Background Info:
Recent events and news about water scarcity got me thinking about this. So the question is essentially the title. Or am I missing something?
If you live anywhere that uses a sewer system rather than septic tanks, isn’t it already doing that?
In my area, the water company pulls in from the river, filters and processes it, and pipes it out to homes. It gets used in the homes, discharged into the sewer to a treatment plant, treated, and then pumped back into the river.
Even if your water company’s intake is before the sewage treatment plant, the next town’s intake is downstream. So if you’re not drinking your neighbor’s processed toilet water, you’re drinking that of the town upstream.
Is getting mixed with river water simply enough to “dilute” the ick-factor here, or is there something I’m missing?
Having had water in a somewhat arid country that pretty much did “toilet to tap” after treatment let me tell you that the smell is hard to get rid of. Your water still smells like shit. And drinking it was a gamble of you were going to get sick or not. All the local markets sold bottled water by the flat tray. Even the locals knew not to drink the tap water.