This Just In...
Kevin Fischer is an award-winning veteran broadcaster who has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for nearly three decades.
Kevin, who is a legislative aide to state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, “INTERchange,” on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Franklin.
How about a nice tall glass of urine?
By Kevin Fischer
Tuesday, May 20 2008, 10:00 PM
Would you drink toilet water?
It’s a preposterous question.
Yet this seems to be one of the latest trends in technology in general, in water-purification to be more specific.
In one of the most beautiful and pleasant cities in America, a pilot program to purify sewage water and return it through household faucets is planned in San Diego.
That’s icky enough. The cost really stinks.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports:
“A full-scale 'toilet to tap' system would cost San Diegans an incredible $4.5 billion. Indeed, reusing sewage water for potable purposes is the most costly form of water on the planet. According to city water department estimates, recycling sewage water for drinking would cost $1,882 per acre-foot. This is more than three times the cost of imported water from the Colorado River or the Bay-Delta, which is priced at $515 per acre-foot. Even desalinated water is cheaper, at $1,400 per acre foot. Significantly, 'toilet to tap' supplies would be more than twice as costly as the 19,000 acre-feet of reclaimed irrigation water that the city currently wastes at the North City Water Reclamation Plant."
Slate.com loves the idea.
This is an incredibly horrible concept that poses tremendous public health and safety hazards.
Think about what ends up in that raw sewage that is transformed into drinking water.
Prescription drugs.
The San Diego Union-Tribune editorializes that an Associated Press five-month long investigation found sex hormones, antibiotics, mood stabilizers, anticonvulsants, and other drugs in the drinking water in major cities. San Diego’s drinking water contained, “ibuprofen, a pain reliever; meprobamate, a tranquilizer given to mental patients; and phenytoin, a drug to control epileptic seizures."
These drugs get into drinking water through human excrement or they’re flushed down the toilet.
How incredibly irresponsible is making toilet water into tap water? The National Research Council says it should only be done as a last resort.
Here are more details from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The toilet-to-tap strategy isn’t being implemented just on this planet.
We’re taking the idea into space.
This is about as crazy as it gets.
Yuckimundo.
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