milestone on International Space Station
NASA, June 20, 2023: For space missions that venture beyond low Earth orbit, new challenges include how to provide basic needs for crew members without resupply missions from the ground. NASA is developing life support systems that can regenerate or recycle consumables such as food, air, and water and is testing them on the International Space Station.
Colorado to reuse water for drinking, creating new supply
The Associated Press, October 21, 2022: Colorado’s water quality agency gave unanimous preliminary approval to regulate direct potable reuse — the process of treating sewage and sending it directly to taps without first being dispersed in a larger water body.
Transforming Water: Pure Water Soquel Embraces One Water Approach
Water Finance & Management, June 20, 2022: Water management strategies tend to evolve gradually with slowly changing community needs. That’s rare in California, where continued population growth and prolonged drought exacerbated by climate change have sparked dramatic change, through initiatives such as the Pure Water San Diego program and Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System, now undergoing final expansion. Further north along the Pacific Coast, Pure Water Soquel is another example of timely, transformative action for a more resilient and reliable water supply.
In An Arid U.S. West, Water Agencies Look to Deliver Purified Wastewater Directly to Customers’ Faucets, Despite “Yuck Factor”
ENSIA, August 8, 2021: For decades, water officials in San Diego, realizing the city was facing an ever-drier future, have worked to make the idea of what’s known as “direct potable reuse,” or DPR, more palatable to residents. In the 1990s, that turned into an uphill battle. The technology delivers purified wastewater to customers’ faucets without an environmental buffer — such as a groundwater aquifer, river or other go-between — prior to distribution, so opponents labeled it “toilet-to-tap.” The epithet stuck and torpedoed the Southern California city’s water recycling plans.
The Future of Water in the American Southwest
Counter Punch, April 27, 2021: The Southwestern states, in particular, have faced frequent and ongoing droughts over the past two decades, and traditional water supplies are failing. As groundwater supplies in the region have depleted substantially, rainfall has decreased and the costs of importing water have risen substantially.