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<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/11/07/243711364/here-drink-a-nice-glass-of-sparkling-clean-wastewater">http://www.npr.org/2013/11/07/243711364/here-drink-a-nice-glass-of-sparkling-clean-wastewater</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">more at the web site – links and photos<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">In California's Silicon Valley, there will soon be a new source of water for residents. That may not sound like big news, but the source
of this water – while certainly high-tech — is raising some eyebrows.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">With freshwater becoming more scarce in many parts of the country, the public may have to overcome its aversion to water recycling.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><strong><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Ah, The Stench Of Drinking Water</span></strong><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">If text could transmit odor, you'd know where this water is coming from.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">"Well, we happen to be very close to a landfill," says Marty Grimes, a spokesman for the brand-new $68 million Silicon Valley Advanced
Water Purification Center in San Jose.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">There's also a wastewater treatment plant across the street. And that is where this water comes from: a place that smells a lot like a
toilet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">"Wastewater is not necessarily a pretty business," says Grimes. "But let me tell you, the result of our plant is going to be pure, clean
water."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">It's a little unfair to linger on the unsavory sewage source. When this plant starts up later this year, it will be doing some of the most
<a href="http://www.valleywater.org/SVAWPC.aspx">state-of-the-art</a> water filtration in the country.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Naturally, that's what engineers here emphasize when they give tours.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">"The water comes from the auto-strainers, where it's strained down to 300 microns," says Crystal Yezman, who works at the facility. One
micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter, so 300 microns is about the size of a human hair.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">That's step one — filtering out everything wider than a human hair.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Then, the water passes through filters that get rid of the
<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88062858">tiniest of contaminants</a>, like viruses or pharmaceuticals, by a process of
<a href="http://www.wqa.org/sitelogic.cfm?ID=872">reverse osmosis</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Finally, the water gets zapped by ultraviolet rays, which scramble the DNA of anything that might be living in it. This water is clean.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">"The Department of Health has acknowledged that we are removing 99.99 percent of all pathogens," Yezman says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">If that's true, then the water is cleaner than
<a href="http://www.backpacker.com/water-purification-snow-hiking/community/ask_buck/412">
snow melt</a>, so to speak, and certainly as good as what people get from their kitchen sinks now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Or, says Grimes, "it could be even better."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><strong><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Erasing A Dirty Past</span></strong><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Despite how clean this water is, no one's going to drink it. Instead, it'll go into segregated pipes bound for landscaping.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">But that may have to change one day because, like
<a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/04/24/op-doc-taking-the-waste-out-of-wastewater/">
a lot of places</a> in the West, water supplies here are drying up. Recycled water is the future — if enough people can be convinced that it's OK to drink.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">"You have to break the memory, or the line of history, of the water," explains Brent Haddad of the University of California, Santa Cruz.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">This is not an engineering challenge, he says. It's a
<a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/08/16/139642271/why-cleaned-wastewater-stays-dirty-in-our-minds">
psychological challenge</a>. Water managers, he says, need to rewrite the history of the water to help people forget the part about sewage.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">One way to do this is to take recycled water and put it back into a natural setting, like a river.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">A "river is something that's comforting to people," says Haddad. "And we don't have to think anymore that it was passing through a city.
We just begin the history of that water in the river itself."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><strong><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Nine Years Of Convincing</span></strong><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">This kind of water purification happens in nature every day. Just look at the Mississippi River — it's full of treated sewage water that
people downstream clean and then drink.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">And it's happening in Southern California, home to the largest
<a href="http://www.watereuse.org/association">potable water</a> recycling facility in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">"We put it back into the ground, and then eventually it becomes part of the water supply," says Mike Markus, general manager of the facility.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Instead of putting their water into a river, his district cleans treated sewage and then pumps it underground, where it mixes with other
water. Then, they pump it back up and treat it all over again, before piping it to peoples' houses.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Even with this crazy, Rube Goldbergian system, getting the public to accept recycled water took lots of meetings.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">Markus says he and his colleagues talked to almost anyone who would listen — local elected officials, the health and medical community,
the Chamber of Commerce, schools, environmentalists, rotary groups.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">"We talked to the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. And scouting troops," Markus adds. "Anyone who would want to hear or receive
a presentation."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">That whole process took nine years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">The irony, of course, is that when you put recycled water back into the ecosystem, it actually gets dirtier and has to be treated again.
How does it feel to put that beautiful, clean water into a hole in the ground? "Frustrated," Markus says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E4E4E4"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#222222">So, he reminds himself that winning people over to recycled sewage water is a process — one that's just beginning here in Silicon Valley.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Laurie Tenace<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Environmental Specialist<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Waste Reduction Section<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Florida Department of Environmental Protection<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 4555<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tallahassee, FL 32399-2400<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">850.245.8759<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Laurie.Tenace@dep.state.fl.us<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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