California residents have been forced to be extremely conscious about their water usage in recent years, as worsening drought cycles exacerbated by changing weather patterns have depleted the state's water supply.
Now, state regulators have approved a new method of giving Californians some relief: treating and converting sewage waste into pure drinking water.
"Today heralds a new era of water reuse," Patricia Sinicropi, executive director of WateReuse California, said in a statement.
While critics of the idea have had understandable qualms about drinking water that was formerly sewage, the technology has been proven to be safe and reliable. In some parts of California, such as Orange County, the practice is already partially in effect, as wastewater is purified, blended into aquifers and reservoirs, and then eventually drawn back to the surface and used for drinking water. This practice is known as "indirect potable reuse."
The practice recently approved by state regulators is "direct potable reuse," meaning that purified wastewater can now be fed straight into drinking water systems without passing through an environmental buffer such as an aquifer or reservoir.
The process of purifying the water involves putting pre-treated waste discharge through intense microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and disinfection by ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide, along with an additional ozone disinfectant process and biological carbon filtration.
The process is significantly less energy-intensive than desalinating seawater and also more environmentally friendly, as it lowers the amount of wastewater that would otherwise be dumped into rivers or oceans. Conversely, there is no environmental benefit to removing seawater from the ocean.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is now planning a $6 billion facility in the city of Carson, south of Los Angeles, which would become the largest water-recycling project in the United States. Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Diego, and San Francisco also have plans to put the practice into effect.
California will become the second U.S. state to approve direct potable reuse, as Texas allowed the development of two such small-scale systems in 2014 to serve towns stricken by severe drought.
As water resources continue to become more scarce as a result of human activities, "extreme" water recycling methods may become more commonplace.
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