![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Sebastian-Gollnow-Picture-Alliance.png\")
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As water supplies dwindle, some communities are treating and recycling wastewater for consumption.Sebastian Gollnow \/ Picture Alliance via Getty via Grist<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by\u00a0Grist<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n One day, you\u2019ll appreciate drinking recycled toilet water.\u00a0<\/p>\n Urban populations are growing as water supplies are dwindling, often due to worsening droughts. In response, some communities are treating wastewater, rendering it perfectly safe for consumption. It is so pure, in fact, that if a treatment facility doesn\u2019t add enough of the minerals the filtering process strips out, it could\u00a0do serious damage to the human body<\/a>. And trust me\u2014it tastes great<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n Cities throughout the American West are already recycling water, easing pressures on dwindling supplies. Now here\u2019s a thought experiment: How much would you pay on your utility bill for the privilege of reused water, if it meant avoiding shortages and rationing in the future? <\/p>\n A recent survey offers one answer. Residents of communities of fewer than 10,000 people said they\u2019d be willing to drop an average of $49 to do so. That money would underwrite water reuse programs, including rain capture systems. \u201cI do think it is a bipartisan issue,\u201d said Todd Guilfoos, an economist at the University of Rhode Island and co-author of the\u00a0new paper<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s often just cheaper than some of the other available solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n Wastewater recycling is not some far-out, prohibitively complicated technology. Western states are already doing a lot of it: A study\u00a0published last year<\/a>\u00a0found that Nevada reuses 85 percent of its water, and Arizona 52 percent. Water agencies do this with reverse osmosis, passing the liquid through fine membranes to filter out solids before blasting it with UV light, which destroys any microbes. On a smaller scale, apartment buildings can house their own treatment infrastructure,\u00a0cycling water back into units for nonpotable use<\/a>, like flushing toilets.<\/p>\n On the municipal level, though, it\u2019s expensive to build such facilities and run them continuously\u2014it takes a lot of energy, for instance, to force water through those membranes. For a small community, charging each household $49 per month wouldn\u2019t be quite enough to get a system up and running. \u201cWhile that might be enough for operating, that doesn\u2019t include what it would cost to actually build whatever water reuse infrastructure that you would need,\u201d Guilfoos said. That\u2019s when a town can turn to federal or state grants, or maybe utilize municipal bonds, to break ground. \u201cI think communities need a little bit of a bump, actually, to get there,\u201d Guilfoos added. \u201cI think usually it\u2019s in the face of some crises that these things end up getting built.\u201d<\/p>\n Those crises are piling up across the US. Droughts are forcing some rural areas to pump more and more H2O from aquifers, depleting them. Tapped unsustainably, these underground supplies\u00a0can collapse like an empty water bottle<\/a>, making the land above sink, a phenomenon known as subsidence. This is a particularly pernicious problem in agricultural regions\u2014California\u2019s San Joaquin Valley has sunk\u00a0up to 28 feet<\/a>\u00a0in recent decades, to offer just one example.\u00a0<\/p>\n $49 a month could fund bioswales\u2014ditches full of vegetation\u00a0that not only collect stormwater, but provide habitat for native plants and pollinators. \u201c<\/p>\n If supplies dwindle, a small community would have no choice but to ration water. Getting more efficient about using what we have can help, like encouraging the adoption of thriftier toilets and spraying less on lawns,\u00a0as Las Vegas has done<\/a>. (Those thirsty patches of green are in general\u00a0an environmental mess<\/a>, beyond their use of water.) But to truly get more sustainable, a community will have to recycle the H2O it has no choice but to use.<\/p>\n What\u2019s interesting about this study, says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, is the apparent overcoming of the \u201cyuck factor.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s a visceral reaction to drinking reused water, particularly reused wastewater, that\u2019s totally understandable,\u201d said Kiparsky, who wasn\u2019t involved in the research. \u201cBut over time, that has faded as the notion of reusing water to augment water supplies, including for drinking water, has become increasingly legitimized.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At the same time, simple infrastructural improvements can capture heaps of another supply that\u2019s readily wasted: rain. That $49 a month could fund bioswales, for instance\u2014ditches full of vegetation<\/a>\u00a0that not only collect stormwater, but provide habitat for native plants and pollinators. Cities like Los Angeles are making themselves more \u201cspongy\u201d in this way, with roadside plots of land\u00a0that collect runoff in subterranean tanks<\/a>. Elsewhere, architects are building \u201cagrihoods\u201d around working farms that\u00a0store precipitation to hydrate their crops through the summer<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the American West, farmers are also having to contend with water whiplash, meaning years of plenty followed by years of desiccation. Generally speaking, rain is falling more heavily because\u00a0a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture<\/a>, increasing the bounty. But so too does climate change exacerbate droughts, making wastewater reuse especially welcome on farms. \u201cAll of this makes the water supply less certain in any given year, and more volatile from year to year,\u201d said Tom Corringham, a research economist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who wasn\u2019t involved in the new paper. \u201cSo any strategies that we can find that can smooth out the water cycle are beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to recycling wastewater, farmers are\u00a0recharging the aquifers beneath their feet<\/a>: When rains fall heavily, and there\u2019s a surplus of water, channels divert fluid into \u201cspreading grounds\u201d\u2014basically big dirt bowls built into the landscape. That allows precipitation to percolate back into the ground, reducing loss from evaporation, replacing what\u2019s been drawn out, and helping avoid land subsidence. Then, when needed, a farm can pump the water back out of the ground, in which case it doesn\u2019t need to draw from, say, a dam, leaving more water for others to use.<\/p>\n Together with wastewater reuse, aquifer recharge can help bolster the water system for the climatically perilous years ahead. As metropolises like\u00a0Mexico City<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Cape Town<\/a>\u00a0run the risk of running out of water, drinking recycled wastewater will be a whole lot more appealing than losing hydration entirely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As water supplies dwindle, some communities are treating and recycling wastewater for consumption.Sebastian Gollnow \/ Picture Alliance via…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-496299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Pictured,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2213517715.jpg\")
Glasses depicting raw sewage, plant effluent filtered and recycled water are displayed at an advanced water purification facility in 2015 in Los Angeles, California.Bob Riha, Jr. \/ Getty via Grist<\/p>\n