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I love you North East Ohio Regional Sewer District
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this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Woah, they take wastewater and turn it into drinking water? Is that common? I would have thought it would be cost prohibitive.
We’re all drinking recycled dinosaur piss from millions of years ago.
Except for billionaires, who drink only the finest dodo feces.
We are, but even simply desalinating water is very expensive last I heard. To turn sewage into drinking water sounds like it would be even more expensive. I know they drink recycled pee on the ISS but that's cheaper than launching water up all the time.
It's actually way easier to treat sewage than it is to desalinate water: https://www.waterandwastewater.com/how-is-desalination-different-from-water-reclamation/
Interesting! They make a good point that you normally have most of the infrastructure needed because you're already treating wastewater. They mention a couple of additional things thatmight happen before reintroducing into the drinking water system but all in all it does sound pretty feasible!
Now I know what to search for, I found this. It seems it's not that common yet but there is growing interest in it. Interestingly Oregon isn't mentioned.
Reminds me of all the signs around sprinklers at my university in California. Do not drink. Agua reclamada!
No and yes.
Most regulations are based on the assimilation capacity of the receiving body which is nerd talk for "how much pollution the water can take before it starts showing signs of harm". So you treat to that, nature does a bit more, and then the drinking water plant takes water from an ideal place.
Most wastewater plants just speed up nature.
The history of centralized treatment is super fascinating because it centred on what the problems were when it was established (very late 1800-early 1900s) whereas drinking water treatment really has changed more to deal with how our understanding of human health has changed. They don't really match up!
I want you to know both how much I love your username and how much I love that there are people out there infodumping about wastewater treatement
Thank you shark fucker 420! You will be pleased to know that I'm not even that unique among the turd herders. Plenty of us are 'eccentric'.
If I had my way you'd all be allowed to form a council of shit herders and direct all the world's shit. Maybe someday
Yes...someday...
releasing human sewage directly into the environment would be ecologically disastrous.
I still don't get how we managed to go on for so many decades doing it. The rivers must have been disgusting. (I'm looking at you, Ganges)
Look at london; they still are!
Fun fact (?): The Thames being so gross is one of the reasons modern sewage treatment took off. One of the main tests is designed based on the behavior of the Thames: https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/labCert/BODAbout.html
Well I was thinking there's a big difference between what is safe to release into the environment (solids removed, UV treated to kill germs, maybe some other stuff) vs safe drinking water. But I guess waste water is mostly just water - not mostly urine. So maybe it's not as big of a gap as I assumed. After all, they pump water in from rivers and lakes for filtering and treatment before putting it in the pipes, maybe it isn't that big of a difference after all?
A lot of people don't realize outside sewers and cities, septic systems are a thing and all the sewage goes to a tank that drains out into a patch of soil. A hundred feet/30 meters and usually even a wellhead is considered at a safe range.
Soils do a lot of biological treatment just as the enzymes and bacteria in septic tanks break down and dissolve solids.
UV disinfection and other treatment of sewage on-site is only common in areas with high water tables or proximity to waterbodies under that 100ft/30 meter range.
The majority of modern wastewater comes from other fixtures for laundry, showers, and the kitchen. Toilet sewage is relatively small volumewise.
Yeah, I didn't think about this before but I guess you need to be careful if you have water from a bore hole. I didn't realise that safe distance was only 30m! But I'm also under the impression that septic systems are quite carefully designed, not just a big hole soaking blackwater into the ground.
Everyone I know on septic systems gets their water from rainwater (something we get a lot of here) so contamination isn't a problem.
A proper septic system is carefully engineered but they can still be quite low tech. Many houses still just have gravel trenches and pits.
My own home doesn't have any pumps, it just pushes water out as water comes in. My tiny strip of land has deep trenches and the right native soil (deep sand).
More modern systems just need some pressurized lines and only three feet of the right sand to achieve proper treatment of effluents.
speak for yourself i been practicing
This is Ohio man, we draw our drinking water from the same rivers and lakes that the town upstream dumps their treated sewage into
I guess the difference is that it's presumably quite diluted by the river, rather than directly feeding waste water back to the drinking water pipe.
Not if you're a Dave Matthews' band bus driver.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/08/08/21-years-later-dave-matthews-bus-poop-incident-makes-chicagoans-laugh-and-groan/
of course
/s