How about water recycling?

Toilet to tap water. Does not sound too appetizing. How can anybody think of drinking water that was once flushed down the toilet? However, chances are some day you will. I take that back, you are now drinking water that has been used not once but maybe millions of times.

All the water that is now on our planet has been here since the earth cooled off. That means that the water you are drinking is the same water that the dinosaurs were drinking. Mother Nature has been cleaning our water through evaporation and then returned to us as rain. Some of this water is further cleaned by percolating through the ground. This process of use and cleansing has been going on for eons.

As our population grows and our water supply dwindles, we will have to find a way to supplement our short fall of water or drastically alter our way of life. Reclaimed water might be just the thing to get us the water we need. With modern technology we can do what Mother Nature has done but with a more precise and controlled manner. The next step in water conservation is the consumption of this precious resource.

This is not a new concept. In the Whittier Narrows of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles has been injecting reclaimed water into an underground aquifer for over 30 years and recovering it some two years later, mixing it with their other water supplies and sending it to their customers.

San Diego and Orange Counties have started pilot programs to use their reclaimed water for use with potable water. Moreover, take the cities that straddle the Mississippi river. One city sends their processed wastewater to the river and the next town down river picks it up and processes it for drinking water.

The water that we are talking about will be go through additional treatments even beyond that of the recycled water that is safe for irrigating schools, parks and for swimming. The additional treatment removes salt and other small molecules then disinfected with ozone or hydrogen peroxide. The resulting water is better than the water used from the Colorado or the Mississippi rivers.

Ron Stark Oak Park Stark is chairperson for the Triunfo Sanitation District