This is just one post in the Recycled Water Category

Tucson contemplates using recycled water to boost drinking water supplies

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 9, 2008 at 5:34 am

From Alternet.org:

Faced with increasing demand for water, Tucson Water Company has recommended that the city eventually use its growing stream of sewage to augment its drinking water. Using a procedure known as the Fountain Valley process, Tucson Water could completely close the gap that will emerge in the coming decades between Tucson’s demand and supply.

“You could offset it all” with treated water, says Tucson Water Director David Modeer in an article by B. Poole in the Tucson Citizen. Treated sewage is much cleaner than what most Tucson citizens are drinking now, called the Clearwater blend of Avra Valley ground water and Colorado River water. The river contains chemically treated wastewater from cities upstream, along with traces of chemicals, hormones and drugs that a system such as Orange County’s would remove.

The Fountain Valley process involves chemical treatment, filtering, more filtering, radiation zapping, and more chemical treatment. It yields water that is nearly distilled, which is then injected into the underground water supply. Orange County has been using the process since January, and its success could serve as a road map to Tucson’s future.

Even Tucson’s most vocal critic of drinking wastewater can’t deny that water put through the Fountain Valley process is clean. “Given enough money, you can treat water to make it pure — more pure than what we’re drinking now, for sure,” said former state legislator John Kromko, who last year spearheaded an effort to ban the use of wastewater in drinking water.