Our View: Getting past gross

In Singapore, sewage wastewater is cleaned up and sold as drinking water. In a tourist town in Belgium, 45 percent of its “fresh” drinking water was once effluent.

Pause here for a moment to say, “Ick.” And then take a swig of the future.

Every day, we use recycled paper, glass and textiles. But recycled drinking water? No way. Yet already throughout the world, fresh drinking water shortages have forced leaders to turn to the “water” they once threw away.

The user-friendly terms for this process? Reclaim. And it’s happening already in the Inland Northwest. No, we’re not yet drinking treated wastewater. And no one’s predicting we will anytime soon. The Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer is still in fairly decent shape, but the demands on it increase with each new home and business. And so Inland Northwest municipalities are experimenting with ways to reclaim treated wastewater.

This summer at Downriver Golf Course in north Spokane, for instance, one small plot of land on the course will be irrigated each day with 10,000 gallons of treated wastewater trucked over from the city’s nearby sewage treatment plant. The wastewater will be treated, in on-site tanks, to Class A standards.

“The water will look and smell just like city water. It’s not drinkable, though. You can’t pick up a hose and drink out of it,” said Dale Arnold, the city’s wastewater director.

Arnold and other city leaders are optimistic that the pilot project will lead to a “purple pipe” system. When the city’s treatment plant is upgraded within the decade, it will have the capability to treat its wastewater on-site to Class A standards. Purple pipes will then pump this treated wastewater to golf courses and other green spaces.

And Spokane County is exploring ways to reuse the wastewater it says will be treated to better-than-Class-A standards when its new treatment plant is completed. The county’s utility department Web site lists several ways treated wastewater is used other places. Reclaimed water irrigates approximately 2,900 of the 18,100 golf courses in the United States, and it nourishes wetlands in Oregon, cools nuclear plants in Florida and fills fire hydrants in Hawaii.

Inland Northwest residents still have that ick factor to overcome. It’s a powerful factor. Time magazine reported this week that consumers don’t even want baby diapers placed near baby food in grocery stores, because the ick factor kicks in.

So for some, watering a favorite golf course with treated wastewater will seem kind of gross. It isn’t. It’s the future and one major solution to preserving our region’s fresh water supply for thirsty generations to come.