DISGUSTING: Texas Town Drinking Recycled Wastewater

Bottled water distributers are probably the only group satisfied with one unfortunate, and particularly repulsive, product of the third worst drought in Texas history. Discovery News reports of the new source of drinking water in Big Spring:

"'When you talk about toilet-to-(water) tank it makes a lot of people nervous and grossed out,' says Terri Telchik, who works in the city manager's office in Big Spring, Texas. Water for the town's 27,000 residents comes through the Colorado River Municipal Water District, which has broken ground on a plant to capture treated wastewater for recycling.

'We're taking treated effluent (wastewater), normally discharged into a creek, and blending it with (traditionally supplied potable) water,' district manager John Grant told Discovery News.

In essence, the system speeds up what would naturally occur with the flow of discharged water through wetlands, with more pristine results, Grant added."

Southern California you're next, as Discovery reports that Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is considering a $700 million project to continue treatment of reclaimed water, currently used for irrigation and industrial uses, so that it can be injected into wells beneath the Hansen dam.

The U.S. segment of the International Space Station takes the premise even further as the station includes a tank that collects and filters urine to recover water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning among other uses.

(H/T: Gizmodo)