A lot of storms. California cities and towns there are looking for any source of water they can find. That includes a water recycling process some call toilet to tap.
Ben Tracy gives us the 411 on this form of H2O. The Pacific Ocean is California's calling card, the Golden State's front door. But it's often treated as, well, the back door.
Southern California dumps 1.3 billion gallons of treated sewage off the coast. every single day. So this is wastewater that's been treated to a degree that it's safe to be able to discharge into the ocean. Mike Marcus is the general manager of the Orange County Water District. What some people call sewage, he calls opportunity.
This 623 million dollar water recycling plant turns treated sewage from the sanitation department next door into drinkable water. It's officially called indirect potable reuse. But it's more descriptively known as toilet to tap.
So you're taking every single thing going down, a toilet, a shower, drain, a kitchen sink, washing machine. Every drop. That wastewater goes through a three-step purification process.
First, these microfilters remove particles and bacteria. Then through a process called reverse osmosis inside hundreds of these tubes, the water becomes as clean as most bottled water. This process will remove any dissolved minerals, viruses, and pharmaceuticals in the water also. Finally, anything left in the water is zapped by high-powered ultraviolet light inside these tanks.
Marcus says the water that comes out is cleaner than most tap water in the country. On the day we visited, the plant was generating 100 million gallons of drinking water. That's about one-fourth of Orange County's entire daily water supply.
If all this water wasn't coming here and you weren't doing what you're doing, where would all this water have gone? If we didn't recycle it, the water would be wasted to the ocean. And lost forever. And lost forever.
During an epic drought, that kind of waste is hard to swallow. But so is the idea of drinking your neighbor's toilet water. I know people don't like toilet to tap, but it is memorable.
Governor Jerry Brown says this is the kind of idea needed to help meet his mandatory 25% cut to water use in the state. Orange County's is the largest plant of its kind in the world and recently expanded. San Diego is fast-tracking a water recycling plant of its own. And mayors in Silicon Valley took a very public swig of recycled water to convince the public there that its time has come. This is an opportunity to ensure we have a drought-proof source of water right beneath our feet.
And the so-called yuck factor may finally be trumped by the reality of four years of drought. Do we have the luxury of saying, I don't want to drink that kind of water? Absolutely not.
It's pure, it's safe, it's necessary. But we can't end this story without trying the water, so cheers. Cheers.
Tastes like water. Because it is water. For CBS This Morning, Ben Tracy, Orange County, California.
Anybody have a problem with that? No, I don't. I think we need to do more recycling.