Revisiting “Toilet to Tap”
The Los Angeles Times responds to the latest issue of water shortage in the city with an op-ed piece about the “toilet to tap” program instituted several years ago.
The city is considering a similar program now, which would take wastewater from the home and purify it in a facility before pumping it back into homes through groundwater.
Not only has this solution already been proposed; it’s already been paid for and under-utilized.
“Built in the 1990s at a cost of $55 million, it was used for a few days then shut down seven years ago. As Los Angeles Department of Water and Power engineer Bill Van Wagoner put it, ‘We spent slightly under $1 million per acre foot (of water produced) before we had to shut it off.’ That comes down to about $2.75 a gallon — as opposed to the fraction of a cent per gallon usually paid by DWP customers.”
Other states have employed similar water recycling programs, with the main detractor that the public envisions a program like “toilet to tap” as eventually drinking their own waste. The reality is that the water is purified for up to five years, so it really does take a long time to travel from toilet to tap.
For more resources on water and water quality, visit both Earth 911′s Beaches 911.
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Oh, sunny, green California
posted on August 31st, 2007 at 2:06 pm
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