Here is an interesting and very informative article on water usage, specifically, how Americans in certain regions of the United States, especially the  west will have to adjust to getting their drinking water from treated sewage water. It has been happening for a while in Texas and Virginia, and in the country of Namibia, Africa, and it is about to happen in Orange County, California. Some studies indicate that the treated sewage water is of a higher quality than water garnered from a “fresh” source, and that there are fewer contaminants to worry about, including bacteria and hormones and pharmaceuticals. These things go in one end and get excreted out the other, right? Other things to worry about in water include agricultural run-off which includes fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides and industrial run-off which includes all kinds of things, including heavy metals. Some studies by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate that the treated water sewage water is better than that obtained by water allowed to percolate through a natural aquifer, as the water tends to pick up pollutants (man-made and otherwise) along the way. I don’t know, I guess a battery of tests will have to be done from a range of trustworthy sources to fully convince me that they are able to get all of the human-excreted hormones and pharmaceuticals out of the water supply. I do worry about that.   Unfortunately, desalination at this point is very expensive, energy intensive, and environmentally insensitive (couldn’t resist).  Just like the organisms that get exterminated in the cooling water for nuclear power plants, desalination would have an adverse affect on the flora and fauna in oceans.

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