8 ms·

Why people irrationally reject cleaned sewer water, and how to change their mind

84 points by e1ven 15y ago

AretNCarlsen 15y ago
"[I]f you have people imagine the water going into an underground aquifer, for example, and then sitting there for 10 years, the water becomes much more palatable to the public. It budges even those most unwilling to drink the water. ... 'When you do introduce a river or even groundwater ... you run the risk of deteriorating the water that's been treated. You can make the water quality worse.'" I am singularly amused at the possibility of contaminating treated post-sewage water with river water, resulting in a medically less safe but socially more acceptable water supply. The results of a public vote (as to whether to mix river water with the treated water) would at least tell us who needs to be mailed a printed copy of lesswrong.com.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > a printed copy of lesswrong.com. Does such a critter exist? Not as an actual printed copy, but a way of diving into it that's not quite so ... scary? The closest thing I see to a "table of contents" is the list of Sequences.
  - mstevens 15y ago
    ciphergoth produced an ebook of Eliezer's posts recently which I'm finding useful: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/ http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers...
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  > I am singularly amused at the possibility of contaminating treated post-sewage water with river water It is bizarre, isn't it? I don't know about anyone else, but I've spent most of my life thinking of rivers as quite polluted. Even when hiking in wilderness I take a giardia filter.
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
  Water rights in Colorado are...complicated. Aurora, Colorado doesn't have enough for its population. So it pumps water out of the river, sends it to people, purifies the result, and pumps it back into the river. Three times. At different locations. So really they're already drinking their sewage water, only slightly diluted with the water from Denver's sewage water...and heading downstream to supply water to Utah, Nevada, and Southern California. Can't find the reference, though. Sorry.
stretchwithme 15y ago
Its not irrational. I know for a fact that the sun only evaporates the water and leaves the crap behind. Its a process that has been happening for a very long time. And we all know how perfect industrial processes are, especially when managed by the government. The sewer water isn't THAT MUCH cheaper than regular water. So I'd prefer that the experiment be run on someone other than me. If it is cheaper and a city wants cheaper water, let them enjoy it. We should be charging market prices to all users. Then if this actually made economic sense, it would be adopted.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > I know for a fact that the sun only evaporates the water and leaves the crap behind. How is that relevant?
- daeken 15y ago
  This would make some semblance of sense if it weren't for two things: 1) You're not drinking rainwater, I assure you. 2) Sure, the sun evaporates water, and that forms into clouds, and then it rains. Except that things in the atmosphere can taint that rain; this is most noticeable in the form of acid rain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain There's absolutely no reason to believe that treated sewer water is any less safe than the water that's sitting in your reservoir at all.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  And then that water in the clouds falls as snow and rain and then feeds into rivers and reservoirs where fish, insects, deer, ducks, beavers, bears, bird, etc. urinate, defecate, bleed, and die into it. That's why pure unfiltered river water doesn't feed directly to a municipal water supply and is filtered and treated first.
  - stretchwithme 15y ago
    Yes, that's true. I guess I don't trust the municipal water system to do the job. I also don't see how they can filter out all the drugs and salt that sewage water currently contains and is being released into the environment. These things are just going to accumulate. Or is there new invention I'm not aware of? Granted, that's not the argument I originally stated but its definitely a question. If you're aware familiar with the Colorado River, you may know that the water gets saltier and saltier as it is taken out, run through the land and drains back into it. Without any intervention, its pretty brackish by the time it gets to Mexico. Running the same water through humanity over and over again is bound to have a similar problem.
daimyoyo 15y ago
I cannot understand why California has a water supply issue when they are located right next to the largest body of water on Earth. I think the public is much more accepting of desalinized ocean water than they are of reclaimed municipal water.
- timr 15y ago
  Because it's much, much harder and energetically more costly to de-salinate water than it is to "de-poop" water. Biological contaminants can be removed using organic processes, settling and chlorination. Salts and ions form relatively strong bonds with water that are hard to separate.
- joshAg 15y ago
  from my survey engineering course (which engineering major should you choose?) it's because reverse osmosis is a bitch to do, especially compared to cleaning sewage or building dams. however, this isn't as huge of an issue as the article makes out because almost all of california's water goes to agriculture, and no one seems to have a problem with using grey-water for agriculture.
- byoung2 15y ago
  I think the public is much more accepting of desalinized ocean water than they are of reclaimed municipal water. It would be hard to justify the expense, increased energy usage, and damage to marine life that comes with desalination. It makes sense in places like Israel and Saudi Arabia, but in California there are more economical and environmentally friendly options.
- wtracy 15y ago
  Let's see: It takes 5kW/h to produce a cubic meter of fresh water from sea water via reverse osmosis.[0] The population of just LA is a bit over 3 million.[1] The average U.S. citizen consumes 2842 cubic meters of water per year. 5 kWh/m^3 * 8765 h/year * 3,000,000 people * 2842 m^3/person-year = 4863662 kW = 4863 MW. I will conservatively estimate that a nuclear power plant will produce 800 MW.[3] So: 4863 MW / 800 MW/plant = 6 That means we're talking about six full-size nuclear power plants running 24/7 with their entire energy output going toward desalinization to supply LA alone. Extrapolating further, I get that it would take twenty nuclear power plants running full-time to meet just half of the demand for the entirety of southern California. Does that answer your question? (I know my sources aren't all that authoritative--they are just what Google pulled up. Feel free to redo the calculations with more accurate numbers, or just to double-check my arithmetic.) [0] http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/large-scale-desalination-is-there-enough-energy-to-do-it/ http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/large-scale-desa... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California [2] http://www.waterfootprint.org/ http://www.waterfootprint.org/ [3] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a_nuclear_power_plant http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a...
georgieporgie 15y ago
On a related note, Portland recently blew $36,000 draining a reservoir after a guy peed in it. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/06/portland-ore-drains-reservoir-after-man-pees-in-it/1 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011... The reservoir is completely open. Untold numbers of animals pee, poop, and die in it every year.
- prawn 15y ago
  Here in South Australia (Adelaide, a city of 1m or so people), we often face water restrictions due to low water levels in our reservoirs and low rainfall projections. These restrictions include only being able to water gardens on certain days of the week, etc. It's quite remarkable to hear about a city/council 'wasting' water and spending money to do so.
  - ScottBurson 15y ago
    It's quite remarkable to us in California as well, only a few hundred miles south of Portland. If Oregon has that much water to spare, maybe we should get them to let us build a pipeline.
    - softbuilder 15y ago
      We built a pipeline, it's called the Pacific Ocean. Enjoy.
Create 15y ago
real sewage is not 'gone': remember all the drugs and pharmaceuticals that are emptied on a daily basis.
- andos 15y ago
  There was this guy at a TED event that mixed the filthiest, most disgusting glop I've ever seen, pushed it through a filter he invented and drank the resulting water all onstage. He said it could even filter virus-sized particles out. Of course, I cannot find a link. I thought it was all very neat and practical, but never wondered if simpler chemicals such as drugs would pass through. Maybe they're diluted enough not to be an issue? As the article notes, we're already purifying sewage from cities upstream.
  - pchristensen 15y ago
    http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_filter.html http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_f... Pretty amazing when he invites the host to drink from a bottle of that filth at the end.
- scott_s 15y ago
  And remember that all water must be treated. So the real question is, why is sewage different than all of the other contaminants that get in fresh water?
  - Create 15y ago
    Sewage is different, because it has a high concentration of WC water (urine), which in turn contains high level of hormone supplements (contraception). Some of the problem is, that these drugs can eventually find their way to fresh water. The standard scientific (chemical) process is the mechanical separation and dilution mentioned, but there is no evidence that there is a safe level of hormone that can be absorbed daily. Not unlike DDT: actually hormones were cited as evidence during the fight for the ban. However, there is scientific evidence of sexual mutation in creatures living in water (frogs, fish etc. -- though many other things could be blamed for this, but none rule out the above)
ChuckMcM 15y ago
I think if they bottled the water and called is 'Dasani' it would be acceptable to the public :-) As a resident of California, and an engineer, I to find this discussion difficult to fathom. The notion of 'contagion thinking' was probably the best thing in that article. By having the water 'touch' something good it can become 'good.' NASA has a vested interest in such systems [1] for things like the space station. No doubt a lunar colony would have a similar system. [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nasa-all-systems-go-for-space-urine-2008-11-25 http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nasa-all-...
- justincormack 15y ago
  Oh no not Dasani, I remember the uk launch when they made tap water less safe and withdrew it. http://www.stevedenning.com/Storytelling-in-the-News/95-coke-dasani-launch.aspx http://www.stevedenning.com/Storytelling-in-the-News/95-coke...
  - xyzzyz 15y ago
    It's interesting how easily people mistake orders of magnitude when they are using different units of measure simultanously -- in the article you linked, first they say: give it a mark-up from 0.03p to 95p per half litre; and then: In other words, Dasani is less healthy than regular tap water, but at more than thirty times the price. It's not thirty times the price -- it's three thousand. It reminds me of a Verizon Math story[1]. [1] - http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/
fawek 15y ago
Just have Barack drink it on TV.
peng 15y ago
Simple solution: don't use the words 'sewer' or 'reused' anywhere near the promotional materials for this product. Call it 'filtered water' or some other safe euphemism.
- misterbwong 15y ago
  Exactly. FTA, this is an identity problem rather than a safety problem. Put differently, it's a marketing & PR problem. Proponents of recycled water need to change the public perception of the water from sewage to something more palatable.
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  And how long would it take before someone blogs about it.
  - jleader 15y ago
    I suspect the trick is to get people to think about it as "recycled water" (or whatever name gets them to accept it) while also intellectually realizing that it's treated wastewater, so when someone blogs about it, people just shrug and say "Oh, yeah, doesn't everybody know that?" I'm not sure if that's possible, but that's probably the only way it would work. For example, the idea of passing it through an underground aquifer lets people think "yeah, I know it came from a sewer treatment plant, but now it's different". You're not trying to hide anything, you're just trying to get them to view it differently.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  It's amazing how much a simple name changes things. People are typically trepadatious about eating something like blood sausage but they have no problem eating powdered bone slime so long as it's called jell-o.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Won't last long before someone like me who hates environmentalists with a passion comes a long and shows how dirty the water is.
deleted 15y ago
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rlpb 15y ago
What about the fallibility of the system? If there's a set of processes feeding into each other taking sewage and producing clean drinking water, I feel that there's a much higher possibility of a failure causing contamination to the drinking water. Engineers can be complacent about fail-safes and politics may compromise good engineering. If there's a river in the way, then although the water must be processed again, this apparent wastefulness also has the effect of preventing engineers (or their managers) from taking shortcuts.
- abstractbill 15y ago
  Any system for producing drinking water is fallible - why is this one special? Why should we be more suspicious of it than any other process? Just for one example, I remember in 2004 when Dasani launched in the UK [1]. Aside from a bunch of other rather hilarious mistakes, their purification process (applied to regular mains drinking water) introduced bromate - a suspected carcinogen. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani#United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani#United_Kingdom
anamax 15y ago
Rejecting cleaned sewer water would seem to be a logical consequence of accepting homeopathic theory.
- fferen 15y ago
  But isn't the idea of homeopathy to consume miniscule amounts of things that are toxic in large quantities, like arsenic? In that case, cleaned sewer water should be good for you.
JoeAltmaier 15y ago
Its not good water or bad water; its desecrated water or sanctified water. No engineering principle is involved; only culture, belief and emotion guide the issue. For better or worse, its people that have to be convinced, and people are emotional creatures.
dwc 15y ago
Put it in bottles, charge a lot of money, and label it "Egawes"
gst 15y ago
People often act irrationally... Here in Vienna the tap water basically comes straight from mountain springs in the Alps. Still, almost everyone here buys bottled water, instead of directly drinking the tap water which has the same quality, if not even better.
- binarymax 15y ago
  When I was in Vienna in 2007 I spoke to a random entrepreneur during lunch and he noticed I was drinking bottled water. It turned out he was in the business of bottling water and said the tap water in Vienna was what he was trying to bottle, and the joke was on me that I was drinking water bottled elsewhere when the free tap water was a much higher quality.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    I don't know if Vienna is the same, but when I was in Italy and Spain, I had to explicitly ask for tap water. If I just asked for water, they would bring me bottled water of some kind.
  - viraptor 15y ago
    Why joke? I happily buy bottled water which tastes better than the local tap one. It really depends on what you look for. I wouldn't mind if it's filtered sewage, as long as it tastes good. The "quality", which can be defined in many ways is hard to judge... Does it matter that much though? At least we can judge the taste ourselves.
    - TeMPOraL 15y ago
      It matters because tap water doesn't generate plastic waste (created by wasting oil).
- ugh 15y ago
  Not just Vienna but many places have great tap water, much better than what you get in a lot of bottles. There are obviously also places where the tap water is of a worse quality or just tastes awful. (The problem for many Europeans is that they like fizzy water. It’s possible to add CO2 to your own tap water but bottled fizzy water is just do damn convenient compared to that. I would never buy plain water in bottles but I’m too lazy to not buy fizzy bottled water.)
kbutler 15y ago
The problem isn't just contagion theory: it's percentages. We know that the treatment process doesn't remove everything (witness the taste of tap water in various cities). Purification rates are generally stated as percentages, suggesting that the dirtier the input, the dirtier the output (GIGO) Searching for "waste water treatment effectiveness" yields interesting articles about failures - for instance: http://www.cabq.gov/progress/public-infrastructure/dcc-18/indicator-18-2 http://www.cabq.gov/progress/public-infrastructure/dcc-18/in... which indicates that upstream failures treating the waste water increase health risks and treatment costs of water users downstream - why should it matter without the GIGO principle above? How sure are you that the treatment systems remove 100% of the micro-organisms? 100% of the chemical hazards? All the time? There's definitely room for concern, even on the purely scientific/engineering side, though advocates say that the treated waste water is the cleaner water source.
- 7952 15y ago
  You can never be 100% sure because science has no way to count to that level of accuracy. But you can take samples to validate that a scientifically proven process is working correctly. The ability of chlorine to purify water is quite well understood.
- jerf 15y ago
  "How sure are you that the treatment systems remove 100% of the micro-organisms? 100% of the chemical hazards? All the time?" I am 100% sure that they do not. It's impossible. No water in nature is that clean, either, by any standard. But also, you are not a wilting flower that can only survive on the purest triple-distilled angel tears. There absolutely is a such thing as "good enough" and any water that meets existing US standards is well in excess of "good enough". It is certainly far, far, far cleaner than anything your ancestors ever had to drink! This isn't about safety. All "room for concern" has been abundantly addressed; US water standards are incredibly strict both in theory and in practice. It is entirely about psychology.
  - delackner 15y ago
    The article, and all of the responses I've seen so far, all ignore the problem that sewer water is overflowing with the prescription drugs that people have consumed. Municipal water AND many bottled water suppliers don't even bother testing for drug contamination. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/there-are-drugs-in-drinking-water-now-what/ http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/there-are-drugs-...
jonnathanson 15y ago
Consider the sausage. Many sausages are made with the intestinal linings and viscera of animals who live in, root around in, and occasionally even eat their own feces. Shit that's passed through shit that's passed through shit. And yet, few people bat an eyelash at hot dogs, brats, or cocktail weenies. Of course, there's that old chestnut about not wanting to know 'how the sausage gets made.' But, by and large, people cognitively distance the making-of-the-sausage from the sausage itself. Why? Because they've been trained to think of "sausage" as a wholly separate class of item from "pig's colon." And because they've first encountered -- and enjoyed -- sausage before anyone ever told them about how it got there. We need to use similar psychology to fight the psychology of contamination thinking w/r/t treated wastewater. The message needs to be about how the input is apples, and the output is oranges. But we have to start with the oranges. It's very tough to sell the story when the story begins with the making-of-the-sausage and not the sausage itself.
- jimmyjim 15y ago
  It's very interesting that you're in a way encouraging that the veil that is there concealing the process of food manufacturing ... remain there. Because that is something that sensible environmentalists argue against, as everyone could stand to know a bit more about what they're eating, and the issues of food safety and food security associated with the food taht they're eating. I think Food Inc does a good of bringing these issues to the public in a very presentable way.
  - jonnathanson 15y ago
    "It's very interesting that you're in a way encouraging that the veil that is there concealing the process of food manufacturing ... remain there." Not at all. I'm just drawing a point of comparison between the "PR" of the sausage vs. the PR of treated wastewater. I don't condone opacity or trickery on behalf of the food processing industry. Just the opposite, in fact. On the subject of Food, Inc: Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma is an excellent read on the topic, and I recommend it highly. It has been highly influential on my personal philosophy toward food and the industrial food system.
- 15y ago
calloc 15y ago
While in school I was taught and learned that all water went through a filtration system including sewage and after cleaning it would go back into the drinkable water lines running to our house. I grew up in Europe :-)
- tybris 15y ago
  I learned the same. I was quite disappointed later to find that, while all the sewage here goes through treatment, it does not get directly pumped back into the water pipes, but instead gets pumped back into the rivers. Although pragmatically speaking that makes more sense, since surface water is surface water, and completely separating these systems avoids any risk of contamination.
bugsy 15y ago
Words like "irrational" are propaganda and "how to change their mind" suggests that people should be drinking cleaned sewer water provided by a municipality whose equipment is run by drug addicts and losers, and equipment provided by the lowest bidder.
leeHS 15y ago
I'm a scientist. I have no issues with the process of turning sewage water into clean drinking water. Absolutely none. However, I do have an issue with humans. Humans screw things up. Humans don't always implement the proper quality assurance programs, and when they do, they might not follow them. Every time I pour myself a glass of water from the tap, it's not the science I'll doubt, I'll just be wondering if Timmy down at the local water treatment plant did his job properly today, because if he didn't, I'm now drinking someone's shit.
- ahi 15y ago
  "Whoah Timmy, that stuff is expensive! The inspector doesn't take samples until the end of the month so go easy on the disinfectant until then will ya?" says Ned the beancounter. True story though my google fu is failing me. The failure modes are not equal. Timmy cuts corners with river/aquifer water and I get some very diluted nasty shit. Timmy cuts corners with waste water and I get some very concentrated nasty shit.
  - mikeash 15y ago
    That might actually be an argument that fewer shortcuts would be taken since the consequences would be so dire. Ned is willing to take shortcuts on river water because it's likely that nothing will happen, but if he's smart, he won't make that same statement with sewage. (Not saying this is any sort of guarantee, just thought it was an interesting thing to consider.)
gcb 15y ago
call it "rain"
swah 15y ago
Can you use it to make belgian beer?
resdirector 15y ago
Paul Bloom (Psychologist at Yale) did a fascinating talk on a whole lot of different examples of psychological contagions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWOfP-Lubuw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWOfP-Lubuw
monkeypizza 15y ago
People alive today are descended from people who've been through a multi-thousand year selection process, where the main factor that determined whether you lived or not was how important you & your parents thought it was to drink really clean water. It's no wonder people are pretty touchy about the water issue.
pbreit 15y ago
I'm not sure "irrational" is the best description. It's not obvious to most in California that water is in that short of supply. It also seems reasonable that treated water would be used for things like watering crops before things like human drinking water. Finally, it's reasonable to be wary of something newish that sounds obviously problematic.
schnaars 15y ago
psychological contagion - why i don't want my mashed potatoes touching my turkey, but I'm cool with my gravy being the mediator between the two.
Joakal 15y ago
Interesting fact: Pure water tastes very bitter and can in fact be dangerous to drink [0]. [0] http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean-water-used-to-make-your-iphone http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean-wat...
- gnosis 15y ago
  Not necessarily.[1] [1] http://www.finishing.com/156/65.shtml http://www.finishing.com/156/65.shtml
Fateasy 15y ago
Its already done in Singapore, called NEWater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater
deleted 15y ago
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toddh 15y ago
It seems more of an essentialism issue than a contagion issue, though maybe they are the same thing underneath. People will pay lots more for a ball that has been actually used and signed by a star than the same exact ball from the store. It retains their essence. The essence of sewer water is that it will always sewer water. It's unlikely any amount of reasoned arguments will change that.

84 points by e1ven 15y ago

"[I]f you have people imagine the water going into an underground aquifer, for example, and then sitting there for 10 years, the water becomes much more palatable to the public. It budges even those most unwilling to drink the water. ... 'When you do introduce a river or even groundwater ... you run the risk of deteriorating the water that's been treated. You can make the water quality worse.'" I am singularly amused at the possibility of contaminating treated post-sewage water with river water, resulting in a medically less safe but socially more acceptable water supply. The results of a public vote (as to whether to mix river water with the treated water) would at least tell us who needs to be mailed a printed copy of lesswrong.com.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
> a printed copy of lesswrong.com. Does such a critter exist? Not as an actual printed copy, but a way of diving into it that's not quite so ... scary? The closest thing I see to a "table of contents" is the list of Sequences.
- mstevens 15y ago
  ciphergoth produced an ebook of Eliezer's posts recently which I'm finding useful: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/ http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers...
ScottBurson 15y ago
> I am singularly amused at the possibility of contaminating treated post-sewage water with river water It is bizarre, isn't it? I don't know about anyone else, but I've spent most of my life thinking of rivers as quite polluted. Even when hiking in wilderness I take a giardia filter.
SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
Water rights in Colorado are...complicated. Aurora, Colorado doesn't have enough for its population. So it pumps water out of the river, sends it to people, purifies the result, and pumps it back into the river. Three times. At different locations. So really they're already drinking their sewage water, only slightly diluted with the water from Denver's sewage water...and heading downstream to supply water to Utah, Nevada, and Southern California. Can't find the reference, though. Sorry.

stretchwithme 15y ago

Its not irrational. I know for a fact that the sun only evaporates the water and leaves the crap behind. Its a process that has been happening for a very long time. And we all know how perfect industrial processes are, especially when managed by the government. The sewer water isn't THAT MUCH cheaper than regular water. So I'd prefer that the experiment be run on someone other than me. If it is cheaper and a city wants cheaper water, let them enjoy it. We should be charging market prices to all users. Then if this actually made economic sense, it would be adopted.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
> I know for a fact that the sun only evaporates the water and leaves the crap behind. How is that relevant?
daeken 15y ago
This would make some semblance of sense if it weren't for two things: 1) You're not drinking rainwater, I assure you. 2) Sure, the sun evaporates water, and that forms into clouds, and then it rains. Except that things in the atmosphere can taint that rain; this is most noticeable in the form of acid rain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain There's absolutely no reason to believe that treated sewer water is any less safe than the water that's sitting in your reservoir at all.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
And then that water in the clouds falls as snow and rain and then feeds into rivers and reservoirs where fish, insects, deer, ducks, beavers, bears, bird, etc. urinate, defecate, bleed, and die into it. That's why pure unfiltered river water doesn't feed directly to a municipal water supply and is filtered and treated first.
- stretchwithme 15y ago
  Yes, that's true. I guess I don't trust the municipal water system to do the job. I also don't see how they can filter out all the drugs and salt that sewage water currently contains and is being released into the environment. These things are just going to accumulate. Or is there new invention I'm not aware of? Granted, that's not the argument I originally stated but its definitely a question. If you're aware familiar with the Colorado River, you may know that the water gets saltier and saltier as it is taken out, run through the land and drains back into it. Without any intervention, its pretty brackish by the time it gets to Mexico. Running the same water through humanity over and over again is bound to have a similar problem.

daimyoyo 15y ago

I cannot understand why California has a water supply issue when they are located right next to the largest body of water on Earth. I think the public is much more accepting of desalinized ocean water than they are of reclaimed municipal water.

timr 15y ago
Because it's much, much harder and energetically more costly to de-salinate water than it is to "de-poop" water. Biological contaminants can be removed using organic processes, settling and chlorination. Salts and ions form relatively strong bonds with water that are hard to separate.
joshAg 15y ago
from my survey engineering course (which engineering major should you choose?) it's because reverse osmosis is a bitch to do, especially compared to cleaning sewage or building dams. however, this isn't as huge of an issue as the article makes out because almost all of california's water goes to agriculture, and no one seems to have a problem with using grey-water for agriculture.
byoung2 15y ago
I think the public is much more accepting of desalinized ocean water than they are of reclaimed municipal water. It would be hard to justify the expense, increased energy usage, and damage to marine life that comes with desalination. It makes sense in places like Israel and Saudi Arabia, but in California there are more economical and environmentally friendly options.
wtracy 15y ago
Let's see: It takes 5kW/h to produce a cubic meter of fresh water from sea water via reverse osmosis.[0] The population of just LA is a bit over 3 million.[1] The average U.S. citizen consumes 2842 cubic meters of water per year. 5 kWh/m^3 * 8765 h/year * 3,000,000 people * 2842 m^3/person-year = 4863662 kW = 4863 MW. I will conservatively estimate that a nuclear power plant will produce 800 MW.[3] So: 4863 MW / 800 MW/plant = 6 That means we're talking about six full-size nuclear power plants running 24/7 with their entire energy output going toward desalinization to supply LA alone. Extrapolating further, I get that it would take twenty nuclear power plants running full-time to meet just half of the demand for the entirety of southern California. Does that answer your question? (I know my sources aren't all that authoritative--they are just what Google pulled up. Feel free to redo the calculations with more accurate numbers, or just to double-check my arithmetic.) [0] http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/large-scale-desalination-is-there-enough-energy-to-do-it/ http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/large-scale-desa... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California [2] http://www.waterfootprint.org/ http://www.waterfootprint.org/ [3] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a_nuclear_power_plant http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a...

georgieporgie 15y ago

On a related note, Portland recently blew $36,000 draining a reservoir after a guy peed in it. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/06/portland-ore-drains-reservoir-after-man-pees-in-it/1 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011... The reservoir is completely open. Untold numbers of animals pee, poop, and die in it every year.

prawn 15y ago
Here in South Australia (Adelaide, a city of 1m or so people), we often face water restrictions due to low water levels in our reservoirs and low rainfall projections. These restrictions include only being able to water gardens on certain days of the week, etc. It's quite remarkable to hear about a city/council 'wasting' water and spending money to do so.
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  It's quite remarkable to us in California as well, only a few hundred miles south of Portland. If Oregon has that much water to spare, maybe we should get them to let us build a pipeline.
  - softbuilder 15y ago
    We built a pipeline, it's called the Pacific Ocean. Enjoy.

Create 15y ago

real sewage is not 'gone': remember all the drugs and pharmaceuticals that are emptied on a daily basis.

andos 15y ago
There was this guy at a TED event that mixed the filthiest, most disgusting glop I've ever seen, pushed it through a filter he invented and drank the resulting water all onstage. He said it could even filter virus-sized particles out. Of course, I cannot find a link. I thought it was all very neat and practical, but never wondered if simpler chemicals such as drugs would pass through. Maybe they're diluted enough not to be an issue? As the article notes, we're already purifying sewage from cities upstream.
- pchristensen 15y ago
  http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_filter.html http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_f... Pretty amazing when he invites the host to drink from a bottle of that filth at the end.
scott_s 15y ago
And remember that all water must be treated. So the real question is, why is sewage different than all of the other contaminants that get in fresh water?
- Create 15y ago
  Sewage is different, because it has a high concentration of WC water (urine), which in turn contains high level of hormone supplements (contraception). Some of the problem is, that these drugs can eventually find their way to fresh water. The standard scientific (chemical) process is the mechanical separation and dilution mentioned, but there is no evidence that there is a safe level of hormone that can be absorbed daily. Not unlike DDT: actually hormones were cited as evidence during the fight for the ban. However, there is scientific evidence of sexual mutation in creatures living in water (frogs, fish etc. -- though many other things could be blamed for this, but none rule out the above)

ChuckMcM 15y ago

I think if they bottled the water and called is 'Dasani' it would be acceptable to the public :-) As a resident of California, and an engineer, I to find this discussion difficult to fathom. The notion of 'contagion thinking' was probably the best thing in that article. By having the water 'touch' something good it can become 'good.' NASA has a vested interest in such systems [1] for things like the space station. No doubt a lunar colony would have a similar system. [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nasa-all-systems-go-for-space-urine-2008-11-25 http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nasa-all-...

justincormack 15y ago
Oh no not Dasani, I remember the uk launch when they made tap water less safe and withdrew it. http://www.stevedenning.com/Storytelling-in-the-News/95-coke-dasani-launch.aspx http://www.stevedenning.com/Storytelling-in-the-News/95-coke...
- xyzzyz 15y ago
  It's interesting how easily people mistake orders of magnitude when they are using different units of measure simultanously -- in the article you linked, first they say: give it a mark-up from 0.03p to 95p per half litre; and then: In other words, Dasani is less healthy than regular tap water, but at more than thirty times the price. It's not thirty times the price -- it's three thousand. It reminds me of a Verizon Math story[1]. [1] - http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/

fawek 15y ago

Just have Barack drink it on TV.

peng 15y ago

Simple solution: don't use the words 'sewer' or 'reused' anywhere near the promotional materials for this product. Call it 'filtered water' or some other safe euphemism.

misterbwong 15y ago
Exactly. FTA, this is an identity problem rather than a safety problem. Put differently, it's a marketing & PR problem. Proponents of recycled water need to change the public perception of the water from sewage to something more palatable.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
And how long would it take before someone blogs about it.
- jleader 15y ago
  I suspect the trick is to get people to think about it as "recycled water" (or whatever name gets them to accept it) while also intellectually realizing that it's treated wastewater, so when someone blogs about it, people just shrug and say "Oh, yeah, doesn't everybody know that?" I'm not sure if that's possible, but that's probably the only way it would work. For example, the idea of passing it through an underground aquifer lets people think "yeah, I know it came from a sewer treatment plant, but now it's different". You're not trying to hide anything, you're just trying to get them to view it differently.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
It's amazing how much a simple name changes things. People are typically trepadatious about eating something like blood sausage but they have no problem eating powdered bone slime so long as it's called jell-o.
tomjen3 15y ago
Won't last long before someone like me who hates environmentalists with a passion comes a long and shows how dirty the water is.

deleted 15y ago

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rlpb 15y ago

What about the fallibility of the system? If there's a set of processes feeding into each other taking sewage and producing clean drinking water, I feel that there's a much higher possibility of a failure causing contamination to the drinking water. Engineers can be complacent about fail-safes and politics may compromise good engineering. If there's a river in the way, then although the water must be processed again, this apparent wastefulness also has the effect of preventing engineers (or their managers) from taking shortcuts.

abstractbill 15y ago
Any system for producing drinking water is fallible - why is this one special? Why should we be more suspicious of it than any other process? Just for one example, I remember in 2004 when Dasani launched in the UK [1]. Aside from a bunch of other rather hilarious mistakes, their purification process (applied to regular mains drinking water) introduced bromate - a suspected carcinogen. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani#United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani#United_Kingdom

anamax 15y ago

Rejecting cleaned sewer water would seem to be a logical consequence of accepting homeopathic theory.

fferen 15y ago
But isn't the idea of homeopathy to consume miniscule amounts of things that are toxic in large quantities, like arsenic? In that case, cleaned sewer water should be good for you.

JoeAltmaier 15y ago

Its not good water or bad water; its desecrated water or sanctified water. No engineering principle is involved; only culture, belief and emotion guide the issue. For better or worse, its people that have to be convinced, and people are emotional creatures.

dwc 15y ago

Put it in bottles, charge a lot of money, and label it "Egawes"

gst 15y ago

People often act irrationally... Here in Vienna the tap water basically comes straight from mountain springs in the Alps. Still, almost everyone here buys bottled water, instead of directly drinking the tap water which has the same quality, if not even better.

binarymax 15y ago
When I was in Vienna in 2007 I spoke to a random entrepreneur during lunch and he noticed I was drinking bottled water. It turned out he was in the business of bottling water and said the tap water in Vienna was what he was trying to bottle, and the joke was on me that I was drinking water bottled elsewhere when the free tap water was a much higher quality.
- scott_s 15y ago
  I don't know if Vienna is the same, but when I was in Italy and Spain, I had to explicitly ask for tap water. If I just asked for water, they would bring me bottled water of some kind.
- viraptor 15y ago
  Why joke? I happily buy bottled water which tastes better than the local tap one. It really depends on what you look for. I wouldn't mind if it's filtered sewage, as long as it tastes good. The "quality", which can be defined in many ways is hard to judge... Does it matter that much though? At least we can judge the taste ourselves.
  - TeMPOraL 15y ago
    It matters because tap water doesn't generate plastic waste (created by wasting oil).
ugh 15y ago
Not just Vienna but many places have great tap water, much better than what you get in a lot of bottles. There are obviously also places where the tap water is of a worse quality or just tastes awful. (The problem for many Europeans is that they like fizzy water. It’s possible to add CO2 to your own tap water but bottled fizzy water is just do damn convenient compared to that. I would never buy plain water in bottles but I’m too lazy to not buy fizzy bottled water.)

kbutler 15y ago

The problem isn't just contagion theory: it's percentages. We know that the treatment process doesn't remove everything (witness the taste of tap water in various cities). Purification rates are generally stated as percentages, suggesting that the dirtier the input, the dirtier the output (GIGO) Searching for "waste water treatment effectiveness" yields interesting articles about failures - for instance: http://www.cabq.gov/progress/public-infrastructure/dcc-18/indicator-18-2 http://www.cabq.gov/progress/public-infrastructure/dcc-18/in... which indicates that upstream failures treating the waste water increase health risks and treatment costs of water users downstream - why should it matter without the GIGO principle above? How sure are you that the treatment systems remove 100% of the micro-organisms? 100% of the chemical hazards? All the time? There's definitely room for concern, even on the purely scientific/engineering side, though advocates say that the treated waste water is the cleaner water source.

7952 15y ago
You can never be 100% sure because science has no way to count to that level of accuracy. But you can take samples to validate that a scientifically proven process is working correctly. The ability of chlorine to purify water is quite well understood.
jerf 15y ago
"How sure are you that the treatment systems remove 100% of the micro-organisms? 100% of the chemical hazards? All the time?" I am 100% sure that they do not. It's impossible. No water in nature is that clean, either, by any standard. But also, you are not a wilting flower that can only survive on the purest triple-distilled angel tears. There absolutely is a such thing as "good enough" and any water that meets existing US standards is well in excess of "good enough". It is certainly far, far, far cleaner than anything your ancestors ever had to drink! This isn't about safety. All "room for concern" has been abundantly addressed; US water standards are incredibly strict both in theory and in practice. It is entirely about psychology.
- delackner 15y ago
  The article, and all of the responses I've seen so far, all ignore the problem that sewer water is overflowing with the prescription drugs that people have consumed. Municipal water AND many bottled water suppliers don't even bother testing for drug contamination. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/there-are-drugs-in-drinking-water-now-what/ http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/there-are-drugs-...

jonnathanson 15y ago

Consider the sausage. Many sausages are made with the intestinal linings and viscera of animals who live in, root around in, and occasionally even eat their own feces. Shit that's passed through shit that's passed through shit. And yet, few people bat an eyelash at hot dogs, brats, or cocktail weenies. Of course, there's that old chestnut about not wanting to know 'how the sausage gets made.' But, by and large, people cognitively distance the making-of-the-sausage from the sausage itself. Why? Because they've been trained to think of "sausage" as a wholly separate class of item from "pig's colon." And because they've first encountered -- and enjoyed -- sausage before anyone ever told them about how it got there. We need to use similar psychology to fight the psychology of contamination thinking w/r/t treated wastewater. The message needs to be about how the input is apples, and the output is oranges. But we have to start with the oranges. It's very tough to sell the story when the story begins with the making-of-the-sausage and not the sausage itself.

jimmyjim 15y ago
It's very interesting that you're in a way encouraging that the veil that is there concealing the process of food manufacturing ... remain there. Because that is something that sensible environmentalists argue against, as everyone could stand to know a bit more about what they're eating, and the issues of food safety and food security associated with the food taht they're eating. I think Food Inc does a good of bringing these issues to the public in a very presentable way.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  "It's very interesting that you're in a way encouraging that the veil that is there concealing the process of food manufacturing ... remain there." Not at all. I'm just drawing a point of comparison between the "PR" of the sausage vs. the PR of treated wastewater. I don't condone opacity or trickery on behalf of the food processing industry. Just the opposite, in fact. On the subject of Food, Inc: Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma is an excellent read on the topic, and I recommend it highly. It has been highly influential on my personal philosophy toward food and the industrial food system.
15y ago

calloc 15y ago

While in school I was taught and learned that all water went through a filtration system including sewage and after cleaning it would go back into the drinkable water lines running to our house. I grew up in Europe :-)

tybris 15y ago
I learned the same. I was quite disappointed later to find that, while all the sewage here goes through treatment, it does not get directly pumped back into the water pipes, but instead gets pumped back into the rivers. Although pragmatically speaking that makes more sense, since surface water is surface water, and completely separating these systems avoids any risk of contamination.

bugsy 15y ago

Words like "irrational" are propaganda and "how to change their mind" suggests that people should be drinking cleaned sewer water provided by a municipality whose equipment is run by drug addicts and losers, and equipment provided by the lowest bidder.

leeHS 15y ago

I'm a scientist. I have no issues with the process of turning sewage water into clean drinking water. Absolutely none. However, I do have an issue with humans. Humans screw things up. Humans don't always implement the proper quality assurance programs, and when they do, they might not follow them. Every time I pour myself a glass of water from the tap, it's not the science I'll doubt, I'll just be wondering if Timmy down at the local water treatment plant did his job properly today, because if he didn't, I'm now drinking someone's shit.

ahi 15y ago
"Whoah Timmy, that stuff is expensive! The inspector doesn't take samples until the end of the month so go easy on the disinfectant until then will ya?" says Ned the beancounter. True story though my google fu is failing me. The failure modes are not equal. Timmy cuts corners with river/aquifer water and I get some very diluted nasty shit. Timmy cuts corners with waste water and I get some very concentrated nasty shit.
- mikeash 15y ago
  That might actually be an argument that fewer shortcuts would be taken since the consequences would be so dire. Ned is willing to take shortcuts on river water because it's likely that nothing will happen, but if he's smart, he won't make that same statement with sewage. (Not saying this is any sort of guarantee, just thought it was an interesting thing to consider.)

gcb 15y ago

call it "rain"

swah 15y ago

Can you use it to make belgian beer?

resdirector 15y ago

Paul Bloom (Psychologist at Yale) did a fascinating talk on a whole lot of different examples of psychological contagions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWOfP-Lubuw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWOfP-Lubuw

monkeypizza 15y ago

People alive today are descended from people who've been through a multi-thousand year selection process, where the main factor that determined whether you lived or not was how important you & your parents thought it was to drink really clean water. It's no wonder people are pretty touchy about the water issue.

pbreit 15y ago

I'm not sure "irrational" is the best description. It's not obvious to most in California that water is in that short of supply. It also seems reasonable that treated water would be used for things like watering crops before things like human drinking water. Finally, it's reasonable to be wary of something newish that sounds obviously problematic.

schnaars 15y ago

psychological contagion - why i don't want my mashed potatoes touching my turkey, but I'm cool with my gravy being the mediator between the two.

Joakal 15y ago

Interesting fact: Pure water tastes very bitter and can in fact be dangerous to drink [0]. [0] http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean-water-used-to-make-your-iphone http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean-wat...

gnosis 15y ago
Not necessarily.[1] [1] http://www.finishing.com/156/65.shtml http://www.finishing.com/156/65.shtml

Fateasy 15y ago

Its already done in Singapore, called NEWater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

toddh 15y ago

It seems more of an essentialism issue than a contagion issue, though maybe they are the same thing underneath. People will pay lots more for a ball that has been actually used and signed by a star than the same exact ball from the store. It retains their essence. The essence of sewer water is that it will always sewer water. It's unlikely any amount of reasoned arguments will change that.