A new water purification plant hopes to change the way people think about turning wastewater into drinking water.
The Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center, located in northern California and scheduled to begin operating this year, is a $68 million facility that will purify treated wastewater—which otherwise would have been discharged into the San Francisco Bay—using three separate processes: microfiltration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light. Although these processes will remove 99.999% of pathogens in the wastewater, making it as clean as any tap water, it will not be used for drinking water; it instead will go into pipes bound for landscaping.
This doesn’t mean that wastewater can’t become drinking water—it's a matter of whether we can convince people to drink it. Getting the average person to drink what was once sewage water means breaking down a psychological barrier.
We will have to find creative solutions to supplement local water supplies in the future because of population growth, drought and other factors. Someday, we might not be able to be so picky about the origins of our drinking water.
