49 years ago, when I was in Vietnam, I was intrigued at the way the cities and larger towns in Vietnam did their water.
Sinks had 3 faucets: hot, cold and potable.
The water from the hot and cold taps was filtered but not chlorine treated; only the potable tap was treated to get rid of bacteria. We don’t need chlorinated water for washing our cars, watering the lawn or washing clothing, we really only need it for drinking and cooking.
I worked in Red China for seven months 42 years ago. In oz. foreign worker guest hose, there were two non-potable taps, hot and cold. Portable water was boiled and added to a thermos bottle by the sink. When it cooled enough, that was your drinking water.
That’s pretty smart of them. If I ever built a new house I’d consider adding a gray water tank where laundry and maybe shower water could be diverted. The tank would be connected to a pressure pump and could be used for washing cars and watering the lawn.
I’ve got no problem with this. As an occasional backpacker, I’ve filtered plenty of water with no ill effects. If I can be confident with a $25 Sawyer Mini filter, I’m sure a municipal wastewater treatment plant will do far better.
Plus, that pesky 4th grade science class about the water cycle comes in to play. Water is a zero sum game. It gets treated, ingested, expelled, returned, treated, ingested...
I had an old farmhouse where the sink drains went to the large garden as gray water. Only the toilet went to the septic tank. Illegal of course.
I have two water systems to my home. One is minimally treated river water which goes to my sprinkler system. I pay a small flat fee for that. Some people in my ‘hood use it for water features, like fountains and waterfalls.
Here in Contra Costa County, California, as a consequence of the draught, our Sanitary District offers for free this kind of water for people to use on their landscaping. The only real problem is that water is heavy and it makes it’s transportation problematic. I have a 300 gallon tank ( that I bought from an importer who used it to bring soy sauce here from the Far East). Three hundred gallons is about 2500lb, so the average utility trailer isn’t up to the task of hauling it, but idiots still try. What is needed is a distribution system, as you point out, so we can maintain our landscaping with what is essentially wastewater that is otherwise discharged (in our case, into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River).
It sucked to be the ville further down the stream.
>> only the potable tap was treated to get rid of bacteria <<
Yeah, but when I was there, I was told always to boil the water anyway.
Trouble was, even though the chlorinated water may have been OK to drink immediately after it left the treatment plant, it still ran underground thru cracked and leaky old pipes before it got to your tap. And during that uncertain journey, it often picked up dangerous pathogens along the way.