Water News

Toilet to Tap: Drinking Purified Sewage Water

Recycling sewage water to meet the growing demand for clean water

One day in the near future, you could be drinking water that has been recycled from your toilet. If you live in a city like Anaheim, Calif. you’re already drinking it. While the thought of drinking purified sewage water sounds unappetizing to most, it’s becoming a popular solution to meet the United States’ growing demand for water. According to the USGS, the average person uses 80-100 gallons of water per day but over 27 percent of this water is flushed down the toilet. By recycling sewage water, this water doesn’t go to waste. This new innovative practice is highly sustainable and helps to preserve our most precious resource.
Ingrid Ingebretsen writes blogs about clean water and water filtration systems for LifeSource Water Systems. Ingrid Ingebretsen

Where does this practice already exist?

Cities in the United States have already started using purified sewage water to supplement their water supplies. These types of programs have been used in: Anaheim, Santa Ana and Hanford, Calif. Big Spring, Texas and Mount Pleasant, Mich. Multiple countries have also begun implementing these programs including Spain, Namibia, Australia and Singapore. By 2060, Singapore expects that half of its water demand will be met by treated sewage water. 

 

How is the sewage water treated?

Sewage water treatment plants use rigorous practices to ensure the water they produce is of the highest quality. The first step is to send the water through the regular water treatment process to ensure the sewage water is suitable to be sent into the ocean. Normal water treatment facilities would then send the water into the ocean but the sewage water treatment plants continue treatment. They send the water through micro-filters with pores as small as 1/300 the width of a human hair to remove solid waste. Then they use reverse osmosis to filter out the microscopic viruses, bacteria and pesticides that are too small to be caught by the micro-filter. Once this is completed, the water is zapped with an ultraviolet light to sanitize it. The final step is to pump the water back into the nearest aquifer to replenish the healthy minerals found in naturally-occurring water. This decreases the water’s acidity from the reverse osmosis and makes the water taste better.  By the end of the treatment process, the water is clean, safe and healthy to drink. 

 

Orange County's groundwater replenishment system

The Orange County Water District, located in Southern California, has seen huge success with their Groundwater Replenishment System in cities including Anaheim, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. This system recycles sewage water and pumps the treated water back into its aquifers to refill the drinking water supply for over 2.4 million people. Since the program began in 2008, the OCWD has been producing 100 million gallons of purified sewage water per day. Before distributing the treated sewage water, the California Department of Public Health and the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Board are required to approve water quality reports to ensure Orange County residents are drinking high-quality and safe water. 

 

Maybe it's time to make a change

Although the thought of drinking treated sewage water initially raises concern, it is a safe, sustainable practice that just might be able to meet the United States’ growing demand for water. Perhaps it is time to take a cue from cities like Anaheim, Calif. and Big Spring, Texas and implement sewage water treatment plants everywhere.

 





INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

We want to be transparent about the data we and our partners collect and how we use it, so you can best exercise control over your personal data. For more information, please see our Privacy Policy.

INFORMATION OUR PARTNERS COLLECT

We use the following partners to better improve your overall web browsing experience. They use cookies and other mechanisms to connect you with your social networks and tailor advertising to better match your interests. You can elect to opt-out of this information collection by unticking the boxes below.

Marketing and Advertising cookies allow us to track what users are looking at and engaging with on our websites. These cookies may be set by the advertising and media partners we work with. In some cases this information may be used by those companies to build a profile of interests and then show relevant advertising on other websites you visit.

Analytics cookies allow us to collect information to analyse how many people are using our websites, how our website is being used and its technical performance. By analysing this data we can then implement changes to our websites to make them more useful and improve the experience we offer.