According the Burnt Orange Report, the city of Wichita Falls, Texas, is going to begin recycling its own wastewater because of the drought:

Nope, it’s not a two-weeks-late April Fools’ joke: The city will be recycling 5 million gallons of “potty water” into (hopefully) clean and (fingers-crossed) drinkable water.

The decision to reuse the wastewater comes after existing restrictions have reduces waster usage by half.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality tested the water for 41 days to ensure that it is safe.

My knowledge of water and wastewater treatment procedures is based solely on an Intro to Environmental Science class I took in the fall of 1996, but in that class we took field trips to get a fourth credit hour. We visited both a water treatment plant and a wastewater treatment plant. The city of Houston drew water from the Trinity River and treated it to make it potable. It treated its wastewater to remove the worst contaminants (poo, condoms, corpses, etc.) and dumped the decidedly non-potable water back into the Trinity River. The wastewater treatment plant was downstream from the water treatment plant, because otherwise Houstonians would be drinking the same water they peed in not too long ago. Continue reading →