Background Info:

Recent events and news about water scarcity got me thinking about this. So the question is essentially the title. Or am I missing something?

If you live anywhere that uses a sewer system rather than septic tanks, isn’t it already doing that?

In my area, the water company pulls in from the river, filters and processes it, and pipes it out to homes. It gets used in the homes, discharged into the sewer to a treatment plant, treated, and then pumped back into the river.

Even if your water company’s intake is before the sewage treatment plant, the next town’s intake is downstream. So if you’re not drinking your neighbor’s processed toilet water, you’re drinking that of the town upstream.

Is getting mixed with river water simply enough to “dilute” the ick-factor here, or is there something I’m missing?

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgOPEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    In some parts of Phoenix AZ , they use the treated grey water to water grass golf courses

    Using grey water for agriculture / irrigation purposes is pretty common. It’s why they tell you not to drink (or make sun tea) from the sprinkler water.

    The issue is really when there are heavy rains and the treatment facilities are overwhelmed and RAW sewage gets dumped into the river

    Yeah, that’s why combined sewer and stormwater systems have fallen out of use (and are illegal in most places now). That used to be a much bigger problem, but thankfully, most places have separated those systems and made it illegal to discharge stormwater into the sanitary sewers. My house still has the old connections where the gutter downspouts tied into the sewer line (house is from the 50s), but they’re capped with concrete.