Editor,
I recently advocated treating our sewage to a potable level of purity that we could pump up the hill and mix with our other potable water. This is not the same as recent proposals that advocated pumping up the hill reclaimed water that we would keep separate from our potable water and use only for landscape and fire protection.
The manager of the Laguna Beach County Water District did a fine job explaining the problems with that idea. It makes no financial sense.
Let’s look further into the idea that we already can treat the sewage at the Aliso Creek treatment plant to a potable standard at a cost far below desalination. A big part of touring that facility came at the end when your guide would drink a glass of treated water and invite you to have one as well.
The astronauts reuse their water. We are all astronauts on this space ship earth. There isn’t any new water. All the water we have has been here for billions of years. We have the technology to clean the water.
What we don’t have is the political will to go, “toilet to tap,” in our water policy. Some day we’ll have to.
In the mean time we can learn from others.
The City of Burbank has started a program for distributing reclaimed water for non-potable uses that may work here. They give ratepayers 300 gallons of reclaimed water per day. Free. Bring your own bucket.
We could do that here. Folks who want to take advantage of this water for landscaping can install their own facilities to store, use the water and haul it home. If enough people started doing this, it could support a business hauling the water.
JJ Gasparotti, Laguna Beach
