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Yahoo!It's nice to think of our drinking water as pure and clean, from rain and melted snow filtered by miles of streams and earth, and sometimes it is. But not usually. There just isn't enough of that to supply a world of thirsty humans.
In some places, people are drinking very clean water that was once in the toilet. Well... maybe we're all drinking water that was once in a toilet, come to think of it.
With only about 1% of the water on the planet available for our agricultural, industrial, household, and drinking uses--most is saltwater and some is frozen on the poles, hopefully for a while anyway--that 1% is constantly recycling in the environment and in our wastewater and potable water treatment plants.
A new reclamation plant in Orange County, California takes the water that comes from our toilets, sinks, and showers and transforms it into water that is cleaner than the groundwater that it then joins when it leaves the plant. (Normally, less-treated wastewater flows into rivers and ends up in the ocean, along with pharmaceuticals and other substances difficult to remove, and which fish don't care for either.) Water traveling into this facility is pumped through massive filters and reverse osmosis chambers, then disinfected with hydrogen peroxide, ultraviolet irradiated, and further treated.
People don't like the idea of sewage to drinking water for some reason, so when it leaves the plant it is pumped miles away to a lake and ends up, cool and clear, back in our homes.
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