The yuk factor is high here and explains why almost everyone who can afford it drinks bottled water.
An excerpt.
Editorial: Toilet water politics
Recycling can't conquer 'yuck' factor
Published 12:01 am PDT Saturday, July 29, 2006
"Your golden retriever may drink water out of the toilet with no ill effects. But that doesn't mean humans should do the same."
So says the San Diego Union-Tribune, which recently joined the chorus of opponents, including San Diego's mayor, of a project that would blend supertreated sewage water in a local drinking water reservoir. The idea is known as toilet-to-tap. The idea appears to offend the sensibilities, at least in San Diego. It's an understandable first-flush reaction.
Alas, it seems time to let San Diegans and any other squirming citizens in on a little secret about water supplies: Toilet-to-tap is as old as civilization in California. And if San Diego shuns blended toilet water, it's about to become very thirsty.
With little groundwater underneath it, San Diego has two primary supplies. One is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The other is the Colorado River. The proposed project, to reuse water rather than drain it into the ocean, is one viable way to create a reliable local supply for San Diego. But it does involve the blending of treated water with untreated water in a reservoir.
Technically, this means drinking treated toilet water. Is this really new for San Diego or most cities? Of course not.
Consider the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, whose waters San Diego draws from the Delta.
More than 300 farmers and cities are permitted to discharge their treated and untreated runoff into these rivers. Counties empty treated sewage water into rivers every day. Almost 10 percent of the average flow of these rivers is discharge, according to San Diego's water department.
