((PKG)) TOILET TO TAP WATER
((Banner: Making it Clean))
((Reporter: Crystal Dilworth))
((VOA Persian))
((Adapted by: Martin Secrest))
((Map: Orange County, California))
((NATS))
((Pop-Up Banner: Orange County, California is already turning wastewater into fresh water))
((Shane DeWane, Orange County Water District))
To me, you’re sitting inside a gigantic scientific instrument. We are using science and technology to treat wastewater and create drinking water on a scale that is almost unimaginable. What we have to do is remove everything from hormones to heroin, viruses and bacteria, before it’s ready to be served back to the public as drinking water.
((NATS))
((Courtesy: Orange County Water District))
((Shane DeWane, Orange County Water District))
Sometimes I like to say that the science, technology and the engineering were the easy part. It took many years, in fact about 16 years of deliberation and thousands and thousands of meetings with the public, to gain public acceptance for drinking water that was once wastewater.
((NATS))
((Courtesy: Orange County Water District))
((Shane DeWane, Orange County Water District))
Water weighs a lot, eight pounds per gallon (1kg/liter). When you move a gallon of water, you have to move eight pounds of mass, and so, if you imagine today, through this project, we’re moving a 100 million gallons (379 million liters) of water into drinking water. That’s 800 million pounds (379k tons) that has to be moved around on a daily basis. Because we’re reusing the water that already been processed, we’re taking the variability out of the weather cycle.
((NATS))
((Pop-Up Banner: Fresh water for Orange County comes from an aquifer, a natural underground lake))
((Pop-Up Banner: The aquifer is reduced by drought, but treated wastewater from the plant replenishes the reservoir))
((Courtesy: Orange County Water District))
((Mike Markus, General Manager, Orange County Water District))
This facility is the largest potable reuse project in the world. So, we take the secondary effluent and then we run it through an advanced purification process, utilizing microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and then UV (ultraviolet) light with hydrogen peroxide. So, by the time it gets through that 3-step process, we’ve basically taken wastewater and turned it into distilled water. For us, it’s extremely important. If we were to rely on rainfall, we wouldn’t be able to fill our basin up. I mean, last year we got four-and-a-half inches (11cm.) of rainfall the entire year. We’re using a form of conservation through recycled water and we’re doing it in a big way.
((NATS))
