Background Info:
Recent events and news about water scarcity got me thinking about this. So the question is essentially the title. Or am I missing something?
If you live anywhere that uses a sewer system rather than septic tanks, isn’t it already doing that?
In my area, the water company pulls in from the river, filters and processes it, and pipes it out to homes. It gets used in the homes, discharged into the sewer to a treatment plant, treated, and then pumped back into the river.
Even if your water company’s intake is before the sewage treatment plant, the next town’s intake is downstream. So if you’re not drinking your neighbor’s processed toilet water, you’re drinking that of the town upstream.
Is getting mixed with river water simply enough to “dilute” the ick-factor here, or is there something I’m missing?
That IF is doing quite a bit of work there …
And again IF the water is treated…
Yes. If those are both done then there is little issue
In some parts of Phoenix AZ , they use the treated grey water to water grass golf courses
The issue is really when there are heavy rains and the treatment facilities are overwhelmed and RAW sewage gets dumped into the river In other places there is insufficient or no treatment and again raw sewage goes into the river where the next town downstream needs to use the river water for drinking
im not sure if they ever happens here. They have overflow areas and those get dumped with a bunch of chlorine added. So its not totally raw but its not properly treated. They also have seperate rain water and sewer so the overflow is not sewage but they still treat it because it can still pick up all sorts of stuff from roads and surfaces and such. If the overflows don’t get overwhelmed then it gets full treatment before being let into the watershed. Which basically means enough time is given for the chlorine to work. Granted they spent a bundle for the public works to get this done and prevent flooding. Not that im complaining as that is why I like where I live. You get all this talk about folks running from the area due to high taxes but you know im fine with high taxes and a well managed watershed, public spaces, public services, and such. disclaimer. I am not a watershed expert and don’t work for the water district so this is just my understanding from the various things that pop up on it (you would be surprised the information you get if you actually read your water bill and such)
Using grey water for agriculture / irrigation purposes is pretty common. It’s why they tell you not to drink (or make sun tea) from the sprinkler water.
Yeah, that’s why combined sewer and stormwater systems have fallen out of use (and are illegal in most places now). That used to be a much bigger problem, but thankfully, most places have separated those systems and made it illegal to discharge stormwater into the sanitary sewers. My house still has the old connections where the gutter downspouts tied into the sewer line (house is from the 50s), but they’re capped with concrete.