SACRAMENTO — State authorities are set to vote next week on regulations for turning sewage into drinking water across California.
The State Water Resources Control Board’s “toilet to tap” resolution would create, as a means of protecting public health, uniform recycling criteria for the direct reuse of treated wastewater as potable water, according to the agency.
“It really will be some of the highest water quality available,” Darrin Polhemus, the water board’s deputy director of drinking water, told the San Francisco Chronicle, adding that sewage could be converted to drinking water in days or even hours.
The board must adopt the rules, which have undergone scientific peer review and been approved by an expert panel, before the end of the year, according to the state body. Water systems and agencies will not be required to participate in wastewater reuse and would have to hold a public hearing for any recycling projects before permit approval. About a third of the public does not support the idea of sewage reuse, Kirsten Struve, an assistant officer at Santa Clara Valley Water, told the Chronicle.
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