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.
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?
He can have mine, provided he doesn’t want to drink it straight from the tap (faucet)
Marie Antonetta Brown: “Let them eat feces and urine..the peasants.. that is.”
What source of energy is used to recycle this waste? The answer to this question will predict whether or not it is economically feasible. I don’t mind the concept. it’s still water, regardless.
“technology would provide long-term solutions, including capturing stormwater runoff and recycling water numerous times.”
How about rebuilding the 350 California dams Green pressure has had destroyed?
In most of southern England, where I live, the water supply comes mainly from the Thames and other rivers. Treated water from the sewage system is recycled into the rivers, so it is very likely that some of the water I drink has been through someone else already, and it doesn’t bother me, any more than the fact that the air I breathe has been breathed many times by other organisms.
True. But Ma Nature’s bacteria and fungi were doing a bit of additional natural water purification work in the meantime. Its all a matter of concentration/time. I doubt even California could afford the ISS concentrated recycling systems. But would not be surprised if Moonbeam tried.
Do you live downstream from a wastewater treatment plant and get your water from the river, it’s recycled. Same for getting your water from a lake where water is discharged. Even groundwater is highly filtered recycled water. Modern wastewater treatment plants and water purification plants can produce water that is purer than those pictured pristine lakes which are pooped and peed in by all sorts of critters.
Unless you get your water directly from combination of hydrogen and oxygen I’d suggest that you get very little water that is not recycled.
Have you ever heard of rain?
Actually rain water can be polluted. Just like some bottled water. It depends on the air quality. All rain water is drinkable, but it might make you sick. Runoff from roofs can be highly contaminated from the dust that settles during dry periods. When we hike, we carry filtration and purification tablets. I’d treat drinking rain water the same way, but rain barrels are great for watering plants.
I think just about everyone in California should drink urine. (apologies to those like AW who really just need to get the heck out of there)
Hey, we’ve got plenty of fresh water over here in Texas, so we’ll be more than happy to bottle up our urine and send it to all y’all!!!
P*** on him. The problem is that it will make very little difference. The big problem is the underpricing of agricultural water and the continuation of cannabis prohibition. And of course the dam n dam problem.
You apparently forgot that it was the agricultural community that paid for the transport of Colorado River water into California, not the cities that grew up because of the availability of the water. If you pay for the project, I think you have a right to expect to benefit from it. In the case of water, it isn’t agriculture that is the leech, its all those people that think agriculture gets the breaks that are.
OK. They paid for the canals. None the less – underpricing the water makes for excessive use. If supply and demand determined price things would be closer to balance.
If you charge farmers more for water, food will get more expensive.
You pay either way.
How about a permanent ban on lawns in a desert?
It would appear the governor hasn’t gotten the message that spaceship Earth already recycles the water to start with. We aren’t losing water, unless all those accounts of alien flying saucers hanging over bodies of water and beaming water aboard are true.
Also, when you take the outflow from the waste treatment plant and pump it into the ground as water recharge for the aquifers, the same rocks filter it again and make it nice to drink yet again. No matter what the governor does, he is not going to find water for another 10 million Californians unless he is going to wake up, build reservoirs, and maybe, just maybe, stop the sales of California’s water out of state via bottled water plants. Sometimes, profitable industries aren’t really profitable for the state, not when the state has to spend tens of billions of dollars finding ways to make high priced water available to the average citizen, so that the rich owner of a bottled water plant can continue to make billions for him or herself.
You mean “V” wasn’t just science fiction?
They don’t call him “Moonbeam” for nothin’….
Here’s a possible solution for Guv Brown (the color of u-no-wot). During 1970, I worked in Korea and while on a road trip, had to use a men’s room at a rest stop. In front of each urinal there was a milk can into which one was supposed to urinate. I inquired and found that the government decided to build a urokase industry and needed feed stock. Requiring everyone to urinate into the milk cans was a way to do it. The cans were emptied each night and shipped to a urokase factory
So here is what Guv Brown (the color of u-no-wot) needs to do. Ask congress to pass legislation to put milk cans in front of all highway urinals in the continental USA so it can be shipped to California to solve his water problems. Pretty soon, his problems will be solved. And ofcourse, the highly-taxed residents of California can foot the bill.
Typical Green Blob stuff.
There are almost 40 million people in California, let’s say they each produce two litres (~four pints) of urine per day, that’s 80,000 tonnes of urine per day.
According to official statistics, the good people of Los Angeles use a little under 0.4 tonnes (400 litres) of water per day, so that means Moonbeam’s plan will save -if 100% effective!!! – the amount of water used by 200,000 people, or 0.5% of the population.
In other words, all fluff and no substance.
” the good people of Los Angeles use a little under 0.4 tonnes (400 litres) of water per day,”
They don’t. In these statistics, the water use of agriculture is included. That’s how they lambast us Westerners with our “wasteful lifestyles”.
Average residential water use in the US is about a hundred gallons per person per day. Lowest is Maine at around 51, highest Nevada at about 190.
Per capita usage for the US on the whole is over 1300 GPD. About half of this is withdrawn to cool power plants, and about 30% is for irrigation.
Four liters per day for residential use sounds about right.
Agriculture uses way more than four liters per person per day.
Eckspeshally in Kaliforny
Those are 2009 numbers.
How long before The ‘Greenies’ start talking about necro-cannibalism?
Another twofer. Reduce the number of humans and feed those that are left all at once.
Why bother with the necro bit?
https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html
Soylent green…Good idea. Great movie too.
“…and with enough science and enough funding we’ll get it done.” Brown commenting on the American political left’s long term goal to increase public acceptance of governmental influence in individual’s daily lives.
I wonder what California’s wine industry thinks about using recycled pee-water for making wine?
Everyone (who gardens/farms) should be using their urine and not “wasting” it. Keeping urine separate from fecal matter is a necessary requirement but there’s quite a lot to be gained from the reutilization:
“Human urine is one of the fastest-acting, most excellent sources of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and trace elements for plants, delivered in a form that’s perfect for assimilation. Not only that, we all have a constant, year-round supply of it – and it’s free!”
http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/gardening/605742/urine_the_ultimate_organic_fertiliser.html
The idea is to use it before it starts going bad, when it turns “ammonia”, just pour it into the compost pile. But, while “fresh” simply dilute with some grey-water and use it for plant food.
“Dilute at least 10:1 and up to 50:1 for use on tender plants and seedlings.”
So, while I don’t think it takes a government program for common sense solutions, I have to say I hope Californians will start acting sensibly. Urine won’t solve California’s drought, but it’s not an insane idea.
If the State can spend all the resources to purify urine, I suggest they also consider that non-yellow, but very salty body of water which lies off their west coast.
Where are you going to get the billions of dollars to rip out, duplicate, and then rebuild millions of feet of in-wall and under-slab sewage pipes with new twin-hole sewage and urine pipes, then excavate the streets and lawns and concrete and bridges and driveways and buildings to connect all of those duplicated sewage pipes, then rebuild all of the ripped out millions of walls and slabs and roads and driveways and bridges and culverts and drainage pipes …
You see, all of these sewer and water pipes and fittings and valves already exit and already are working. THEY DO NOT NEED TO BE REPLACED to continue to function, but now must be duplicated to satisfy the democrat-in-charge.
Oh wait. This is Californication! Just add taxes. Charge the bill to the state for all illegal aliens and residents who can’t afford to pay taxes. Just add it to the state and federal budgets – like they did for the 200 mph rail that is being built by the husband of CA’s democrat senator.
Everyone with a septic tank already uses their waste, all of it including what goes into the insinkerator, to fertilize their lawn/landscape.
I am sticking to some Peter’s (who, BTW, disagree about what is the most balanced and available formulations) for my veggies, but you go right ahead and use pee in the garden you feed to your guests and kids.
Maybe on flowers and trees. Not on the garden plot.
Not for this kid. Not until I am scratching bottom in a survival situation.
Not tonight!
When I was about 10 I was at a boys sleep-away camp, the only females around were the nurse and cooking ladies, so we skinny dipped, and when outdoors we usually peed where ever we were.
However, at archery class the instructor insisted that we only pee on this one little tree, because he said it would kill trees if we peed on them, so only kill this one tree, and not the rest. After two months at the camp the peeing tree had grown far bigger than all the other trees that started out the same size. The instructor claimed he knew that would be the result, because he had conducted this experiment before, but he wanted to teach us that not everything you assume to be true is correct. I had already started to learn to be skeptic of many things I was told, but this made me even more determined to question everything.
I don’t understand why people who ask “is that really true?” are now called deniers. We really should be called inquisitive.
yay! was hoping someone would say this..:-) yes saving n diluting urine for the garden is so easy and gets such great results, and seeing as homegardening is again happening, what better time.
there is a phosphorus shortage globally they tell us(of course thats after all the big agri mobs bought all the sources they could find to corner the market)
all the animal manure that used to be piled aged n applied to soils now isnt
idiots buy in chem fertilisers at great cost.
I get by in hot aussie summers with 2000gallons max of rainwater, thats everything!!! washing bathing n garden and animals. avg no to low rain is nov to march/april
its about time the drier parts of america had a RElearning event
you can!! wash bedding then hardly dirty office clothes etc then jeans then dog rugs for eg in the SAME wash water, yes you still use rinse water fresh but it saves avg 300+litres of water on 4 fresh wash loads of water
yes it takes a bit longer to either spin n save the water n reload the machine
but if you really? were short of water -you’d damn well DO IT!
our ancestors did and I do.
you CAN have a perfectly good bucket wash using as little as 2 gallons of water inc washing long hair, yeah its not so easy as turning on a tap and standing there, you do have to exert yourself to upturn dippers of water over you 🙂
if you are short of water then you DO make the effort.
and laundry water should go onto garden, get another length of hose added to the one that comes with the machine n run it out direct to yard or fill buckets n carry them out.and if you must use regular shower etc divert to there as well in summer, even washing dishes in a bowl and tip that to garden.
Im still absolutely amazed that Cali KNEW it was facing water shortfalls and did NOT even start to tell people to ease off n conserve water at the start of year two of lower reservoir capacities. sheer stupidity.
Our ancestors were lucky to live to thirty.
A funny french writer of XIXth century named Alphonse Allais had a bit similar idea, intentionally as ludicrous as that of this governor: He proposed to recycle the urines of the diabetic people with the aim to extract the glucose they are containing and to use it in pastries making.
Interesting, isn’t it ?
Has he done a cost vs benefit study of this???
Has any liberal?
Yes, but he used the same people who concluded it would be a better use of funds to buy a subway (that no one will use in a state that is even more in love with their cars than most), than fleet of desal plants, or a pipeline to the Columbia river.
I think this same group of crack accountants and cost/benefit analysts are the ones that said taking dams apart was a fine idea.
Correction: …only about 2-3 gallons of recycled pee-water would be needed for washing out oak barrels.
My diet of alcohol and pizza, is starting to sound better and better.
In a related story, Governor Brown recommends Californians begin eating bugs as their primary protein source. Brown elaborated, that “bugs have lower cholesterol per gram of “meat”, and require significantly less water than beef, chicken or pork.”
Urban areas should be able to supply plenty of maggots and roaches for their residents to eat !
Most especially in China town. Roaches there are fat, juicy and yummy.
hasn’t California legalised smoking pot?… what if you drink their recycled stuff… hmmm everyone gets high and fails their mandatory urine tests at work and get fired… mass unemployment… the law of unintended consequences ???
The process of recycling should break down the complex hydrocarbons.
Not yet. Just for medical use.
An Australian senator (ironically named Ms. Waters) advocates urination in the shower. This despite the fact that the dams are over flowing. When a person is that daft, it makes sense to have a shower every time one has the urge to pee, as this will save water from going down the loo! As Mark Twain suggested, politicians, like diapers, should be changed often, and for the very same reasons!
Ms. Waters is, ofcourse, a member of the Greens.
As if Moonbeam’s stupid “bullet train” isn’t enough of a fiscal disaster, there’s SB32. But first, the ‘bullet’ train:
Moonbeam’s train is intended as his ‘legacy’. It will cost well north of $100 Billion, it will never be able to operate without passenger subsidies, the land bought up for rights-of-way will stop paying property taxes, the cost of a subsidized, 4 ½ hour trip from LA to SF will still cost more than an airline ticket, politics will ensure that every podunk town on the route (Manteca, Fresno, etc.) will have a stop, thus making it a very slow “bullet”, and best of all: there’s already a much better infrastructure in place: right now anyone can fly from LA to SF in one hour for around $100 (advance fare). So there is no need whatever for a 19th Century travel solution. It’s insane. A more stupendous White Elephant would be hard to imagine. Maybe next: Pyramids!
So, on to SB32, introduced by Sen. Fran Pavley, D (of course!) -Agoura Hills. It would mandate the reduction of “carbon” emissions (by which they mean harmless, beneficial CO2) to 80% below 1990 levels!
These people are insane! I don’t want to think about any alternatives. Like: they are deliberately trying to destroy the economy. So: they’re insane.
And their leader’s name is Moonbeam!
Don’t call Plant Food CO2. It confuses the masses.
I think I saw someone calculate that for the cost of the train, they could buy every airline ticket for everyone who travels this route for the next umpteen (I forget the number, but it was an eye-opener) years.
In polite society am I to:-
Leek on my peas
or
Pee on my leeks?
Or for approximately 1-2 cents per gallon they could use a teeny tiny fraction of the seawater (there is over 1,000,000,000 CUBIC KILOMETERS OF WATER in the world’s oceans, just think about that a sec) they’ve been blessed with to any number of people who wanted to move there as much water as they could use. Water and power problems should be far, far behind us with our level of technology and wealth but environmentalists are evil.
True, I think that making sea water into fresh water would be cheaper than trying to collect pee and converting it. Common sense to me…
How about if we use solar energy to evaporate seawater, then use the cool air up above 10 to 15,000 feet to cool the vapor, collect it using a land based capture systems of creek, stream, and river like canals, then pipe the resulting water where needed?
We can build structures to store the water for when it is required.
We can even get cheap power from these storage structures if we plan it right.
Naaaaahhhhh, some ecoloons would probably insist we take the whole shebang all apart, use what water we have to try and save a few minnows, and drink our pee instead.
I think they should send the urine to the almond groves (good source of nitrogen too!) and make make potable water out of sea water. Or SF Bay water, I hear that’s not too polluted.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Singapore has led the way with water recycling and collecting storm water – and they brand it as new water.Didn’t I read somewhere that Mississippi water is drunk several times during it’s journey from source to sea?
Whereas here in Australia we foolishly abandoned water recycling because it was branded as sewerage, and we ended up with expensive desalination plants because of one alarmist Tim Flannery who declared there would not be enough rain to fill our dams. Now: the dams are near full, and the desal plants are mothballed, but consumers are paying in their water bills for Flannery’s Follies.
Singapore? That place right near the equator that gets about 85 inches (over 2.1 meters) of rain each year, on every square inch of land?
If that don’t beat all.
Except maybe moving to a desert and drinking pee…it don’t beat that.
Desalination wont work because as everyone knows California must increasingly use renewable energy to meet the requirements of AB32. There is no solar at night and our one nuclear plant is not considered renewable. Under California law, neither is hydro, so that’s out too. That leaves wind power which is too little and too far from the ocean to supply the massive amounts of power needed to desalinate water.
So his idea must involve a massive baseload increase from fossil fuel, which is illegal.
Have you seen an ocean? Most of them have a lot of waves. The ocean near California has plenty of waves, wave power could be used. But there is no logical reason not to use oil, coal, nuclear hydro, wind, solar, or horses.
I think sooner or later, people will realize that making stuff illegal will not automatically solve the problems that the thing made illegal was solving.
We had all of this happen during Eastern Australia’s drought in the late noughties:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1835830.htm
Spent billions of dollars on a desalination plant which never opened its doors:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/beatties-9b-grid-proves-to-be-a-massive-money-pit/story-e6freoof-1226658095426
You know why it never opened? It rained:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/the-drought-breaks/story-fn59niix-1225952583089
Actually Anto, the Brisbane Desal was used for a few days AFTER the Brisbane flood, because a couple of the normal water treatments works were flooded. The Desal provided some water for the clean up.
He loves this kinda thing – he lusts for CONTROL. He wants to micromanage with an electron microscope.
And nothing will ever be good enough. It’s drink your pee today, tomorrow it will be eat your feces.
California has already been eating his for far too long!
Jerry Brown is not a nut, nor stupid nor an idiot. He is, however, a democrat politician who floats ideas that appeal to his constituents. A 25% cut in use is a no brainer because this state wastes water like there’s no tomorrow. I easily cut mine in half last year and I could cut it further. Last year northern Ca. cut use by 21%, in southern Ca. ….2%. I drive through the valley every week and see flooded orchards, drive through suburbia and see green lawns and lush landscaping. For all the talk of the liberal mind in this state it’s always the ‘other guy’ when it comes to sacrifice and taxes, which doesn’t surprise me much.
But never mind, it’ll rain like it always does, and the reservoirs will fill again and Jerry Brown will go make speeches at an empty high speed rail station down in Fresno after they’ve hurried off the protester and bums and swept up the garbage. The 25%+ of Fresno’s citizens who can’t find jobs will watch and wonder.
Please provide any and all evidence that Jerry Brown is not a nut, stupid, or an idiot.
Talk with those that supply water from reservoirs. The water is not clean. We have water treatment plants for a reason. You can die from untreated water.
Reply to Kyle Danielson
“”You can die from untreated water.””
As with many things, it depends.
Where I live, admittedly a small town far far away, the water is, in general, not treated at all. The exception is that once a year for about a week the reservoirs are treated with hypochlorite to remove the algal build up in them.
The water admittedly reaches only the minimum standard for potable water, but this is because of the way the regulations are written. Water that is not treated, irrespective of the actual quality of the water can never be better than the minimum.
On all actual tests of potability, the water I am provided is the best in the country. It invariably has the lowest bacterial count, whether total or coliform. There are some minor doubts, such as arsenic and mercury levels which are within accepted ranges but higher than is normal for the country as a whole, but these are due to the water being extracted in a volcanic region. The only way around this would be either importation or weak resin ion exchange, both ruinously expensive in the volumes required.
Eighty percent of the water use in California is used by agriculture. These speeches and restrictions are meaningless, they are however an effective way to promote the Climate Change boogeyman to uneducated masses.
A lot Californian’s are unaware that a new tax on gasoline went into effect January 1st, somewhere btween 50-60 cents a gallon. The increase happened to coincide with the drop in global crude prices, so the increase went unnoticed.
What part of “coastal state” do these people not understand? Desalination would be easier and more cost effective.
Desalination of seawater would would take many times the amount of energy required to recycle waste water. It may be conceptually easier, but the cost of energy would be much greater.
Ironic, too, in that because of idiotic energy policies to “fight climate change”, they have driven energy costs up, making desal as a solution to their drought situation uneconomical.
The single, largest power user in the state are the pumps that lift Northern California’s water over the Tehachapis for use in Southern California and this water is already fresh. The costs of desalinating water for the LA Basin and lifting that water to existing reservoirs for storage is astronomical, not to mention there are no new power sources available to do that. California imports 20% coal power from other states now as it is. That number must decrease under AB32.
There ain’t no free lunch.
Just out of curiousity, do the water project pumps need to run 24/7? If not, mightn’t pumping water around the state be a good load for intermittent wind and solar to deliver power to? If so, that’d free up a couple of GWh of dispatchable hydro power every year for loads that aren’t as accomodating. Or would that be too mundane for the ideologues on both sides to accept?
Don K
Pretty much, yes they do need to run continuoously.
The simple mass of millions of tons of water moving through the multiple-parallel, tens of-foot diameter pipes up and across mountain ranges mean that impulses and water hammer and irregularly starting and stopping momentum changes destroy the foundations, the pipes, the pipe mounts and structures, the pumps, and the motors and valves. Yes, you “can” stop and start them – that’s obvious. Just like you “could” drive cross-country in a high-end, top-fuel dragster – changing the engine and bearings and transmission every 2 miles, and refilling the gas tank and re-packing the parachute every 1/4 mile.
CA also imports a lot of power from the great Columbia River system dams of the Pacific NW.
RACookPE1978
I take it then, that pumped storage — which involves pretty much what you describe — can’t work. Should we tell the operators who do it or just let them find out for themselves?
Seriously, how does the water pumping in California differ from the pumping up the 1000 foot drop between the two reservoirs on Schoharie Creek at Blenheim-Gilboa in New York. Is it an engineering problem that could be solved at reasonable cost?
It differs because of the size of the units, the deliberate design of the pumps and turbines, and the deliberate start-up and shutdown control design planning in the pumped storage units. The very, very large pumped powerhouses in NY’s Moses plant, and across the river in Canada, are more typical of the “best practice” methods and very low heights more often used. That one plant in one location can be designed to survive with two-way flow assuming completely filled pipes and inlets does NOT imply the pumps and inlet piping elsewhere can be done that way with the irregular, unpredictable surges from wind and (less variable but still unmanageable) solar plants.
For example, pumping uphill the water that will be reversed and used later to drive turbines requires the pumps (operating about 92% motor efficiency) and the pump rotor (operating at 64% efficiency) be combined to pump water uphill trhough pipes (causes flow loss) into an open reservoir (minor evaporation losses) against gravity. That water then flows back through the suction pipe (again, more flow losses and control valve losses), into the turbo-pump (now operating at a slightly higher efficiency as a turbine, but not as efficiently as a pure-turbine in a straight hydro plant), and is discharged into the river at a slightly higher elevation than the suction (more potential energy losses from the net energy equation.) The hydro turbo-pump turns a shaft and a generator (about 96 – 98% efficient, but not perfect in any case). From that generator, you fight transmission losses and resistance losses sending the earlier electrical power backwards down the HV lines it was in only 6 hours before. None of those losses can be recovered.
It is the Niagara Falls natural hydro power flowing downhill from Lake Eire to the two reservoirs that makes those pumped storage units able refill their stockpiles with little extra power. (Usually, you can only made due with what little price difference between higher daily afternoon rates, and the lower late evening rates to “pay off” the combined hydro-pump units. And both Niagara plants must work with the daily night-and-day water flow changes allowed in the international agreement. But, both stored power units were built against extreme eco-opposition even in the mid and early 60’s. (there and a few other places) that allows pumped storage to work Elsewhere? Not nearly as effective, and nowhere else can it be as efficiently generated and replenished.
It’s good for guffaws, I guess. But the only real issue with it is where you’d place the treatment plants in the LA sprawl.
If it’s Brown, flush it down.
If it’s yellow, let it mellow.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Why is everyone talking about recycling? Can anyone tell me why we can’t have more reservoirs?
It’s the same problem: the eco-Greens, who work hard to stop all water storage projects. They are the ones at fault (and their cousins are the climate alarmist crowd).
Their last big win was getting the massive Auburn dam stopped just short of completeion. More than $1 billion was
spentwasted on the dam. Now it’s just a big ugly hole in the ground.In the UK we have had a large population move towards the South-East over the last 20 years, as the financial services industry boomed. This has meant that infrastructure services have had to be increased, and the water companies identified the need for 8 new reservoirs. They put these in their long-term plans, and organised their budgets accordingly – increasing rates so as to be able to service the interest on the capital loans they would need…
So customers are already paying for these. But government inspectors have halted each one of the projects, citing new European regulations which require countries to make a 20% drop in water use per capita. If we used 20% less water, the reservoirs would not be needed, of course.
Great Britain has no need to drop water consumption by 20%. It rains very frequently here, and there is water in abundance falling from the sky. But the European committee which set the standard is staffed by countries like Italy and Spain – both countries with comparatively low rainfall, and a need for water conservation. Britain didn’t need to worry about water conservation, so it thought it didn’t need any representation….
England has ground water reserves too. Thames Water was sold to MacQuarie Group a few years ago, and they are great at asset stripping. No investement in infratsructure, water rates increasing and borrowing against assets to pay share holder dividends.
Hate to break it to y’all (though I am guessing a lot of folks here already know it) but waste water has been recycled for decades. I worked in water and waste water treatment for many years. A lot of cities reuse some or all of their dilute liquid wastes for irrigation; some communities pipe it out for agricultural irrigation; liquid sludges are sprayed on agricultural lands as are settled solids. Different States and Provinces have their own regulations on the amount of treatment and type of crops that can be irrigated. If you are a golfer, you may have noticed signs on the golf course about not drinking the water from hoses (it’s often sewage effluent).
New treatment technologies such as micro-filtration make waste water suitable for irrigation and with further treatment – for stock watering or even human consumption. Many city boulevards use storm water and/or treated sewage. This isn’t a new idea.
In fact, cities in California are already using “recycled” water:
“There are examples of communities that have safely used recycled water for many years. Los Angeles County’s sanitation districts have provided treated wastewater for landscape irrigation in parks and golf courses since 1929. The first reclaimed water facility in California was built at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1932. The Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD) was the first water district in California to receive an unrestricted use permit from the state for its recycled water; such a permit means that water can be used for any purpose except drinking. IRWD maintains one of the largest recycled water systems in the nation with more than 400 miles serving more than 4,500 metered connections. The Irvine Ranch Water District and Orange County Water District in Southern California are established leaders in recycled water. Further, the Orange County Water District, located in Orange County, and in other locations throughout the world such as Singapore, water is given more advanced treatments and is used indirectly for drinking.[4]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reclaimed_water
Golden Brown?
The headline is very misleading.
Nowhere in the article cited is the recycling of urine specifically mentioned. What is talked about is the recycling of waste water in general. There is no proposal to keep the urine separate as opposed to mixing it in municipal waste water as it is now. Recycling municipal waste water would require no new distribution system.
Don’t worry everyone. Bill Gates has put together a $16.5 million dollar fund to design a super duper high tech toilet that will end the problems of the developing world. (& maybe even California).
According to Gates, what Africa needs more than anything else, is an expensive hi-tech toilet that will require a team of trained engineers to maintain. So he has set the best and the brightest of American colleges to work. Gates saves the world, again.
http://www.scidev.net/global/health/news/gates-scheme-to-reinvent-the-toilet-is-too-high-tech.html
Perhaps the odd coal fired electricity generating station or two would be more useful.
yeah, another stunt by gates…when there easy cheap and safe composting or bioloos all over the place they just need shipping TO africa. its hot there so composting in the sun to heat to 50c or more is not hard to acheive, and the waste is perfect soil improver.
Oh the humor and irony !!
Back when Moonbeam was running in the democart primaries in ’92, I was at a friend’s bachelor party at a bar and I found a “Vote for Brown” flyer in the head. I put it in the urinal and all night long when someone had to use the head, it was “I’m voting for Brown!!!”
In many California cities, your tap water contains Chloramine (for disinfection) and Fluoride (to reduce tooth decay). It is not good for goldfish and I doubt it’s good for some plants. The Chlorine and Ammonia will eventually escape to the air; but using potable water for:watering lawns and gardens, car washing, fire fighting, and toilet flushing is a waste of both. Unfortunately distribution systems for non-potable water are not widely available. Perhaps the drought will result in more distribution systems for recycled but non-sterilized water–but, please, not through our primary water system.
BTW, along our coastal hills, fog drip is another source of non-potable water.
Urine has been historically been used to make gunpowder…
Edit:
Urine has been historically used to make gunpowder…
I think there is a joke here somewhere.
Stop p1ssing on my fireworks man 😉
Water availability may be a challenge, currently, but it’s not THAT dire.
I’m sure most readers have gulped some pool water after it was recycled by the splashing of some toddler with sudden big smile on his face.
You know the rules:
1. never drink pool water
2. don’t eat yellow snow
I can drink my ool water.
I do not, but I could.
Because there is no p in it.
Very few people are lucky enough to have access to well water that does not require treatment. The vast majority of people in successful countries get treated water (now there’s another rat hole!). The city I live in injects treated sewage water into the aquifer. Initially it was a solution to keep the salt/ocean water out.
Desalinated water should only be considered in locations that have no access to fresh water otherwise there is more cost efficient technology and practices available to manage water. I’ve been through numerous droughts in So Ca. This too shall pass.
Over the past millennia or two, California has had droughts lasting for hundreds of years.
Just sayin’…
Its embarrassing to me as a Californian that we have a water shortage panic with over 800 miles of coastline and unlimited access to an unlimited supply of ocean water. Our country was was landing men on the moon 45 years ago. We’ve known how to desalinate water since, what, caveman days? Didn’t Grog the Neandrathal write a paper called “Boil, Condense, Drink, Grunt”? Peer reviewed by Dave Cromagnon and Bill Missinglink? There are first graders in our schools with science projects explaining to California how to make ocean water drinkable.
Every raindrop and snowflake is drinkable ocean water.
some of these people you wouldn’t pee on if they were on fire. Brown is one of those people.
Even if it was his hair on fire?
BTW, I am thinking his pants will be bursting into flames any day now, after all the climate lies he be spouting.
Now, that sure would be a my kind of a moral dilema … to pee or not to pee … to pee or not pee … oops, too late, his hair is all gone and he has fallen down.
I’ll make up for my indecision by peeing on his grave.
Wait a minute! He doesn’t have any hair and his eyebrows wouldn’t burn long enuf to allow for a well thought decision … to pee or not to pee.
I guess that I am still just peing on his grave.
In the end, it does give a new meaning to Pee Soup.
I just wasted like 3,000 dollars worth of California drinking water last night in the toilet. I was drinking beer. I wish I read this yesterday.
No elaborate technology is needed. Pee into the sea. (Easily done in California, since everyone lives on the beach there. I know this from films starring Sandra Dee and Annette Funicello. ) Nature will do the recycling and return the water as rain or snow. Most of this falls in the North of the state, but it will naturally trickle down to the South.
I’m sure he’ll lick the problem…..
It is said that the water in the River Thames in the UK passes through three people on its way to the sea.
But the problems Brown is facing is the creation of enviro policies. Drought occurs in California and a system of irrigation developed to alleviate it.
If Moonbeam really cared about the water shortage, he would expel the millions upon millions of illegal aliens residing in California. They are citizens of other countries who have no right to be here. They’ve bypassed the folks immigrating legally, and they are a huge burden on the existing water supplies. And they keep ‘flooding’ in by the millions.
But at least things here aren’t quite as bad as they are in the UK.
Expelling illegal aliens is not within the jurisdiction or the authority of the governor of California. It’s a federal issue.
Tell that to the Great State of Texas.
Moonbeam has immense influence. If he wanted, he could make a big difference. But they’re all on the same team, along with the climate alarmist crowd.
Those people are the PROBLEM, not the solution…
He doesn’t have the legal authority.
..
These folks can do it http://www.ice.gov part of the DHS
What are you all getting on about? Did you not read the last sentence?
“….and enough funding ”
Forget the pee metaphors, they are the perfect distraction. This is just another run of the mill boondoggle to channel taxpayer money to the well connected. Remember: Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
…. especially a manufactured crisis that took years in the making.
Advice to Jerry Brown : Never, ever, say “We’re in space.”
In space, no one can hear you scream. Here in the U.S., the MSM ensures the same outcome.
I have heard of a place that is very very hot, where water is an extremely precious commodity, there are lots of rolling black outs, and where pale green horrors rule over you. Now I see it is real.
It’s time we upgraded him to Jerry “Uranus” Brown.
Some of us are way ahead of Jer’. I have a lot of respect for the guy, save his climate evangelism. What can you say to those who have heard the voices? Anyway, can’t tell you how many thousands of gallons of water I’ve saved peeing in my vegetable garden. Man, is it green. Guessing 70% me and 30% the increase in atmospheric Carbon dioxide.
Learned the concept back in the 70’s on my first Grand Canyon river trip. See, you are given very strict instructions by the National Park Service to pee IN the river. Whoa! I’d spent a decade backpacking and hiking a third of a football field to pee AWAY from any water.
Pooh is an entirely different matter. Our kidneys approach the efficiency of a reverse osmosis filter, the ones Jerry is planning to use, wisely.
Get over the snark. We need to play smart.
What we really need is clothing that incorporates desalination, so we can drink our perspiration as fresh water. PRV – personal recycling vests.
Soylent Green is Pee-ople!
It looks like Hippy Sunshine’s hairline has receded and revealed…Big Urine Moonbeam salesman in a tie.
Hippy fantasies dictate that environmentalists think up worthless products that no one would buy voluntarily and with enough funding and science, this solves problems. And they fail to notice that when government sells you products, they use guaranteed taxpayer loans to companies created for the purpose of receiving the loan.
But I would think voters if asked nicely would give him the loan on the condition he put his face on the designer bottled urine water and sell it door to door.
And I would think they would approve a nice plant in Hollywood, which has been congratulating itself for putting scat in all their products for many years.
“Clean Water or Dirty Science”
I hope it makes you think,
Millions of children everyday
Have no clean water to drink.
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/2014/01/09/clean-water-or-dirty-science-its-our-choice/
Don’t worry where the huskies go,
You can eat that yellow snow..
Chris4692
June 11, 2015 at 4:49 pm
The headline is very misleading. […]Nowhere in the article cited is the recycling of urine specifically mentioned.
Yes, and if Gov. Brown had uttered such a thing, you’d naturally expect a hard-hitting investigative rag like the Los Angeles Daily News to be all over it with a headline like maybe Moonbeam’s Tinkle Toys on Tap or something like that, but instead, we have to be content with Eric Worrell’s effort here to gin up a little excitement, which one must acknowledge has produced a shower of potty humor, most of it flushable.
Meanwhile….
http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_28056793/californias-budget-surplus-soars-new-heights-schools-benefit
…and before that:
http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/californias-debt-levels-soar-under-schwarzenegger-5408
Some of you may remember Gov. Gray Davis. When he attempted to put a dent in California’s budget deficit of the time by raising vehicle registration fees a little, Californians went bananas, and that is the real reason for his recall, not the brown outs, which came later, and were the result of outside manipulation by Dick Cheney & pals. Of course, the Governator took the state down the tubes, but none of that matters now when you can have a field day bashing Moonbeam.
You may be drinking bottled water in future, but it’s obvious that you previously drank the kool- aid.
Alan Robertson
June 12, 2015 at 10:33 am
“You may be drinking bottled water in future, but it’s obvious that you previously drank the kool- aid.”
If you have something to say, please articulate exactly or quote specifically what it is you are trying to talk about, instead of just flinging salt from the peanut gallery: “Obvious…” about what, or in what way exactly?
It is obvious to me that Eric Worrall’s commentary here about Gov. Brown’s statement, and recycled urine is entirely a product of Eric Worrall’s imagination.
Some might even call it Yellow Journalism.
I happen to disagree entirely with Gov. Brown and his stance on CAGW, but where I part company with most of the commenters here today is that I do give credit where credit is due, instead of just piling on Gov. Moonbeam with gleeful giggles about recycled pee, as if this were some entirely new, bizarre, and laughable thing, when the truly laughable part is that so many people are seemingly ignorant about the basic plumbing of their own civilization.
I also know that Gov. Brown was speaking metaphorically. I know this through the diabolically clever technique of reading what he actually said, which author Worrall was kind enough to include, but which Mr. Worrall apparently either did not understand, or chose to ignore in the hope of drawing some easy laughs.
I vote for (and appreciate) the easy laughs.
DonM
June 12, 2015 at 6:13 pm
“I’ll make up for my indecision by peeing on his grave.
June 12, 2015 at 6:16 pm
June 12, 2015 at 6:24 pm
“I vote for (and appreciate) the easy laughs.”
A show of hands from the Peanut Gallery is not necessary, nor was it requested.
From comments here – yours included – we already know it’s SRO in there, where laughing is easier than thinking, and potty humor trumps all.
“Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown has a plan to combat climate change, and to help the State of California absorb an extra 10 million residents:”
CA already has to many residents (Legal and Illegal) and Gov. Moonbeam wants a plan that adds 10 million more. How about a plan that stops additional new residents and discourages the Illegal residents from staying?
As for combating climate change, RoFL! Mother Nature is going to do what she wants, when she wants, and how she wants, irregardless of AGW ShamWow squad.
There is no hope for California. — Eugene WR Gallun
He should drink it straight like Ghandi.
“Maybe some of you who are in denial about this scheme should write to the governnor…”
Well Zeke, with your keen interest, broad knowledge, and obvious enthusiasm for the subject, I think you’d be the perfect man for the job.
Check out Harris Tweed, a traditional method of recycling urine.
By the time they have spent BILLIONS on projects that don’t work the Californians could have supplied the whole USA with desalinated water .
now there is a thought bottled desalinated water from the gold coast got to be worth a $1.00 a bottle
Here in arid Israel we recycle 85% of our waste water, although that recycled water is nearly potable so we use it for irrigation water in agriculture only. This is an especially effective system when it’s fed through drip irrigation, which we invented.
God example!
Invent drip irrigation … you did not. You just came up with a better hole.
This brings to mind the story of an erstwhile Indian Prime Minister who was known to drink his own urine. A cartoon appeared in the Western media showing him talking to colleagues at an international meeting, with words to the effect: “You go for the grog and I’ll hit the piss.”
LOL … he’s taking the p1ss out of Kalifornians!
US has won a war with urine!
“Urine was used before the development of a chemical industry in the manufacture of gunpowder. Urine, a nitrogen source, was used to moisten straw or other organic material, which was kept moist and allowed to rot for several months to over a year. The resulting salts were washed from the heap with water, which was evaporated to allow collection of crude saltpeter crystals, that were usually refined before being used in making gunpowder”
I feel very much inclined to tell “Moonbeam” to p*ss off.
Gov Jerry Brown, a great leader and environmentalist. Without him the self-loathing movement would lose momentum….
Not really sure what all the fuss is about. Surely, the complaint should be that California was not already using reclaimed water. Florida has been doing this for sometime, http://www.dep.state.fl.us/water/reuse/
I would have thought that an overpopulated desert state with a surfeit of environmentalist scientists would have implemented this water saving already.
Recycling greywater is a perfectly sensible and intelligent way to handle water shortages, and should be a normal procedure for all municipalities. It if foolish and wasteful not to recycle greywater.
Cape Canaveral, Florida uses recycled greywater to irrigate streetside grass strip and plantings.
I’m sure someone has already pointed out the success of freshwater-starved Israel in using greywater/recycled in irrigation.
Mocking good ideas is a bad idea.
Nothing new here, the ‘ Warmists’ have been taking the piss for years!!
So moonbeam wants to take golden showers?
I have to disagree with you on this, Worrall. Unlike most of y’all, I actually am an environmental engineer with a wastewater license. This is a perfectly acceptable solution, and given that California is in a massive drought, a NECESSARY one. Scratch Climate Change from the justifications. It doesn’t change that California is suceptible to multi-decade droughts.
Proper sewage treatment gets clean, river-quality water (in fact, the effluent of my sewage plant goes into a pond that’s teeming with wildlife and is measurably cleaner than the steam it enters into), and it doesn’t take much extra work at all to get it to potable water standards (in fact, it’s easier than cleaning river water in the first place).
While the hype is ridiculous, the technology is sound, inexpensive, and has been used in that liberal hotbed of Wichita Falls, Texas.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/toilet-to-tap-wastewater-recycling-begins-in-wichita-falls-texas/
From one engineer to another – so many examples where the “waste water” flow from plants I worked on was improving the quality of the receiving waters, to a point that I have a thank you letter in my old work files from a provincial government, that was initially skeptical, thanking us for the reduction in eutrophication of a prairie lake thanks to the excellent quality of the sewage effluent. I worked on many such projects. In fact, there is an article on the philopsphy of sewage treatment somewhere that says rather than “the solution to pollution is dillution” that we ought to simply place all our sewer outfalls on rivers ABOVE our water intakes – which would mean we would be darn sure to go a great job of treating our sewage effluent. See also post at Wayne Delbeke
June 11, 2015 at 4:41 pm
I remember days in the 1950’s when I would walk along the river near my school at lunch and we would see condoms, floating feces, tampons and tampon containers, syringes, toilet paper and all sorts of detris caught in eddies and stuck on the rocks on the shore. We have come a long way from the days of open discharge into water bodies.
Wayne Delbeke
June 12, 2015 at 9:58 am
“I remember days in the 1950’s when I would walk along the river near my school at lunch and we would see condoms, floating feces, tampons and tampon containers, syringes, toilet paper and all sorts of detris caught in eddies and stuck on the rocks on the shore. We have come a long way from the days of open discharge into water bodies.”
====================
My first question would be, where was this ?
My second question is, why you would chose that spot to eat your lunch ?
By the way, you’ll still see the same things in some of Chicago’s alleys today.
Been there done that.
Where: Trail, BC, Canada, behind the Odeon Theatre, on Esplanade Avenue, two blocks from the school. A large retaining wall separated Esplanade Avenue with a large grassed area with picnic tables and tennis courts about 10 metres above the river; and a boat launch right at the the down town area beyond the tennis courts and just the opposite block of the shool. Of course, being curious young boys (and girls) we would go down the boat launch to the river and walk along the rip rap below the retaining wall/flood protection works. There was a large eddy that brought back sewage effluent and all the detris of interest to 12 and 13 year old kids.
A few years later everything was pumped to a secondary sewage treatment system some miles south of town. The City water intake was upstream of town but downstream of the other towns upstream 😉 .
As another point of interest, in the winter we used Esplanade Avenue to practice doing 360 degree spins in our cars as it was little used and nice and icy. 365 days of Happy Days style entertainment bookmarked by the Odeon Theatre and the “Bluebird Cafe” with a host of bars in between. If you remember the late 50’s and 60’s, you weren’t there.
The best direct discharge that I ever saw was a photo of an outhouse that was built on top of large tree roots that were exposed due to the erosion of the stream bank … straight 6 foot drop into the creek into the nice rural creek.
I’ve seen the photo used in a couple of seminars as a good attention getter … I wish I had kept a copy.
Don M
You just described the Tilapia ponds I saw in Vietnam back in the 90’s. The “Privy” was elevated on stilts in the middle of the pond and waste dropped straight into the middle of the pond including food wastes.
Mind you, I was walking along the docks in downtown Dubai sometime in the same decade, and was surprised to hear a splash in the water across the street from gold encrusted shops. It seems some of the Dows had a Privy on the bow with a straight drop to the ocean, the same ocean I was surfing in, but quite a few miles away. Still ….
How else do we get these great stories out of…..these older folks unless we press them 🙂
Wayne Delbeke
June 12, 2015 at 6:25 pm
“If you remember the late 50’s and 60’s, you weren’t there.”
I appreciate your excellent contributions to this thread Wayne, but I was there, and do I remember those years fairly well. It wasn’t until – shall I say it? – a wee bit later that I myself began to imbibe alcoholic beverages, a stupid choice I blame mostly on myself, but also on the bad influence of friends.
Many of the younger generations who’ve reaped the benefits of all the environmental clean-up work that went on in the 50s, 60s, and 70s are seemingly entirely ignorant of the rampant water, air, and land pollution that was commonplace during those decades in the USA.
As Americans took to the open road, the car window was a convenient trash bin, any remote ravine was fair game for dumping, industrial effluvient was discharged directly into waterways, and some of the nation’s bigger cities were already choking on smog.
In 1943, LA experienced its first episodes of smog: visibility was just three blocks, and Angelenos experienced burning eyes, respiratory discomfort, nausea, and vomiting. Already in 1947, California Governor Earl Warren signed into law the Air Pollution Control Act, authorizing the creation of an Air Pollution Control District in every county of the state. The first anti-litter campaigns started in the early 50s, and the term litterbug dates from the late 40s. In 1963, there was a TV campaign where “Every Litter Bit Hurts.”
Now some of the younger people apparently can conflate a river with an alley, and think they’ve “been there, done that.”
“Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown’s plan to recycle urine”. I don’t think he was referring to everyone he was just stating what he intended to do.
Moonbeam is still pushing the $60 billion slow train whhile his state runs out or water.
Yet this may be far better for much less money.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2015/06/150602-Musk-sonic-hyperloop-gets-California-stretch/
The climate cult obstructs even the most obvious progress no matter how desperate the need is.
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Tapping-the-ocean-for-drinking-water-State-lays-6247262.php
“Desalination plants have the obvious attraction of tapping a limitless source of water, the ocean. Critics warn, however, that the plants kill fish as they suck in briny water, and spew greenhouse gases into the air from the energy they require to run.”
Lying environmentalist idiots are the problem.
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2015/06/05/drought-desalination-supporters-hope-1b-carlsbad-plant-changes-critics-minds/
“The Carlsbad Desalination Project will be the largest facility of its kind in the Western Hemisphere when it opens later this year.
Situated 35 miles north of San Diego in Carlsbad, California, the $1 billion plant will supply 50 million gallons of potable water per day, or about seven percent of the county’s total water needs, to drought-weary San Diego County residents when it comes online around Thanksgiving.
With California’s snowpack at historically low levels, groundwater depletion causing subsidence across the Central Valley, and a frustrating lack of significant rainfall, much attention has been focused on desalination as a solution to the state’s record drought.
For decades, advocates and critics of desalination in California have clashed over the efficiency and cost of the process. Supporters claim desalination could tap the limitless water supply of the Pacific Ocean to alleviate the acute water shortages caused by drought, while opponents, including many of the state’s politically powerful environmental groups, say the process is too expensive and degrades the ecology of the ocean.”……………………..
This is a very significant story for WUWT to carry, and one which I hope will receive deeper consideration in future articles. I believe that these plants will be slipping into local water systems all across this country, and we are all going to need the facts. It turns out that Bill Gates is going into the Big Scat industry. No, I am not referring to the nationalized, computerized public education system called Common Core.
The waste systems he is selling now are called Omniprocessors. These are the press releases from Forbes:
People are going to need a breakdown of the inputs and costs per gallon of water produced. These kinds of nameplate capacities and expense sheets compared with actual costs and experience would be a real blessing for families like ours, who have already had outrageous hikes in water prices, though we have the most rainfall in the country. No doubt trendy town halls will want to install this addition to the existing water infrastructure, in the same way they shamelessly add worthless wind turnbines to thousands and thousands of acres of land for a disruptive and volatile supply.
But how much energy does it use?
How do they remove the ‘DNA’ ?
Michael Crichton had two principle concerns concerning science and society, which led to his criticism of global warming. First, he warned against governmental capturing science as a tool to cow the population into funding and submitting to politicians’ policies. Second, he thought scientists in many fields were far too certain and trusting of their knowledge and tools, especially computerized systems.
Judging by what others have said on blogs, I was not the only one for whom his book (State of Fear) triggered a skeptical stance toward global warming alarm. It was a wake up call for some, and for others, like myself, it was an inoculation against the viral media onslaught to come.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/06/12/in-praise-of-michael-crichton/
Now, just how is Jerry Brown going to recycle urine when the stars in Hollywood are sprinkling their lawns with it ?
In the Middle Ages, urine was a vital component in laundering clothes and in dyeing fabrics. Apparently it was only male urine that was collected, possibly for ease of collection or modesty, but it was common to have large tubs on the streets for men to urinate into. Perhaps California will do something similar and put out public collection stations.
And in some societies drinking each others urine was a way to “recycle” the drugs (natural, of course) they had taken.
can’t blame Moonbeam for this:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2015/06/12/flashback-abcs-08-prediction-nyc-under-water-climate-change-june
Some 70% of the surface of our planet is covered by water around 3 miles (~5 km) deep and here we have a ‘leader’ advocating that the more palatable option for citizens is the ingestion of their own urine. The mid boggles at this crass idiocy.
Will there be green water from green urine and sceptical urine from realists? why not let them oxidise etc and grow food with the resultant fertiliser. Make gun powder nitrates too if you pickle it properly. Could be a commercial opportunity here folks!
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
(Somebody probably already said something along these lines but ……)
Recycle urine? Maybe he just got tired of recycling the same ol’ sh*t?
As Patches O’Houlhan said in “Dodgeball,” “I don’t have to drink my own urine, but I do. Why? Because it’s sterile, and I like the taste.”
This will be a fine lesson in unintended consequences. Anyone care to guess what happens next if this madness becomes law?
Governor Moonbeam may be off target on most of his stuff, but I am with him on this one. Fact is, Calfornia has been recycling water for 90 years so there is nothing new here so I don’t quite understand the vitreol except as a characterization of the “Gov” rather than the idea.
Decent sewage treatment is not difficult even in “underdeveloped” countries. They are well aware of the danger of drinking polluted water and will walk miles from dirty rivers to get clean drinking water.
Slow sand filtration is simple, economic and effective and can be used to IMPROVE the quality of receiving waters. Recycling of waste is heavily practice in tropical places like Vietnam. (though I have to admit I have never regained a taste for Tilapia since I worked there and saw the fish feeding process)
It is good practice to reuse effluent wherever in the world you may live.
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/water/effguide.pdf
I have raised carp in my farm septic tank effluent discharged to an aerated lagoon, though I never ate any. The fish thrived till a flock of Mergansers wiped them out a couple of falls ago.
My farm waste evaporates or exfiltrates back into the water table and provides great habitat for birds and other wildlife. There is never a discharge to my creek. I practice what I preach.
I also have a trout pond beside my house that uses recylced water from my water to water heat exchanger and air conditioning on the few days a year it is required. It helps to keep the pond water below 18 degrees C in the summer which is healthy for Rainbow Trout and keep the meat firm.
Recycling of water is used all over the world from Africa to Asia to Europe to North America.
http://www.watercorporation.com.au/water-supply-and-services/solutions-to-perths-water-supply/groundwater-replenishment/water-recycling-around-the-world
http://www.globalwaterforum.org/2013/03/18/tackling-water-scarcity-israels-wastewater-recycling-as-a-model-for-the-worlds-arid-lands/
There’s just too, too much nonsense here to cogently comment on (not the comments per se, but the original post). I (sigh) am a Californian and hereby request that all refer to Brown as “Jerry Clown”. Because (old age) that’s what his “ideas”, plans, etc., are trending to, slapstick comedy.
I’m afraid you can’t blame Gov Jr’s moonbeamy ideas soley on age. He was just as looney as a young idiot governor. Unfortunately, even if he ran off with Linda Ronstadt to Africa again, we don’t have Mikey to sign anything this time.
Where does this muppet think the outfall from treatment plants go?
There was an old story that in East London where I grew up the water had already passed though 5 sets of human kidneys.
If the need is real then the simplest way to do something like this would be to pump the effluent from their wastewater treatment plants “upstream” to the head of their water treatment plants.
But we are talking California here. Some group would probably come out and say that plan would upset the smelt or the rotifers or something.
I should add that this simple wouldn’t be applied in California.
1. People wouldn’t “feel good” about where their drinking water came from.
2. There’s no need for research grants. A pilot study or two but not much else. The science end is already well known.
3. The public funding pie wouldn’t accommodate many fingers.
“There’s no need for research grants. A pilot study or two but not much else.”
With he and his family the test subjects?
As the water recycling equipment was being tested aboard the ISS,
one astronaut said the machine will turn yesterdays coffee into today’s coffee.
My childhood dream of being an astronaut faded somewhat that day.
How much water is consumed by humans directly as drink or in food when eaten, of which only some will be excreted? (Some will be perspired.)
Is he an idiot or a grandstanding politician?
Oh! wait – those are the same things. 🙂
The governor should visit one of those special clubs where gentlemen (sometimes leather-clad) will recycle their urine onto his face. Perhaps his taste for recycling will be satisfied.
My engineer daughter worked on a plant that could do this. The water ended up pure distilled water, making it unpalatable. So make it drinkable, they added trace minerals. The plant was built to satisfy environmentalists.
The plant worked, but was shut down. It requires a lot of energy to run. As seen from comments above, the thought of where the water comes from, not what it actually is nor how clean it is, puts the unscientific off and people wouldn’t drink it. Finally, contrary to the environmentalists claims, it rained, and rained, and rained so hard it flooded.
The belief that the source of the water makes it undrinkable is to me just as unscientific and crazy as fanatical warmist beliefs, or even skeptics who can’t do there own reading.
I would not object to systems like what they have in Orange County, where ultra-treated sewage is sent to perc ponds to help buoy the aquifer.