Sunday, January 27, 2008
News
Waste not, want not
Toilet water to drinking water may soon be a reality for many Georgians
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CREDIT: shutterstock.com
By Josh Clark
The recent snow, ice and rain may have led some Georgians to think the drought is over, but it’s not. Talk of neighborhood pools being closed for next summer is rife among kids who’ve asked last summer’s lifeguards about it. Gov. Sonny Perdue has continued heated talks with his counterparts in Alabama and Florida over water rights. And now, with Cobb County discussing the possibility of Six Flags shutting down some of their wetter rides, it looks like water parks may soon be relics from an insanely decadent past.
Georgia is not alone in its impending water disaster. Across the country and around the globe, water is becoming increasingly scarce. In some areas, parched necessity has given birth to bizarre invention. In resource-poor Singapore, where water is imported from nearby Malaysia, the government has begun reclaiming water used by its residents and bottling it under the name Nu Water. Australia, one of the driest developed countries in the world and suffering through a five-year-and-counting drought, has taken to reusing water from washing machines and bathtubs. That gray water is being used down under for irrigation.
Meanwhile, back here in the U.S., Orange County, Calif. is asserting itself at the leading edge of water reclamation. In November, the O.C. opened a high-tech water reclamation facility dedicated to transforming water flushed down the toilet back into drinking water. Water in, water out, water in again, you might say. In Orange County, the circle of life is complete.
Don’t laugh. You, too, may soon be drinking the same water you flushed. The F. Wayne Hill water treatment plant in Gwinnett County is on the verge of receiving approval to pump its effluent discharge into Lake Lanier. Although Lanier serves as the drinking water supply for your home (and mine, by the way), this effort is nothing so dramatic as “Soylent Green.” The plant is one of the most advanced in the Southeast, and can bring sewage—called “black water” in the wastewater biz—back to nearly drinkable levels.
“EVERY DROP COUNTS”
While you may be gagging by now, it’s clear that we’ve reached the point where we’re forced to explore strange new ways to offset the wild consumption of the post-Industrial era.
“Every drop counts,” says Spyros Pavlostathis, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on concepts like removing human waste from water, and he says that the technology has advanced as quietly as fluoride was introduced into the drinking supply in the ’50s.
“Water reclamation is already here in several parts of the country,” he says. “It’s not necessarily used for drinking water, but for irrigation.”
This is an example of that grey water concept that Australia has used to the fullest advantage, and it makes sense. We use first-run quality water unnecessarily for a variety of uses, chief among them irrigation. Why use the water we need on our plants when reclaimed water works just as well? This is the driving force behind gray water, which has been a saving grace for businesses like golf courses.
Black water, however, has its limits. You won’t find it at water parks like Whitewater—at least, not in a way its operators intended.