Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown has a plan to combat climate change, and to help the State of California absorb an extra 10 million residents: Implement space ship like closed system recycling of waste water, such as urine, to allow the water to be recycled repeatedly.
According to Brown;
“We are altering this planet with this incredible power of science, technology and economic advance,” Brown said. “You have to find a more elegant way of relating to material things. You have to use them with greater sensitivity and sophistication.”
Brown said that, as California struggles to meet a mandatory 25 percent reduction in urban water use, technology would provide long-term solutions, including capturing stormwater runoff and recycling water numerous times.
“The metaphor is spaceship Earth,” Brown said. “In a spaceship you reuse everything. Well, we’re in space and we have to find a way to reuse, and with enough science and enough funding we’ll get it done.”
Jerry Brown might be happy preparing for his trip back to his home planet, but here on Earth, most of us prefer to drink water from reservoirs, rather than piping it in from the local sanitation plant.
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He can have mine. Where do I pee on …..
https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/8205079552/h19845CE8/
Can also be used as biofuel for the new Oldsmobile URIN8 for pissing about town
This scheme would require energy, and Californians are sadly allergic to new power plants. Only supplies from their neighbors allow them to keep the lights on now.
I guess I’m somewhat confused with the idea, because Californians have been drinking reclaimed pee for decades, in fact, everyone one us have. Water treatment plants process raw sewage all the time, and if they don’t then nature does it for us via the water cycle.
Here’s to a nice cold glass of dino pee!
Where do people think all of the sewage treatment water goes? Into the Air? Into the ocean via a direct pipeline? Drive along the river near your town. You will find a Sewage Treatment Plant and the discharge goes into that river. Further down stream that same processed pee is pumped into the water treatment plant cleaned up and pumped into you drinking water. Over, and over, and over and over again till it goes into the ocean.
Oh, that does not affect me, I get my water from well water. Well try this. pour a gallon of marker dye in every one of your neighbors toilet and flush it. do this for a few week or till it shows the dye, and it will show up in about 1/4 of the homes using well water. CT, MA, PA, and OH are states that I know have problems with this.
The only saving virtue is that moist soil has enough bacterial action and filtration to eliminate most of the bacteria etc. over the distance that it travels that it will not hurt you, and over the years you have built up an immunity to those that do get through the several hundred feet of soil.
Agree with Kuldebar and Usurbrain. However, several of CA’s large cities are on the ocean and rivers through them often don’t carry water. It may sound worse when a city uses its own recycled water, rather than recycled water from a city upstream, but it is really the same.
Useurbrain rhetorically asks: “Into the ocean via a direct pipeline?”
Actually “Yes,” in San Diego Point Loma Waste Water Treatment Plant the pipe does go directly out to the ocean.
“The treated waste water is then delivered back into the ocean by an outfall (pipe) that dumps the water 4.5 miles out from the coast.”
Usurbrain rhetorically asks: “Into the ocean via a direct pipeline?”
Actually In San Diego “Yes.”
San Diego Point Loma Waste Water Treatment Plant the pipe does go directly out to the ocean.
“The treated waste water is then delivered back into the ocean by an outfall (pipe) that dumps the water 4.5 miles out from the coast.”
It seems that Eric Worral also has his own planet Earth, if he thinks we are not already drinking recycled sewage.
It is estimated that tap water in Paris has already been drunk by six people… join the dots as to what that means.
Many municipal water supplies come from rivers, which are also where the nominally “purified” sewage goes. Bad luck if you live too far down stream.
Exactly Kuldebar!
It has been calculated that there is one drop of water in every glass that once went through Julius Cesar.
It’s all THE SAME OLD WATER since the Dino’s ran around. The only NEW water gets created as Methane and Oxygen react with Lightning and Fires
One word: Stillsuits. Ok, two words: Mandatory stillsuits.
LOL! This was my first thought, too! California, land of the Fremen!
Urine valley.
You forget that they can fuel the underclass of immigrants with corn based ethanol.
Capturing storm water runoff? The man’s a genius.
…he is probably is thinking of something like a reservoir, but without a dam, or any kind of an impoundment, and doesn’t reduce in stream fish water…. I don’t have the capacity to visualize it.
Argggh, Simple. Use fracking to restore aquifers with storm water run off. So easy to drill and exploit surface oil, so use same technology to refill aquifers. massive storage on tap.
No! Removing dams to increase the supply of sea water for desal plants.
Is it Alzheimer’s, satanic possession, or just Aspen Institute brainwashing?
No brainwashing. Gotta save water.
Moonbeam thinks you can re-work an entire sewer plumbing system like this….
well, I guess to some people this sounds good
Water treatment plants already exist its just that the cleaned up water in California tends to be dumped in the ocean. It isn’t necessary to use the reclaimed water in the public drinking supply it could be easily used to replace much of the water used for agricultural purposes. This is however just fiddling about to no real effect as 80% of water use in Southern California is agricultural and around 50% of that supplied as potable water is used to irrigate peoples gardens.
Bottom line is that the massive scale of agricultural use in the central valley is unsustainable in what is after all a semi desert environment. Growing grapes and soft fruit in a desert needs a LOT of water. Use of modern techniques such as drip irrigation as practised in Israel could be far more cost effective. Israeli experts have been advising farmers in dry areas of Asia, including China and India, on sustainable dryland agriculture for many years.
I recall visiting the Desert museum outside Tucson Arizona and on the tour were a group of Israelis. They object to the use of the word ‘desert’ for the area as it got around 12″ rain per year. The guide asked them what they would call such an area. The reply was ‘In Israel that is prime agricultural land’
I agree that water could be used more efficiently, but those farmers or land owners have the ‘legal’ rights to use it. So Moonbeam should buy it from them to help them pay for the water conserving technology that feeds his taxpayers.
It is too late now but California was a mistake to begin with. Move 40 million people to a desert, steal water from all your neighbors and get surprised during a dry spell.
Brown could be a leader here. They already want to tax the air you breath (out), so why not tax the water you drink, tax your pee, tax you poop, tax your dog’s poop, tax your children, tax your …….
Excerpt of transcript from recent CBS 60 Minutes episode “Depleting the Water” with Lesley Stahl
[…]
Making things worse, farmers have actually been planting what are known as “thirsty” crops. We saw orchard after orchard of almond trees. Almonds draw big profits, but they need water all year long, and farmers can never let fields go fallow, or the trees will die.
But with all the water depletion here, we did find one place that is pumping water back into its aquifer.
Lesley Stahl: Look, it really looks ickier up close.
We took a ride with Mike Markus, general manager of the Orange County Water District and a program some call “toilet to tap.” They take 96-million gallons a day of treated wastewater from a county sanitation plant — and yes, that includes sewage — and in effect, recycle it. He says in 45 minutes, this sewage water will be drinkable.
Mike Markus: You’ll love it.
Lesley Stahl: You think I’m going to drink that water?
Mike Markus: Yes, you will.
They put the wastewater through an elaborate three-step process: suck it through microscopic filters, force it through membranes, blast it with UV light. By the end, Markus insists it’s purer than the water we drink. But it doesn’t go straight to the tap. They send it to this basin and then use it to replenish the groundwater.
Jay Famiglietti: It’s amazing. Because of recycling of sewage water, they’ve been able to arrest that decline in the groundwater.
Lesley Stahl: All right. I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/depleting-the-water/
These people won’t be satisfied until everyone is drinking urine and eating feces.
Now that’s a feedback loop. But I suspect you’re correct.
You laugh, I listened to a college professor explain how you can grow duck weed in a hog waste lagoon which purifies the water. If the duck weed is then moved to fresh water, the sugar in the duck weed turns into protein which can be fed back to the pigs.
The problem is, her research is funded by the DOE. They want to make the high sugar duck weed into ethanol. If she were to publish turning the duck weed into pig food, she would loose her funding.
Interesting! Decades ago there was research published showing that fermentation of corn to produce ethanol created cattle feed that was superior to corn.
“… to produce ethanol created cattle feed…”
I bet made the cows happy.
Where I live, the treated sewage water is distributed among many acres of Poplar trees. The idea was to harvest the trees and use the fiber in a nearby pulp mill for making paper. Unfortunately, the city didn’t harvest the trees quick enough, and a state law kicked in that said a stand of trees older than a certain number of years could not be cut down. So now we have a thick stand of trees that serves as a forest home for deer which are a nuisance for all the nearby garden growers.
@cassidy421 – feed lots used the “leftovers” from beer brewers and distilleries as a superior and cheap feedstock.
Note the past tense. They did that right up until (I think it was the FDA, but could have been DOA, or EPA – one of the the three letter Fascists) came along and told them it couldn’t be used unless it was completely sterilized (more sterile than just using raw grain).
Soylent Brown?
We will need to learn how to recycle human waste if we ever hope to colonize space, successfully. Developing the technology would be useful for dry areas, where desalinization is impossible. Frank Herbert’s book “Dune” was about recycling waste on an even smaller scale – the individual. It is amazing how some sci-fi concepts appear to be catching on – such as the alleged warp drive from NASA. Even the light sail triumph of this week is based upon ideas that were planted, back in the pulp science fiction era.
No Problem. Been done for centuries in places like China and India. Just get yourself an outhouse, put it on a little rise, and get a pig, put it down below, then just let the, er, “stuff” roll down hill…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet
SNORT! It’s been done for a very long time, for sure, but the way you put it was hilarious! The truth is that if most folks really knew what goes down in our own sewer plants they would run screaming. The stuff found in our drinking water supply’s, for example, have been items from band aids to bodies…stuff that I’m sure would shock most. You know what they say, ‘Chit’ happens! So, what’s a little pee among friends? LOLOL
Would save on dog food, too.
Dogs probably largely domesticated themselves when outcast, defective wolves gravitated to human camps to chow down on our fecal matter and scraps, to include bones.
In my early career, (’60s and ’70s) i worked on the design of wastewater treatment plants. I was visiting the Lemay WTP in South Saint Louis sometime in the early ’70s. Saint Louis had a combined storm and sanitary waste system (at that time). There was a pump station at the foot of the hill occupied by the Lemay plant. A call came from the station to “come have a look.” They had about $2,000 in twenties drying on clotheslines they’d rigged. the money had showed up on the bar screen and the $2k was what they’d been able to rescue.
No claim was ever made on it.
And on a side note, 2 million gallons of sewage is a lot less intimidating than a half gallon.
In his WW-II memoir “Quartered Safe Out Here” George MacDonald Fraser (of “Flashman” fame) described the privies he saw in Burma in 1945: A tiny hut atop four poles ten feet tall, with a ladder. The dung accumulated on the ground below. Presumably, over time, the dung pile could conceivable grow tall enough to require relocating the privy a few yards away. Which is harder – digging a deep pit or erecting a stilt hut? Maybe they just didn’t have good shovels.
In the early 2000s I was boarding in a farmhouse in rural Romania. The “outhouse” didn’t need to be on poles. It was built on a slight slope with a small stream meandering down the hillslope and around the base of our contributions. The waste pile was continually eroded and washed down into the small apple orchard just down slope. The apples were fed to pigs, used to make apple brandy and even for eating.
Sustainable waste management !
“Which is harder – digging a deep pit or erecting a stilt hut? Maybe they just didn’t have good shovels.”
In alluvial flats in monsoon countries like Burma the groundwater level is often just a few inches below the surface, so digging deep pits isn’t practical.
Urine is not the health problem. all of the other stuff is. The dope, pills (the thousands of different ones for thousands of different problems), used pregnancy tests, toilet cleaner, drain cleaner, industrial solvents, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
Exactly. The headline here is inaccurate. There’s not that much pee in the type of waste water Moonbat… er… Moonbeam is talking about here, grey water. Your shower (the ordinary one) discharges very close to pure water, except for a little soap and a small concentration (.04%?) of salts and some dead skin cells. Aye, there’s the rub-a-dub-dub. That stuff takes it out of tap water standards. Bacteria that can eat those skin cells can eat YOU. The grey water needs to be processed. Brown (pardon the expression) didn’t say they were going to recycle sewer water; I suspect he’s talking about using recycled water as industrial water–stuff for agriculture, cooling towers, petrochemical production, reaction quenching, washdown, etc. Additional purification would permit use as tap water, but that’s expensive. Instead, why don’t we just stop dumping millions of gallons of freshwater to protect the delta smelt?
Yup. I am a sewer collection/water distribution worker. I have repaired numerous domestic sewer pipes and, while you might think that human waste would dominate, the most prominent odor I have smelled while in excavations is cleaning chemicals. It’s a known fact that current treatment processes can’t deal with such chemicals, not to mention the steroids and antibiotics in our food, as well as the other as mentioned chemicals, most of which simply pass through our bodies and into the sewers. Most, if not all, treatment plants rely on lagoons, where treated sewage sits and evaporates. When it evaporates enough it is put on trucks and hauled to landfills. Some have tried to use it as fertilizer but, the chemicals in the sludge are a problem. I guess my point is, you can recycle urine into water but, as with any process, there is waste/ byproducts that needs to be disposed of if it can’t be used in some other process. It doesn’t matter what it is, there are always byproducts. Has the Governor given any thought to that?
I think the plan can be modified to send the water to farms, where it can be used to bathe farm animals. Afterwards the soapy water can be used in car washes to water lawns, which ought to grow very well. The only drawback I see is insects getting those hormones and antibiotics will probably take over the San Fernando Valley.
“Milorganite” was the name for fertilizer made in Milwaukee from sewage. The problem was there was too much selenium in it for use in agriculture.
Too bad they couldn’t have shipped it to Selenium poor areas in the west. We supplement Selenium to livestock where I live.
Colonizing space, yes.
Right here, we have a huge desalinization plant – it’s called the Earth (or “Spaceship Earth” if you want to be all Moonbeamy). Supplies more fresh water than we can find a way to use.
Now, the distribution system from that plant leaves something to be desired…
Ummm, we don’t need to learn anything. Cleaning wastewater is now-trivial task that has been known for centuries. Modern sewage plants are extremely clean, and multple cities have already done this.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/toilet-to-tap-wastewater-recycling-begins-in-wichita-falls-texas/
“…alleged warp drive from NASA.”
Next step: discover a “paradise planet” in another solar system. Start shipping colonizers.
Before signing on, read Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons.”
Or we might ship a few million illegals back to their home countries and let them drink mexican instead of California water. Draining the swimming pools in Silicon Valley, Beverly Hills, and Malibu might be a serious gesture too.
(As no-one has said it yet): He’s taking the p*ss!
Maybe it wasn’t drinking the green kool-aid that made the eco-freaks so neurotic….At least now they are considering filtering it…
It is wise to recycle that which is rare and expensive.
Government says we should recycle urine.
What a nut job… Pure insanity.
Then again, it is said that the water in London’s taps has been ‘recycled’ 11 times. (I stick to scotch!)
bingo, we have a winner
Its likely to be many more times than that these day.
Sounds like nothing but a good idea to me.
Israel already recycles its water with more than 80% efficiency. It’s not only possible, it helps prevent environmental collapse due to anthropogenic water usage. For instance, there are salt water springs underneath the Galil (Sea of Galilee) that, if the fresh water level goes to low, will mix with the fresh water. The only cause of low water levels has been human usage. If the Galil becomes salt water due to human use, not only will the supply of fresh water dry up, but the local environment that relies on that fresh water will be exterminated pretty much over night. Thanks to water recycling, the Galil has been saved as both a human source of fresh water and one for the wildlife.
California is not unlike Israel. While it regularly has high water levels, it is prone to droughts that are exacerbated by human water usage. Human drinking water has to come from somewhere and it can’t continue coming from freshwater sources. That means desalination and water recycling.
Fact is, this is a good idea and one that common sense conservationists have been pushing for for a while now.
But this is California, where a urine tax is sure to follow.
BAHAHAHAHAHA! I know right! 😊
i agree possibly with yehudi but i agree definitely with r-guy. yeah, there will be a urine tax … but it will have a real nice all-around appealing jazzy name.
did i miss it or did no one, so far, comment on the key phrase in the final Gov-JB quote: “enough funding”
gosh almighty, what on earth could that possibly mean? not new taxes? heh?
“The metaphor is spaceship Earth,” Brown said. “In a spaceship you reuse everything. Well, we’re in space and we have to find a way to reuse, and with enough science and enough funding we’ll get it done.”
When I was young and living in San Diego, the Submarine Base at Point Loma had a desalination plant. When Guantánamo was quarantined by the Cubans, the USN sent that plant to Cuba. I have no idea whether it is still in use there.
Anthropogenic water usage [AWU], now THERE’s a catchy phrase. Wonder where we can use that? Good work!
This is the same knot head who wants run multibillion dollar tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta in order to avoid sending brackish, Suisun Bay water south (that’s not what he says, but that is what it does – save Southern California money).
Yes,
He wants to put the Sacramento River into a $10 Billion tunnel (list, to be doubled a few times during construction) AND send it out the bay for the Delta Smelt at the same time… “Unclear on the concept”…
So, as read it, he’s advocating I go pee on my lawn to save water and recyle at the same time?
Sure, what’s another $10 billion. Perhaps they can crowd source it or just grab some of the millions certain people get from Big Oil.
And by the way, all you Kalifornians remember, Florida is fine without you so stay away.
Look at the photo of Gov. Brown that accompanies this post. Look into his eyes and you look into the eyes of madness. I am always amazed at the utter lunacy that comes from Brown. It was the same last time he was Governor of California. What is really amazing is that the people of California voted the loon back in.
To solve the problems created by the first Moonbeam administration, ie giving public employees the right to strike, Californians voted in, that’s right, an older and even zanier Moonbeam!
Ever see his official gubernatorial portrait? ‘Nuff said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gubernatorial_portrait_of_Jerry_Brown
That is some painting!
Never seen him look better.
Looks just like him! Darn near photo-realism.
What is really amazing is that the people of the USA voted the racist obama back in. Now he’s stealing from peoples IRS refund money to fund obummer care. Truth.
Well it’s easier to filter than seawater, therefore cheaper. And just as filtered. Singapore already sells it in bottles as “NeWater” AFAIK.
Hope all you Americans aint too grossed out when you find out that last time you visited London, you’ll have been drinking water that passed through the kidneys of at least 5 other Londoners!
I pity the fifth one.
The 2nd, 3rd and 4th shouldn’t be too thrilled either.
The water that comes out of most sewage processing plants is already safe to drink. We just dump it back in the rivers to let mother nature do a little more work on it tastes better.
Grandma recycled cow pee and poop into rose tea for her garden. Farmers do the same thing on a much larger scale. I see no reason why technology should not be used to turn at least grey water into potable water. At a larger scale this could be expensive, but at the individual dwelling level it might be doable. I could envision the day when toilets are equipped with technology that allows even this water to be prepared to become potable. I think this makes sense. I can see places like El Paso, Texas going this way. That area has very limited water supplies.
Right after they finish the high speed rail line…..to Fresno.
Fresno is a commercial hub city of more than 400,000 residents. It is no longer the BFE portrayed in local jokes when we still had good variety shows on TV. A high-speed rail line to San Francisco and Los Angeles would seem quite reasonable to some Californians (and ex-Californians).
It may be fun for those who idolize trains, but it will never make sense.
Takes 4 times as long as a plane but costs many times more.
It will never pay for itself, just as every other high speed train line has failed to do.
Yup. You should see the scale we do that on at my dairy farm. 150 HP tractor, multiton manure spreader. A big boy. OTH. We do let Mother Nature work some intervening soil interventions, as our shallowst water well is 65 feet down and a good quarter mile from the nearest manured field.
Nothing wrong with grey water for lawn/golf course/ agricultural irrigation. Thats one reason Earth has a vast bacterial and fungal biome.
Only, you have to create additional plumbing infrastructure to use city greywater properly. Maybe Moonbeam can get California started. You know, pump LA greywater back up to the Central Valley. About as useful as his proposed bullet train.
Most municipal waste-water treatment plants stop at Secondary treatment, which involves a certain amount of biological treatment. If Tertiary treatment technologies were added to existing infrastructure, you’d pump the discharge directly to the potable water treatment plant, no problem. The final polishing step could be man-made marshes full of cattails; they can breakdown PCB’s for food! No need to collect grey water on a city-wide scale and pipe it separately.
Actually, in this case, I agree with Brown. I’ve been thinking that the western US would need to learn to make fresh water from the ocean in an economically viable way sooner or later…this is a good bridge, reusing waste water…so long as it is sufficiently cleaned.
I’ve thought so ever since the desalination plant, which was a promising pilot project, was repurposed for Guantánamo. The Pacific looks awfully big and wet when you’re standing on the beach at La Jolla….
Actually, it’s not such a bad idea, given the situation. It’s a much-needed water source.
Let them drink urine!
The US Army now advises against drinking your own urine in survival situations, but if diluted with fresh water, the saltiness problem could be alleviated.
This would be the simplest solution for achieving Jerry’s vision of Ecotopian paradise. Then of course there is the possibility of sterilizing and harmful bacteria in fecal matter (better wet than dry, to save water). It’s a small step from advocating CACCA to consuming caca.
For “and”, “any”.
As in Eco-li.
Cleaning up wastewater (less than 2,000 ppm total dissolved solids) for reuse is easier than desalinating seawater (35,000 ppm total dissolved solids).
There are steps to remove the biological contaminants from the waste water but they are not going to take as much energy or other resources to remove as will the dissolved minerals.
Are you counting all the drugs in urine? How hard is it to get them out? Perhaps you could bottle drug infested urine and sell it at a premium. You could call it “Pees of Mind”. Get high as you hydrate, a winning combo.
I was thinking same.
Not just regular drugs either…all kind a funky stuff.
How about instead they run a big wide pipe up to the Columbia River?
End of problem.
@Menicholas WA will never let it happen. BPA shuts down the nuke plant to dump water through the hydro power dams and maintain water flow at the “required” level/flow rate.
Conventional secondary plant with nitrification, followed by a sand or activated carbon filter, followed by nanofiltration or reverse osmosis, followed by a strong oxidant or UV. Not new technologies, though they are all improving. The drugs would be taken out by the nanofiltration/reverse osmosis step.
How about collecting the valuable substance for industrial uses, like the ancient Romans? Plus other uses for the valuable waste product:
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/21/5-great-uses-for-pee-thank-smithsonian/
Reblogged this on Starvin Larry and commented:
The level of stupidity from elected gov’t officials is astounding-who voted for these idiots?