Do you set up your coffeemaker night before or morning of?

Due to the extreme water shortage, California does something that I don’t think I ever got out of my mind after learning about it. Colorado also does this. They pump waster water, meaning used water from sinks and toilets, that has been super cleaned and treated up into the hills to let it trickle back down through the earth, supposedly to further normalize it and then it is returned to the public water systems that eventually go into your home. I used to take the meeting minutes for nearby city’s sanitary board. They were responsible for trash removable and sewer drains for rain water and water was a big topic.

One of the sanitary district’s members was also on the local water board. He would supply updates on what was going on with California’s limited water sources. He is the person that informed the sanitary board on their planned use to start recycling waste water. Again, this is the water from flushed toilets and kitchen use. He jokingly called the new program “Toilet to Tap” and had the slogan “We put the #2 into your H20.” The sanitary board took a tour of the water reclamation facility where they learned how the water was cleaned and treated. I guess some goes up into the hills to trickle back down to be reused and some is pumped through a pipe that runs 5 miles out into the ocean to be released, which is what used to be done with all waste water until the toilet to tank program.

This man explained how they had added another post secondary disinfecting system for both the water to be reused and the water that went into the ocean to further insure the purity of it. But even after all of the disinfecting and processing, tap water in my area tasted horrible. And I needed to change Brita filters often to keep that chemical taste and smell out. And the knowledge that I was using old toilet water stuck with me and I only used Brita water for drinking, cooking, and coffee. The habits stuck and I am still running all consumable water here through the Brita before use. And that includes the cat and dog water fountains that have their own little filter in them, which, I guess, means my pets are drinking cleaner water than I am.