Something to consider- if using canned veggies- they are packed in water usually-save liquid re-use on beans. My understanding of soaking beans is that it is possible to re-use water for soaking- mightt be wrong- need to research
Also good idea to have method for sterlizing water from bad sources
No, don’t use the canned veggie liquid to soak beans. You don’t want to waste those vitamins. Use the veggie liquid in cooking or in soups. Whenever I have room in the freezer, I keep a large container to dump that liquid into and use it in the winter as veggie stock for soup.
The reason to soak beans is to get rid of the dirt and to cut down on cooking times. Both things you want to do in hards times. Use potable water to soak them but afterward, it’s no longer potable so use it for watering the garden or something else.
http://missvickie.com/howto/beans/howtosoak.html
I re-use the soaking water on my beans. I wash them before hand to get rid of dirt. Soaking cuts down on cook time and will soak the “toots” out. You have to throw the water out and re-wash the beans to get the flatulence stuff off but in bad times, I would think that “toots” would be the least of our problems. ;)