20060725 KDDC Recycled Water

Recycled Water

July 25^th, 2006 by Kevin Dayhoff

Paul over at Wizbang has posted an interesting item about what very well may be a portion of the water supply for all of us in the distant future.

For those not following the story, Australia is experiencing quite a drought.

As the world – and Maryland – continues to search for the increasingly elusive future sources of water - - desalinization and recycling anthropogenically tainted wastewater may very well be the future.

Indeed, the water that comes out the discharge pipe of the Westminster Wastewater Treatment Plant is arguably cleaner that what is brought into the intake at the Water Treatment Plant.

Although, a closed system is worthy of consideration, perhaps what may be more palatable is to position a re-uptake intake several hundred yards downstream from the Wastewater Treatment Plant and give Mother Nature an opportunity to further purify the water.

Beyond, public perceptions, the one scientific challenge is the increased number of pharmaceuticals that now make it through the wastewater purification process.

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) such as Acetaminophen, Caffeine, Carbamazepine, Cimetidine, Codeine, Cotinine, Diltiazem, Hydrocodone, Ketoprofen, Metformin, Nicotine, Paraxanthine, Salbutamol, Sulfamethoxazole, Trimethoprim, and Estrone.

For more information on the issue of pharmaceuticals and PPCPs, go here or here.

More research may be needed in utilizing recycled water - and Maryland certainly does not need to be the beta on this, however, years in the future, recycling – or using “reclaimed water” may be a solution.

For more information, consider going here.

The San Diego municipal web site, says:

“In San Diego water is too precious a resource to be used just once. To meet future water demands and avoid shortages, while reducing our dependence on imported water, the City of San Diego has built the North City Water Reclamation Plant and the South Bay Water Reclamation Plant. These plants treat wastewater to a level that is approved for irrigation, manufacturing and other non-drinking, or non-potable purposes. The North City Plant has the capability to treat 30 million gallons a day and the South Bay Plant can treat 15 million gallons a day. Recycled water, also referred to as reclaimed water, gives San Diego a dependable, year-round, locally controlled water resource. Using recycled water is cost-effective, reliable and good for the environment.”

If anything, may any discussion of future use of recycled water be a signal that we need to really start taking this water thing very very seriously.

For the immediate future, the county needs to pull out all the stops on developing the Union Mills and Gillis Falls reservoirs.

And oh, the editorial in a local publication on July 5^th, 2006, was a simplistic and uninformed cheap shot that certainly did not serve the best interests of the public.

Before one endeavors to criticize the City of Westminster about water allocation, please bear in mind that you are preaching to the choir. Westminster painfully understands that it must find more water.

The current administration and board of elected officials have continued to work hard at identifying and securing future sources of water, including ideas that cannot be discussed publicly which involve property acquisition.

Other ideas that are working their way through the system are along the lines of running a pipe up to the Union Mills reservoir water source while the reservoir works its way through the permit process.

The formula that MDE is currently using is sound as far as maintaining a basic public health, safety and welfare matter. If the drought of record from 1964 to 1966 were to be repeated, public safety would be a concern. Working in concert with MDE will be in everyone’s best interests. Never-the-less, the new, retro-active conservative quantification of water supply resources have put municipalities across the state in a bad place.

To deal with this new reality, scaling back the number of building permits per year is undoubtedly in order, but one thing that City officials may very well want to look into, is finding a good opportunity to give the Bair v. Mayor and Council of Westminster, 221 P.2d 642 (Mary. Ct. of Appeal 1966), a court test. A lot has changed since 1966.

Please know that two years after the City purchased the water system from a private company (in 1964,) the Maryland Court of Appeals declared the water system a "public utility" and promulgated a ruling that forces the City to provide water to any property near an existing water line.

In Bair v. Mayor and Council of Westminster, 221 P.2d 642 (Mary. Ct. of Appeal 1966), the Maryland Court of Appeal found that “when a municipality undertakes to perform duties of public service companies, it must, insofar as services are reasonably within its range of performance, furnish services to all applicants within the area supplied and cannot unjustly discriminate between consumers therein.”

Speaking for myself, housing developments are getting old. The continued onslaught on our quality of life is getting well beyond acceptable levels of collective tolerance. We must re-think this and plan better.

Meanwhile Paul at Wizbang writes:

“Drought-stricken Australia Considers Accepting Reality”

As a scientist, I'm amazed this is even being debated.

Drought-stricken Australia considers drinking recycled sewage

Residents of a drought-stricken Australian town will vote this week on whether they're prepared to drink water recycled from sewage -- the first such scheme in the country and one of only a handful in the world.

The controversial proposal has divided the town of Toowoomba in the state of Queensland, which has faced water restrictions for a decade.

Local Mayor Dianne Thorley, who is leading the "Yes" campaign, said that without drought-breaking rains the town's dams could dry up within two years.

She insisted the 73 million dollar (US 55 million dollar) plan to pump purified wastewater back into the main reservoir for drinking was safe.

"Somewhere, sometime we have got to stand up and change the way we are doing things," she told AFP as the town prepared for the July 29 referendum.

"Otherwise our great grandchildren are going to be living in something like the Sahara desert."

A vocal "No" campaign opposes the proposal, and says there are unforeseeable health risks for the town's 100,000 residents.

"The scientists say it should be safe," said local councillor Keith Beer, one of three members of the nine-strong council that opposes the plan. "That is not good enough for me, for my kids and my grandkids."

Paul at Wizbang sums it up this way:

For those of you cringing out there, I have some bad news for you. Every drop of water you've ever consumed has been recycled sewerage. Yes, even that fancy French bottled stuff.

Water, like everything in life, has a cycle. That coffee you consumed this morning was dinosaur excrement at one time. I live at the bottom of the Mississippi river. I don't need to tell you what I drink every day.

We're so self-deluded. We'll dump treated sewerage effluent into a natural body of water then we'll later use that same body of water as an input for a municipal system... But if you try to hook one to the other, people freak. What do they think happens in the middle and why don't they think we can reproduce it?

A closed system is actually safer as there is less chance of accidental contamination by toxins.

I understand it's "icky" to many people but closed (actually they're semi-closed) systems make infinitely more sense.

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