Total Brag

When I was at UCLA, I had a class about Urban Geography taught by a Rand Researcher (Rand is a West Coast Think Tank). Our final project was to write a 1 page paper on a Los Angeles urban problem and a possible solution.

I literally wrote about the water problem in coming Global Warming (we didn't call it Climate Change back then). My solution was to use treated waste water to water agriculture in the Central Valley in this same manner. My paper was one of 2 that the teacher printer out for everyone to read and study for the final. This was in 1980.

Now over 40 years later, reality has caught up with me and it is a prosed solution for California and the entire West. I was soooo ahead of my time. (full link to article).

...

Part of the solution, the legislators say, is to fund the construction of more facilities that can recycle the wastewater that flows out of our sinks, toilets, and showers. You may think that’s gross and preposterous, but the technology already exists—in fact, it’s been around for half a century. The process is actually rather simple. A treatment facility takes in wastewater and adds microbes that consume the organic matter. The water is then pumped through special membranes that filter out nasties like bacteria and viruses. To be extra sure, the water is then blasted with UV light to kill off microbes. The resulting water may actually be too pure for human consumption: If you drank it, the stuff might leach minerals out of your body, so the facility has to add minerals back. (I once drank the final product. It tastes like … water.)

The recycled H2O can be pumped underground into aquifers, then pumped out again when needed, purified once more, and sent to customers. Or it may instead be used for nonpotable purposes, like for agriculture or industrial processes.