Flushing our future…
In the same week that Fred is dealing with the major issues facing our city by declaring an “Elephant Crisis”, the Star informs us that we have no choice but to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to drink sewage water direct from our taps in the very near future.
Fred is already on record approving of this unsavory and toxic concept (as reported in the Tucson Citizen in February). I strongly disagree, and I find it amazing that nowhere in the Star’s long Sunday front-page story (nor elsewhere in their upcoming multi-part series) is there any mention of the possibility that we might change the way we grow in order to conserve water as we grow.
We are still approving sprawling subdivisions at the edges (and bankrupting ourselves to build the required city infrastructure they require) and worshipping at the altar of unrestrained growth, an addiction that has us resigned to drinking our own sewage without examining more rational options. The Star story reports that it is not yet proven that we will be able to remove pharmaceuticals, viruses, hormones, and other toxic contaminants from the waste stream. My favorite quote is from a senior hydrologist with the geological survey, talking about these contaminants: “We don’t have any information on their health effects. Maybe there are none.”
More compact residential development can reduce water use by 1/3 to 1/5 compared to a typical subdivision. How much more of our quality of life do we need to sacrifice–clean air, clean water, pristine desert–before we take a hard look at the way we grow?
June 19th, 2005 at 9:26 pm
I think that it is inevitable that the entire effluent volume produced by desert communities will be reused in some way. The same trends are emerging in places like Australia and Saudi Arabia, where most of the literature on these issues comes from. However, there is no current program elsewhere I have been able to find to put treated effluent into the potable water system. The common uses, and even some of these can be controversial, are for municipal irrigation and the irrigation of crops, including food crops (this being the most controversial use). Feeding our citizens treated effluent would constitute a massive uncontrolled and non-consensual experiment on the public’s health. It would be a criminal and indecent act.
I think it’s a fine idea to reuse our entire effluent stream. Expand the existing grey-water system and put all irrigation on effleunt mixes, trade farmers our treated effluent 1:1 for CAP allocations (even though that would be a big financial loss for the cities) to irrigate their non-human food crops, but to force effluent down the throat of a child is simply monstrous. There are no longitudinal studies on the health effects of treated effluent on human health for one good reason - no government has been nuts enough to propose connecting their effluent plants to their potable water supply. Considering the microbial load, the hormone-blocking chemicals, the bioactive pharmaceuticals, and the other potential nasties which we cannot economically remove from human effluent at this scale, you would be exposing people to unacceptable and immoral levels of risk by even trying it.
You might be able to do this sort of thing in science fiction or in a space capsule where liquid water is at a huge premium, but making human wastes containing effluents safe for human consumption is not possible with current technology. Not to mention the sociological ‘yuck’ factor that would pulverize any elected official who supported this.
June 19th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
Oh Yeah,
Steve, if Fred has gone on record as supporting this, this should be THE ISSUE of the campaign for you and Nina. There is no way in hell Fred will survive advocating what can reasonably be characterized as medical experimentation on Tucson’s children. Let you never open your mouth for the rest of the campaign without mentioning this and let the landslide begin.