10 Sources and Summary

Urban areas of California are affected by drought and a degradation in water distribution and treatment infrastructure as well as modern management techniques. For the future water stability of urban California, it’s vital that cities increase local investment and technological advancement to include more water recycling and rainwater capture in urban and agricultural regions.     

Angelica:

1. Sokolow, Sharona. "Urban Recycled Water Use in California: A Briefing Paper on Status, Opportunities for Expansion, and the Environmental Health Benefits." Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative (Spring 2015): 1-17. Web. 24 Mar. 2016.

     2. Olivieri, Adam W., Edmund Seto, Robert C. Cooper, Michael D. Cahn, John Colford, and James Crook. "Risk-Based Review of California’s Water-Recycling Criteria for Agricultural Irrigation." Journal of Environmental Engineering - 140(6): - PDF (ASCE). American Society of Civil Engineers, n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

3.  Grant, Stanley B., Tim D. Fletcher, David Feldman, Jean-Daniel Saphores, Perran L. M. Cook, Mike Stewardson, Kathleen Low, Kristal Burry, and Andrew J. Hamilton. "Adapting Urban Water Systems to a Changing Climate: Lessons from the Millennium Drought in Southeast Australia." Environmental Science & Technology Environ. Sci. Technol. 47.19 (2013): 10727-0734. 3 May 2013. Web. 27 Mar. 2016.

While many people have come to accept water recycling for nonpotable reuse proposes, there is this stigma attached to recycled water that is detrimental to the many potential benefits of it.  Even though science has enabled us to treat water in such a manner that it can reach the health standard for drinking water, it is still considered toxic and dirty by most people.  Public acceptance of water reuse seems to be a huge issue that we need to overcome in order to make any progress.  However, water recycling may be our only hope in coping with the lack of available water, especially here in California.  

        Obviously there are legitimate health concerns involved with using recycled water.  Water needs to be treated properly and must be safe for consumption if we are going to be watering our crops with it, especially crops that we consume raw.  Many people are also afraid that recycled water contains antibiotics and antibiotic resistant bacterias which could eventually lead to humans becoming resistant to antibiotics that fight infections.  I found a few articles that explore the safety concerns of water recycling that we can use for our project to explain the health effects of using recycled water.  There is a lot of research and data that prove how clean this water can be if treated properly, which we can use to support our argument that recycled water is safe to use as an alternative to ground and surface water.  In addition, I found a few articles that compare the water situation in California now to the drought in Australia.  It will be helpful to use these studies on Australia in our project to show the positive effects of water recycling.  There is also a lot of information on the water recycling project in Orange County that can be used to explain the costs associated with such a project right here in California (according to an article from NBC Los Angeles, the system needed to purify water costs 481 million dollars to build).  We can use the projects in Australia and Orange County to examine what it would cost for future projects and the environmental and economic impacts of water recycling.

One gap that I found in my research is who is going to pay for these expensive water recycling projects.  In my opinion, I feel that the agricultural industry should pay a large portion of the bill since they are the largest consumer of water in the state and they are also making profits from it.  These are issues I will definitely need to research further.

Alec:

4. Anderson, J. "The Environmental Benefits of Water Recycling and Reuse." Water Science and Technology: Water Supply 3.4 (2003): 1-10. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Many rivers are facing declines in water quality due to pollution. Water conservation and efficiency can improve downstream river flows since the amount of freshwater being extracted from the river influences affects the quality of water. Reusing water can reduce the amount of freshwater being extracted and also reduces the number of pollutants in order to improve water quality. Water recycling increases the availability of water and decreases people’s reliance on freshwater. Benefits from water conservation and reuse are increasing farm production, reducing diversion costs, savings in fertilizer applications, savings in cost of diversion structures, drought storage, transfer systems, water treatment, maintenance costs, discharge pump stations, and treatment costs. Water recycling also benefits the environment by improving downstream river quality, reducing pollution and negative impacts on aquatic life, and improved health for downstream water users.

5.       Zhou, Yuan, and Richard SJ Tol. "Evaluating the costs of desalination and water transport." Water resources research 41.3 (2005).

Desalination costs are based on size and type of desalination plant, source and quality of water, location, conditions, energy, and labor. Primary elements are capital and annual running cost. Transporting water horizontally is cheap while lifting it up is more expensive. Desalination has negative impacts on environment such as greenhouse gas emissions. Desalination is not a solution for countries with high elevation and are poor. It is however an option for countries that are rich in energy.

Jason:

An additional water efficiency technique that can be implemented in urban areas of california is rainwater capture. Rooftop rainwater harvesting (RTRWH) is the most common technique of rainwater harvesting (RWH) for domestic consumption. It can be done easily, doesn’t cost much and is applicable at small-scale with a minimum of specific expertise or knowledge; or in more sophisticated systems at large-scale (e.g. a whole housing area). Some advantages include the ease of training local people to build rain water harvesting systems themselves and rainwater is better than other available sources like groundwater due to its move frequent absence of fluoride, salinity or arsenic. Also, it is not affected by local geology or topography and this method reduces the amount of rainwater going into sewer and drains resulting in less flooding. There are disadvantages of the water capture technique. For example, Rooftop rainwater harvesting is limited by the amount of rainfall and the size of the catchment area and storage reservoir. Overall it provides an interesting addition to water scarcity and mitigation, and with further research, could be a promising technology for recharging groundwater and being more efficient with even limited rainfall.          

Source

6.    Gur, E., & Spuhler, D. (n.d.). Rainwater Harvesting (Urban). Sustainable Sanitation and Water Managment. http://www.sswm.info/print/1505?tid=515

Water recycling boasts many environmental benefits, the main one being its ability to increase the available supply of water, enabling human needs to be met with less fresh water in areas such as agriculture, urban areas, industry and water resource supplementation. Water conservation and water reuse produce substantial environmental benefits, arising from reductions in water diversions, and reductions in the impacts of wastewater discharges on environmental water quality.

Source

7.    Anderson, J. (2003). The environmental benefits of water recycling and reuse. Water Science and Technology: Water Supply, 3(4), 1–10.

Manuel:

Urban water supply is crucial for our every-day survival; and as our water resources become scarcer due to the forces of global warming and climate change, recycled water may be a viable option. Since Public opinion and acceptance of recycled wastewater varies drastically, there have been numerous studies conducted to learn more about social acceptance of recycled potable and non-potable water use. Environmental quality and restoration efforts have also influenced social acceptance of recycled water. The increasing costs of water and the “real” cost of money (prime-interest rate), have influenced more municipalities, states, and countries to consider recycled wastewater. An ever-growing population in need of water resources will eventually need to turn to recycled water as a viable option.

        There is a strong correlation between higher education/knowledge of recycled water, and a person’s attitude and acceptance towards it. This leads to a higher probability that the individual will consider drinking recycled water. Local/State governments and political party beliefs does not influence an individual's social acceptance of recycled water, neither those their sex. An alarming find is that the price of water does not seem to affect a person's willingness to adapt recycled wastewater, primarily due to the fact that current water prices account for a very small portion of our budget constraint; resulting in inelasticity. An individual’s quality of existing source of water also influences its willingness to adapt recycled wastewater. Willingness to adapt is usually rated on these five factors: (1) overall quality to drink, (2) visual, cloudy material, (3) taste, (4) colour, and (5) odour.

        As with many other scenarios, wastewater recycling involves many pros and cons. Some pros are the reliability and viability of it, while the cons include contaminated water that includes many organic and inorganic compounds, as well as human hormones in urine and birth control pills. Pharmaceutical compounds (PhACs) are also believed to be present in many wastewaters, but there have been no attempts in documenting them. Another example of an effluent-derived contaminant is N-nitrosodimethylamine, which is a potent carcinogen present in lubricant, pesticides, and liquid rocket fuels. Some regulations require that recycled wastewater have only certain amounts of compounds, especially when used to re-pump aquifers. The fate of many of these micro-contaminants remains, as further research is needed to fully understand them and their impacts on human health and earth’s eco-system. Cryptosporidium is the most significant cause of waterborne disease in the U.S. today. The occurrence in surface waters has been reported in 4 to 100% of the samples examined at levels between 0.1 to 10,000/100L depending on the impact from sewage and animals.

Sources:

8. Baumann, Duane Baumann D. "Social Acceptance of Water Reuse." Social Acceptance of Water Reuse. Buttersworth & Co., 1983. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

9. Sedlak, David L., James L. Gray, and KAREN E. Pinkston. "Peer Reviewed: Understanding Microcontaminants in Recycled Water." ResearchGate. Environmental Science & Technology News, 1 Dec. 2000. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

10. Rose, J. "Public Health Evaluation of Advanced Reclaimed Water for Potable Applications." Water Science and Technology 40.4-5 (1999): 247-52. Web.