Posted on 04/18/2015 12:20:32 PM PDT by Steelfish
California Takes Serious Look at 'Toilet to Tap' Tech
BY JEFF DANIELS As the California drought worsens, some communities such as Orange County, San Diego and the Silicon Valley are expanding water recycling programs, and support for "toilet to tap" programs appears to be growing from a once-squeamish public.
"Because a lot of communities are running out of water, they sort of have to explore all their options," said Janny Choy, research analyst with Water in the West, a program of the Stanford Woods Institute and the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. "Recycled water is certainly one piece of the puzzle, but it's probably not going to be the answer to solve everybody's problem."
The Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center, located in San Jose, began operations last year and produces up to 8 million gallons per day of purified water from wastewater (Tweet This). The facility was built at a cost of $72 million in a partnership between the Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) and the city of San Jose. The facility treats wastewater that would otherwise go into the San Francisco Bay for use as reclaimed water in irrigation, construction and industrial uses. They eventually hope to use some of the purified water to refill groundwater sources.
The Santa Clara County facility gets wastewater from the cities of San Jose and Santa Clara, and the goal had been to expand the recycled water to make up at least 10 percent of total county water demand by 2025. But due to the 4-year-old drought, the water agency is pushing its goals further: It's pursuing plans to expedite that goal by three years—to reach the 10 percent number by 2022—and partnering with other cities in the county to purity their water.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
$58 billion will buy a lotta desalination plants.
Or a train to Fresno.
The amount of water in 200 FLUSHES costs roughly $1.00 through desalinization. Somehow I think that most people don’t mind paying that.
LOL!!!
Great insight....that’s very funny in an unfortunately real sort of way. Thanks
Yeah, but he was able to blame the first one on Reagan.
Brush your teeth with Poopsident.
I gotta get out of here!
It would make more sense to route the gray water to the toilet tank. Drains from the sinks are dirty, but generally do not contain any sewage, and would be ok to flush the toilets.
I had thought that the people of California were ALREADY drinking the Brown water.
Makes great Kool-Aid, I understand.
There is a way to get plenty of drinking water, irrigation water, bathing water, just water sparkling in a pool. Suck it up out of the ocean, desalinate it, and pump it inland.
And how is the water desalinated? Same way it is on a US Naval ship powered by an atomic reactor - distill it from sea water using the excess heat from the atomic reactor. The heat was going to waste anyway, put it to good use.
Setting up a series of Thorium-fueled Molten-Salt reactors all along the Pacific coast, and using them to generate a base supply of electrical energy, then using the escaping heat energy to drive distillation towers, results in the generation of pure water from the condensed water vapor driven off from the heated brine, and a supply of sea salt from the brine. Now, there are a number of valuable components in the brine, minerals of nearly every sort. These may be refined out of the brine, by differential crystallization. One of the lesser constituents of “sea salt”, is potassium chloride, a valuable fertilizer, which crystallizes out at a different rate than sodium chloride, the main constituent of “sea salt”. Almost every other metallic element is also dissolved in sea water, to a much lesser degree, but still recoverable by selective crystallization, in steadily smaller and smaller amounts. There is even a theoretical quantity of the noble metals, gold, silver and platinum, that could be recovered as salts (mostly chlorides) and refined. As an industry, the processing of the dried “sea salt” could be on a paying basis relatively quickly, as mining the sea is probably not significantly more complex than hard-rock mining, and environmentally much easier to manage.
We have not yet even begun to tap the potential wealth that surrounds us in our seas. All we have to do is apply techniques we already know about, but have never sufficiently developed the engineering to make them a reality.
They’ll soon be keepin their poop in a jar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYfqIN0Z4bA
That's what I've been crowing about for months....just run it right down the I-5 corridor -- the land and rights of way are already in place.
That would work, would create jobs, increase financial base, and add materials for industry.
Therefor, democrats would oppose it with the utmost vehemence.
It's embarrassing that more Californians aren't embarrassed at what they are doing by electing these buffoons. It is truly sad to see the once great state I grew up in going down the tubes like this. I'm glad I left when I did.
You would think the morons would learn.
Moonbeam is not blessed.
Well, it is like the idiots here in NY voting for Cuomo, Sheldon Silver, etc and expecting magically different results.
Then whine about how the state is run.
*snort*
I hate to bang the drum over and over, but I don’t necessarily see the state’s citizens as the problem. Yes, they do vote for Lefties, but honestly, the Lefties are the only ones selling their wares in California.
I could be selling the latest and greatest vehicle, but if the Yugo salesman is the only one with an actual car out there, and mine is sitting in a garage and I don’t talk about it, which car will sell more?
I see this type of talk a lot. It’s somewhat grating, and look, I know you mean well and in effect you are right. Californian’s are voting in the worst of the worst.
Let’s look at California since 1998. Pete Wilson was a luke warm bucket of horse sweat. I will say that he was a good governor monetarily. He handed off a surplus. It took Gray Davis four years to go through it and get ralled, leaving 20 billion plus in deficits.
In 2002 Davis ran for re-election against Simon and outspent him by a massive margin, something like 10 to 1 (or more). Davis also tossed out charges of corruption, because Simon’s company was being sued. Simon was not name but it didn’t help.
The Republican leadership in the state and nationally were as close to being totally absent as they could possibly be. They didn’t help with funds, with campaign efforts, with bringing in big names... Simon was left run his campaign on $2-$4 million, while Gray Davis spent over $20 million. I’m doing this from memory, so I may be somewhat off on the exact numbers.
Davis flew around in a leer jet, and Simon round around in a bus. Davis was on television continually as the guest of the news programs. Simon couldn’t get his face on camera for more than a few seconds. If he was on, it was a long shot, and Davis got the close-ups.
Simon lost by just 5% of the vote, despite the obstacles he faced. He was a decent man and pushed sound Conservative principles. If he had the money and the big names, I think he would have won. Davis was not popular. Witness his recall a year later.
Then you had the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nobody was going to beat him. End of story. And then we got Jerry Brown again.
We haven’t had a true Conservative spending big money here since the 1980s. That’s where the blame for what takes place in California should be focused.
When big issues come up, Californian’s make good decisions. They got immigration and homosexual marriage right. If we can sell those correctly in the state, there’s something wrong with the picture if Conservatives can’t get elected here.
I think it’s because there isn’t the information out there, to sell them.
We live among despicable people as evidenced by the wealthy elites who host Obama fundraisers up and down the west coast. They know full well that his intentions are not honorable, yet they support him. And good people do nothing or are intimidated by them.
I think we have passed the point of no return. Let's all get tickets for a ride across the barren Central Valley on the high speed train.
Can’t argue with your comments. I am hopeful that a good man could turn this around.
I think we can agree the nation has gotten much worse under Obama. I think that same thing can happen in revers.
If the right guy gets in there and does away with the Department of Education, you’d see a lot of this propaganda curbed.
If the right guy gets in there and demands that Universities become more diversified politically or lose federal funding, you’ll see a big change.
If the right guy gets in there and starts taking on renegade city governments that think they can thumb their nose at our immigration laws, things would change.
We can play hardball too. It’s time we did.
The key is finding “the right guy”. Or having one step up with the GOD given combination of common sense and courage that Reagan had.
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