Background Info:
Recent events and news about water scarcity got me thinking about this. So the question is essentially the title. Or am I missing something?
If you live anywhere that uses a sewer system rather than septic tanks, isn’t it already doing that?
In my area, the water company pulls in from the river, filters and processes it, and pipes it out to homes. It gets used in the homes, discharged into the sewer to a treatment plant, treated, and then pumped back into the river.
Even if your water company’s intake is before the sewage treatment plant, the next town’s intake is downstream. So if you’re not drinking your neighbor’s processed toilet water, you’re drinking that of the town upstream.
Is getting mixed with river water simply enough to “dilute” the ick-factor here, or is there something I’m missing?
You’re not missing anything, people are just weird about it.
Also the person who named it “toilet-to-tap” is an idiot. Reclaimed water is “toilet to tap” in the same way that a vegetable grown in compost is “garbage to garden.” There’s a host of sophisticated engineering processes in between the two, making the water just as clean as any other treated drinking water.
Mixing with river water or putting the water in a reservoir and then pumping it back out again simply makes people feel more comfortable about it and, like you said, reduces the “ick” factor.
My guess is they’re not idiots and knew exactly what they were doing… and being paid for by whoever it was that stands to lose money if reclaimed water became popular
More like it’s designed to sound disgusting in order to rub people’s noses in it when they have no choice but to go along with whatever this new plan is (for the planet).
They know we don’t have a choice, so it’s an opportunity for some sadistic person to maximize the discomfort of this unavoidable process.
And I don’t mean unavoidable physically. I mean unavoidable legally.