Treated Wastewater More Palatable in Dry Times

"the article quotes one official who claims the water quality is at least as good as that of any tap water found in the developed world."

Is Mexico a developed world?........

Homes in water constrained areas need to take a cue from us RV folks. Handle the grey water and black water separately. In fact, you could use sligthly filtered (screened) grey water to flush toilets. Grey water is fine for most non-food irrigation uses. That can all be done at the dwelling level. Probably not practical to install separate municipal grey water and black water sewer systems.

I think I'll drink beer instead!

I recently read that Las Vegas sends their treated water back to Lake Mead. They need to, because the water level at Lake Mead has dropped so far that one of the water intakes (that feeds Vegas) may soon be above water.

And those West Coast states keep coming up with ideas to 'tap into the Great Lakes' to 'solve' their water problems. Lake Michigan (the only completely US owned Great Lake) is already having problems with maintaining its reserve. It makes the news when Lake Michigan is two inches lower that the same time last year. Two inches is a LOT of water, there's a reason they're called the 'Great' (as in 'BIG,' 'Huge,' 'Gigantic') Lakes. It takes something like two years of 'wetter than normal' weather to recover an inch of Lake Michigan water. Those silly West Coasters want to take the Great Lakes water to water their lawns, fill their pools and run their fountains (yes, and grow their grapes) and they'd fritter away the entire supply in a year, extending the 'Western Desert' all the way to Cabbot Cove, Maine.

This is a photo of the water level at Lake Mead. The white stuff is the mineral deposits left behind from water when the lake is at the "normal" water level.

Yup, that's a problem with managing the water level.

Also explains the Midwest's attitudes towards 'sharing' the Great Lakes water with the West Coast, If Lake Michigan were to sink that low from its normal level it would be a disaster beyond measure. Shipping would be impossible (Yes, we still use the Lakes for shipment of goods and materials, all the docks are designed for the lake at its current level), Drinking water for all cities on the shoreline would dry up (and in Chicago we have to pay a 'surcharge' (extra tax) on bottled water as is) and I don't even want to think of the wider ecological issues, such as the Chicago River draining to its riverbed, which would affect things all the way to the Mississippi Delta.

This is like having a brother-in-law with money management problems. Sure we can 'lend'/'share' money (which we all know is actually 'giving,' since the brother-in-law will never have the funds to pay it back) but the money we 'share' will just get frittered away, and then he'll be back for more, draining our accounts and threatening our ability to keep our own finances under control.

The cost of a pipeline from the Great Lakes to the west will be tremendous. The Columbia River flows freely and isn't as far. I've heard about a study where they're thinking about it.

I will say that most cities in Southern California are pretty good about informing the public about wasting water. I grew up in a small suburb outside of Chicago. When I was a kid, only one house on the block had an underground sprinkler system. When I moved to California, nearly every house had an underground sprinkler system, but when the first drought hit (late 80's I believe), the water rates went up and watering the lawn wasn't as important.

Today, we are in the middle of a multi year drought. Our rental homes have underground sprinkler systems and I keep them adjusted and maintained. The house we live in has a manual sprinkler system for the front Boxwood bushes. There's also a drip system for the plants on the front retaining wall and also on the hill in our back yard. Due to the cost of running these systems, we don't run them and only water the plants from the hose. Our lawn is in pretty bad shape and we're getting ready to replace the grass with native plants that are drought tolerant.

I also just installed dual flush systems in our toilets and we have low flow shower heads on the showers. Of course low flow aerators on the sinks as well.

There are lots of people doing their part to reduce water usage here in So Cal. Unfortunately, the news only wants to show the bad ones (water running down the street, fountains spilling over, washing the driveway with water, etc).

I almost forgot. Our water bill has only increased by pennies, which is due to some great planning by our water district. The incentive for us to save water is to insure that water will be available for the future.

The water district came to our civic association and town council meeting to give a presentation on the status of our water supply. They told us that we're okay this year. If we have another bad year, we're still okay next year, but the prices will go much higher. The big problem is if we have another bad year. So the idea is for the consumers to reduce water usage by 10% this year.

"... the news only wants to show the bad ones (water running down the street, fountains spilling over,..."

In other words, Las Vegas.

And thank you for going the 'native vegetation' route. When and why did we decide that we should be trying to put 'English Lawns' all across the country. The English style lawn is very water intense and high maintenance. Personally I prefer trees and the accompanying ground cover vegetation that likes to huddle in the shade over a big, sun-baked lawn that needs to be watered every other day and mowed every weekend.