{"id":9168,"date":"2012-04-24T09:40:56","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T14:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=9168"},"modified":"2012-05-09T16:22:05","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T21:22:05","slug":"op-doc-taking-the-waste-out-of-wastewater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/04\/24\/op-doc-taking-the-waste-out-of-wastewater\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Don&#8217;t Drink More Waste Water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"nyt_video_player\" title=\"New York Times Video - Embed Player\" src=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/bcvideo\/1.0\/iframe\/embed.html?videoId=100000001501722&amp;playerType=embed\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"625\" height=\"373\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Water is <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/drought-app\/\">becoming scarcer in Texas<\/a>, and the solutions being passed around as of late are varied. <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/01\/five-ways-to-find-water-for-a-thirsty-texas\/\">Desalination, conservation and new reservoirs<\/a>\u00a0are all on the table. Another less, ummmm, palatable solution that is already being used in Texas? Treating &#8220;effluent&#8221; (i.e. waste water) to be used again for drinking, cooking and cleaning.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/22\/opinion\/sunday\/taking-the-waste-out-of-wastewater.html?_r=1\">new video op-ed <\/a>in the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0by filmmaker Jessica Yu looks at the\u00a0psychological\u00a0barriers to adapting waste water for re-use, featuring\u00a0cockroaches and a creative &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6HGKJHpQkfI\">Folgers switch<\/a>&#8220;-style test marketing of bottled treated affluent called Porcelain Springs.<\/p>\n<p>Every summer, residents of Houston enjoy what you could call &#8220;recycled&#8221; water <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/12\/21\/dallas-wastewater-keeps-trinity-flowing-houston-drinking\/\">sent down the Trinity River from their neighbors to the north in Dallas<\/a>. It works for them, so why not do it everywhere we need water? &#8220;In Israel, more than 80 percent of household wastewater is recycled, providing nearly half the water for irrigation,&#8221; Yu writes. &#8220;A new\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/02\/10\/science\/earth\/despite-yuck-factor-treated-wastewater-used-for-drinking.html?_r=2&amp;pagewanted=all\">pilot plant near San Diego<\/a>\u00a0and a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pub.gov.sg\/ABOUT\/HISTORYFUTURE\/Pages\/NEWater.aspx\">national \u201cNEWater\u201d program<\/a>\u00a0in Singapore show it\u2019s practical to turn wastewater into water that\u2019s clean enough to drink. Yet, in most of the world, we are resistant to do so.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can watch the video above, which is culled from clips from a forthcoming documentary, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lastcallattheoasis.com\/\">Last Call at the Oasis<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Water is becoming scarcer in Texas, and the solutions being passed around as of late are varied. Desalination, conservation and new reservoirs\u00a0are all on the table. Another less, ummmm, palatable solution that is already being used in Texas? Treating &#8220;effluent&#8221; (i.e. waste water) to be used again for drinking, cooking and cleaning. A new video [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":8894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[61,140,85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9184,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9168\/revisions\/9184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}