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Many politicians have been talking about using recycled sewage water
to supplement drinking water in Melbourne. We feel this is a very bad idea. We have heard that other cities do it. Examples often include London, Singapore, Texas and California.
SingaporeSingapore has a system known as "NEWater". They take sanitary sewage and clean it using traditional sewage treatment system and then pass it through two additional steps. The last step is reverse osmosis which is identical to the steps required for desalination. Its original purpose was to produce water for industrial usage. They then pass that water into an underground aquifer where it blends with the natural underground water. That process will filter and balance the water in a way that is not economical. They do not send the water directly to the water taps: "We are not proposing to Singaporeans to drink NEWater directly, but it is safe to drink it directly."1 You can buy bottled NEWater in Singapore but its been passed through extra processing steps and quality control steps.
LondonI have no doubt that some people in London are drinking water that hasn't been properly processed. They have had many cases of contaminated water systems but that is mostly a result of having the oldest modern sewer in the world. They were the first to attempt to split sanitary sewage from rain water runoff but they both flow into "sewers" so reclaiming the rainwater and recycling that gets reported in the press as "recycling sewage".TexasTexas has a number laws on their building code that require that all recycled water be provided using a 3rd pipe system (the purple pipe) and there are strict rules to keep that from being used for anything other that watering lawns and approved industrial use. Examples are that water can't be connected to a house and it can not be used to fill swimming pools. In some areas it can't even be used to water vegetable gardens.VirginiaMuch like Texas with their water laws but their major issue is getting rid of the sewage after its been treated so they pump the cleaned sewage into underground aquifers in-place of the nearest river like most areas do.CaliforniaThey have been using underground aquifers for decades simply because the mountains are in the way.The net result of this is that the rumours of other locations doing it are simply not true.
1 NEWater web site FAQ. |
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