It's enough to make you gag. To be sure, the city has established a progressive recycled water program to enhance and expand the city's limited water resources. The city has used recycled water for several years for ground water injection in sea water barrier areas, irrigation, and industrial uses. Recycled water is also used as cooling water at the Glendale steam plant and for irrigation purposes at Balboa Lake, Wildlife Lake, and the Japanese Garden Lake. But that's for irrigation and industrial purposes.
Drinking water is something else entirely.
Current testing requirements for drinking water do not test for all possible contaminants which go into our sewer system. Indeed, only a handful of water contamination levels are now required to be tested, but there are over 100,000 known biological and chemical contaminants that are put into our sewers every day. Many scientists acknowledge that these contaminants could make it through the treatment system and still go undetected. In fact, legal and scientific evidence revealed in similar project proposals for the San Gabriel Valley and San Diego made it very clear that returning reclaimed sewer water into the drinking water system greatly enhances the risk of making the water unsafe. If one also adds in the fact that the medical waste from four large hospitals is sent to the Tillman plant for treatment, the doubt about drinking water safety alone should stop this project now.