First, I fully admit to being a nerd who is fascinated with the workings of things like this. If facts about how toilet water is processed in this area is gross or boring to you, skip the rest of my post.
I worked for a local city’s sanitation department for over 20 years as a side job. I took the meetings down verbatim with my steno machine and then created meeting minutes for them. And over the course of all those years, I absorbed a lot of information about what happened with the trash and water. In the Orange County area, the wastewater from your sinks, showers, and toilets travels in the sewer system to one of two reclamation plants where they remove the solid sludge (feces, toilet paper, tampons, egg shells, etc.) and separate it from the liquid waste.
The liquid wastewater, approximately 185 million gallons a day, is treated via multiple stages and types of filtration and ends up in one of two places. About 130 million gallons of this cleaned and treated water is directed to the “ground breaking” groundwater replenishment program. This water is cleaner than any bottled water you could purchase and it is returned to the groundwater system to be eventually used again by homes and businesses throughout the area. 130 million gallons of water that is sterilized and used again. With the water shortages we have been through in the past, this is an amazing and critical program.
When this program was first introduced, it freaked people out and they began labeling it “Toilet to Tap” water, and people were joking that the water district put the “Number 2 in H2 0” But the water tested so incredibly pure that minerals had to be added back into it. People eventually got used to the idea of reclaimed water and it is an extremely important source of clean water for this area.
The remaining filtered water is sent through a giant pipe that is 10 feet wide and 5 miles long out into the Pacific Ocean off of Huntington Beach. The ocean water is monitored and tested daily. I think I remember that the water is sampled daily from within a 25-mile wide area and that there are approximately 100 thousand tests performed each year to make sure everything is as it should be and that no harm comes to the environment or inhabitants of the ocean.
The solid sludge is treated with anaerobic digesters and heated to where it becomes biosolids. The biosolids are a nutrient rich material and is then trucked to fields throughout California and Arizona to be used as a soil amendment. The gases created from the anaerobic digestion process is used to power the water district’s onsite generators, so everything reclaimed from the toilets, showers, and kitchen sinks is put to use. And with 185 million gallons of it being treated every single day, it is an amazing system that utilizes waste material and turns it into clean water, soil amendments, and power.
Like I said, I admit to being a nerd who is fascinated by information. I have no idea how wastewater is handled by landlocked states and would be interested in hearing about it if you happen to know how it is handled in your area.
