Sludge Watch ==> Orange County, San Diego and LA - plans to drink sewage effluent

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Putting sewage effluent into the Orange County drinking water supply?  Bad 
plan.

Sewage effluent contains antibiotic resistance bacteria and pathogens from 
the sewage treatment process.  It has surfactants, antimicrobials and 
endocrine disruptors.

The rich may be able to afford  to buy bottled water to drink.  But by 
putting the sewage effluent into the ground we risk serious contamination of 
the aquifer and the drinking water for many millions of people.  There's 
more in 'reclaimed water' than water molecules.

We shouldn't use water to flush wastes along a pipe.  We need strict water 
conservation rather than wastewater effluent recycling into drinking water.




CALIFORNIA: Transforming wastewater
05.dec.07
LA Times


www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-wastewater5dec05,0,1025800.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail


The Orange County Water District's new $480-million Groundwater 
Replenishment System is, according to this editorial, set to launch 
operations Dec. 15. It will take treated wastewater -- a.k.a. sewage -- from 
an adjacent treatment plant, force it through state-of-the-art 
microfiltration, reverse-osmosis and ultraviolet-ray purification systems, 
and then dump the resulting 70 million gallons of purified water a day into 
a system of ponds in Anaheim, from which it will percolate slowly into an 
aquifer and into the county's drinking water supply.

When Los Angeles tried to do something like this a decade ago, constructing 
a $55-million wastewater reclamation plant in the eastern San Fernando 
Valley, citizens flew off the handle, fretting about the prospect of water 
flowing from "toilet to tap." Politicians who had supported the project 
reversed course in 2000 and shut it down.

The editorial says that the Orange County's Groundwater Replenishment 
System, the largest of its kind in the world, is getting nothing but kudos. 
Running at full capacity, it will provide enough water to satisfy 140,000 
families each year, at a lower cost than relying on imported water from 
Northern California. It also will reduce the amount of sewage the county 
dumps into the Pacific Ocean, making beaches cleaner and safer.

On Monday, San Diego's City Council voted to study a water-reuse project of 
its own, overriding a veto from Mayor Jerry Sanders. And the Los Angeles 
Department of Water and Power is once again considering plans to recycle 
wastewater.

The editorial says that as the discussions proceed, Angelenos should resist 
false notions about fecal matter spewing from kitchen faucets and accept the 
basic truth about, well, fecal matter spewing from kitchen faucets. Water 
molecules are water molecules are water molecules. The same limited number 
of them have been recycled continuously for billions of years. Treated 
sewage already flows into the Colorado River, the San Joaquin River and the 
Sacramento River -- all upstream sources of L.A.'s water. And that water, 
once cleaned, is perfectly safe.

With supplies from the Colorado River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta 
increasingly unpredictable, regions need to do what they can to tap into 
local water resources. Wastewater reuse is a relatively cost-effective and 
environmentally friendly way to make that happen. Cheers to Orange County 
for outgrowing its potty-humor phase. It's time for Los Angeles to do the 
same.