From the toilet to the tap: Bottoms up
Bay Area residents willing to drink treated water to quench thirst, poll shows
SAN JOSE, CALIF.— San Francisco Bay Area residents consider California’s historic drought so dire that a majority say they would be willing to drink purified toilet water.
In a Bay Area Council poll released Wednesday, many residents appear to be putting aside long-held notions about the environment, health and public costs to support bolder options to increase the water supply.
While 58 per cent of those polled say they favour adding appropriately treated recycled water to the drinking water supply, 63 per cent say they support building more dams and reservoirs, with 23 per cent strongly in favour.
“That’s a high number in an environmentally conscious place like the Bay Area,” said Rufus Jeffris, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council, a pro-business advocacy group.
Only 36 per cent of those surveyed in the online poll said they supported a $5 “drought fee” on top of their water bill. But 88 per cent of those polled say they support the expanded use of recycled sewage water — mostly used at golf courses, car washes and other outdoor spaces — and 75 per cent favour the construction of more desalination plants to filter seawater into drinking water.
It seems people are willing to go out of their comfort zones in the midst of California’s epic drought, now in its fourth year.
“I’m a squeamish person, but I think I could do it,” Susan Kay of San Jose said about drinking treated sewage water, joking, “Just close your eyes and plug your nose.”
Drinking recycled water is a reality for residents of Orange County, Calif., and Wichita Falls, Texas.
In 2008, the Orange County Water District began filtering treated sewage water in a three-pronged process — purifying it through reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light — and infusing it into aquifers. It remains there for a year before being pumped into the drinking water system.
This produces roughly 380 million litres of recycled water each day, making it the world’s largest “indirect potable reuse program,” said Mike Markus, general manager of the Orange County Water District.
After suffering from a devastating drought, Wichita Falls established its water recycling program last year. Unlike Orange County, Wichita Falls draws water from surface reservoirs rather than rechargeable aquifers.
“There is a yuck factor to it at first; it’s a psychological barrier,” said Wichita Falls city manager Darron Leiker. However, “this certainly helped us survive the drought. Without that, I truly believe we ran a high risk of running out of water.”
Recycled water has been used in San Jose and other cities in the Bay Area for more than a decade, but only for irrigating golf courses, landscaping and industrial uses.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews and other local leaders drank treated waste water in April while calling for expanding the use of recycled water, and mixing it with existing groundwater to serve back to the public to drink. The proposal could get a boost from legislation in Sacramento to speed up environmental approvals on toilet to tap projects.
Fifteen years ago, community backlash halted a toilet to tap project in the Dublin San Ramon Services District, which instead limited its water recycling for irrigation. Now, the water district is exploring new technologies once again to provide the East Bay cities with recycled drinking water.