“Today heralds a new era of water reuse,” is a statement by Patricia Sinicropi, the Executive Director of WaterReuse California. It’s a bold claim, but it’s true.
California has approved necessary standards for converting wastewater into potable drinking water, a process known as “direct potable reuse.” This decade-in-the-making initiative represents “a landmark in the quest to reclaim some of the hundreds of millions of gallons of waste discharge that flows out to sea unused each year.”
There are both direct potable reuse and indirect potable reuse systems being put into place. Indirect potable reuse is when the purified wastewater is still run through a water treatment system before reaching your tap.
It begs the question: should you invest in a reverse osmosis system before these initiatives reach your city? Based on available information, large cities in California will be ready for this technology to go into full effect first.
