Talk:Reclaimed water

message: :Many cities actually ban citizens from drinking, bathing in, or filling swimming pools with reclaimed water, although the risk of harmful effects associated with doing so are very low. If you irrigate your lawn or plants with reclaimed water, you should place a sign on your property warning people not to drink from the irrigation system.
These two sentences seem to contradict each other.  Why is a sign needed if it's so safe - usually safer, the previous text claims, than fresh water from the tap?  Tempshill 03:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do your research and cite your sources when making those types of changes to an article (changing "reclaimed water is often cleaner than standard drinking water" to "reclaimed water is unsanitary").  I edited the article to make note of the fact that some pharmaceutical chemicals pass through the filtering process, but it is easy to find at multiple sources that reclaimed water is usually treated to higher standards than ordinary drinking water in order to ease people's concerns about it being unsanitary.  --taestell 01:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Is it safe to drink or what?

message: The current text includes this line:
Reclaimed water is not directly mixed with potable (drinking) water for several reasons:
This seems a very broad statement. Currently reclaimed water is turned into potable water in various places, by feeding the reclaimed water back into the dams that provide water that is made potable and distributed as tap water. 
That is to say, "reclaimed water" and "potable water" are two intersecting sets, not mutually exclusive categories. Ordinary Person 00:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reclaimed water and potable water 

message: The ignorant barrier some people have created upon themselves is unbeleiveable. Do your research... recycled water is perfectly fine to wash, bath-in or drink. It is water treated  after the secondary treatment and through the processes of Microfiltration and Reverse Osmosis. And.....yes by this stage it is perfectly fine to drink. No you will not get diseased, sick, or someway deformed. All you will get is pure drinking water. I believe you are deeply inconsiderate if your are against recycled water. Grow up....learn the facts....its not sewage. Plus other alternatives such as dessalinisation, just arn't a viable long-term solution (high costs and high usage of electricity). Ignorance can be overcome quite easily......so do just that.
No one knows what pollutants or mircrobes remain in reclaimed effluent. Leading experts who are not in the employ of the huge wastewater industry warn of risks to public health.  Do your research.Notindustry (talk) 23:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recycled Water is the Future 

message: The reference provided lists a number of properties of reclaimed water but does not compare to standard drinking water. And the properties listed are not all the possible measures of how "clean" the water is. -- Barrylb 04:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "often as clean as (or cleaner than) standard drinking water" 

message: Google has more hits for "recycled water" than "reclaimed water". Currently recycled water redirects to reclaimed water. Perhaps it should be the other way around. -- Barrylb 12:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recycled or reclaimed 

message: When adding a reference to this page, using the  tags, it is not necessary to manually add the reference to the References section, as it is done automatically (provided, of course, that the  tag is in place, which it is in this article).  Simply adding [website text-you-want-displayed-in-ref-section] is all that is needed with this system. Draffa 18:50, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References Section

message: Turns out that the QLD Government is calling the Referndum a Plebiscite instead, since the word Referendum is specifically mention in the Constitution re changing governence.  In reality, there is next to no difference, as the Plebiscite is still non-binding. Draffa 19:11, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed

message: ===Clive Berghoffer's Objections===
Quote from one of the currently-linked ABC Online articles:Many local councils have supported Mr Beattie's decision, but former Toowoomba mayor Clive Berghofer says the food export industry is now in danger.For any Aussies reading, Clive has substantial interests in land slated for development in Toowoomba.  He was outspoken in the Toowoomba Plebescite on RW last year.  One might suspect he wasn't concerned over the quality of the water, but rather the potential impact on property prices for newly-developed land.  His statement over the now-cancelled South-east Queensland Plebescite seem to indicate his position still stands.  Similar objections were raised several years ago by a Mayoral Candidate when Caboolture considered implementing Recycled Water some years ago during another severe drought (best summarised as "They want you to drink poo!").
Not that the water really matters to Clive, since the ABC's Quantum program has shown his 'house-sized' water tank under his suburban house. :D Draffa 17:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Brisbane/South-East Queensland

message: Quote from one of the currently-linked ABC Online articles:Many local councils have supported Mr Beattie's decision, but former Toowoomba mayor Clive Berghofer says the food export industry is now in danger.For any Aussies reading, Clive has substantial interests in land slated for development in Toowoomba.  He was outspoken in the Toowoomba Plebescite on RW last year.  One might suspect he wasn't concerned over the quality of the water, but rather the potential impact on property prices for newly-developed land.  His statement over the now-cancelled South-east Queensland Plebescite seem to indicate his position still stands.  Similar objections were raised several years ago by a Mayoral Candidate when Caboolture considered implementing Recycled Water some years ago during another severe drought (best summarised as "They want you to drink poo!").
Not that the water really matters to Clive, since the ABC's Quantum program has shown his 'house-sized' water tank under his suburban house. :D Draffa 17:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Clive Berghoffer's Objections

message: "Humans may face psychological barriers against drinking reclaimed water, since it was formerly sewage". 
Do the folks who have psychological problems with drinking reclaimed water ever consider the places where their breathing air has recently been -- say, through the nearest sewer or autopsy facility -- and that without any subsequent treatment ?  
"Fresh air" contains a wonderful variety of the worst kind of filth and noxious substances -- but fortunately our bodies filter or reject most of it.
A touch of rationality does wonders.   Allenwoll 00:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Amusing Comment

message: reclaimed water used for irrigation of lawns, golf courses etc. rarely receives tertiary treatment and does not get reverse osmosis or microfiltration.  In its 2005 annual report, the USDA recognizes that endocrine disrupting chemicals and pathogens, including drug resistant bacteria cannot be removed with present technology, and can pose an environmental and human health threat.Notindustry (talk) 18:12, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  pathogens and endocrine disrupting chemicals in reclaimed 

message: Thought this might be worth adding to the article but I don't have time to do it at the moment: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090520-space-urine.html Robogymnast (talk) 18:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using recycled water in space 

message: " Reclaimed water planned for use in recharging aquifers or augmenting surface water receives adequate and reliable treatment..." Yes? This may or may not be true.--Wetman (talk) 15:10, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  official blurb 

message: Hi, I'd like to add some text about a January 2012 National Research Council report about water reuse. You can read more about the report here: http://dels.nas.edu/Report/Water-Reuse-Potential-Expanding/13303
This is the text I'd like to add:
:In a January 2012 National Research Council reporthttp://dels.nas.edu/Report/Water-Reuse-Potential-Expanding/13303, a committee of independent experts found that expanding the reuse of municipal wastewater for irrigation, industrial uses, and drinking water augmentation could significantly increase the United States’ total available water resourceshttp://dels.nas.edu/Materials/Report-In-Brief/4307-Water-Reuse. The committee noted that a portfolio of treatment options is available to mitigate water quality issues in reclaimed water. The report also includes a risk analysis that suggests the risk of exposure to certain microbial and chemical contaminants from drinking reclaimed water is not any higher than the risk from drinking water from current water treatment systems—and in some cases, may be orders of magnitude lower. The report concludes that adjustments to the federal regulatory framework could enhance public health protection and increase public confidence in water reuse.
Does this seem OK? I'd welcome any feedback. Thanks, Earlgrey101 (talk) 23:19, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Add information on National Research Council report

message: I recently came across this Wikipedia article: Environmental persistent pharmaceutical pollutant. The article has some issues and needs some work. Nevertheless, I think it might be relevant to link to it, e.g. under concerns it could be linked in a sentence or provided as "further information". What do you all think about this? EvM-Susana (talk) 08:47, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Information about "environmental persistent pharmaceutical pollutants"? 

message: I propose to merge this page with the page on water reclamation. I have also said the same on the other talk page but there have been no responses. As this page here is more detailed I propose to move/merge the content of water reclamation to here and then to have a re-direct from water reclamation to here. What do others think? E.g. Thewellman, Velella EvM-Susana (talk) 06:29, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, nobody had any objections, so this merger has now been done.EvM-Susana (talk) 21:42, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with the page on water reclamation? 

message: More photos could be added, quite a few are in Wikimedia Commons, just look for keywords like "wastewater reuse", "tertiary treatment", "water reclamation" etc. I have just added one which in my opinion is more suitable than that photo of a manhole cover in California which was there before.EvM-Susana (talk) 13:31, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Find more photos 

message: To User:Bio-CLC: I have edited the text that is now under "health aspects (potable use)". However, I am not too sure if this is sufficiently clear: "This would be of much less concern if the population were to keep their excrement out of the wastewater e.g. via the use of the Urine-diverting dry toilet or systems that treat blackwater separately from greywater." - Keeping those streams separate would deal with the pathogen and pharmaceutical residues issue but not with the household chemicals issue: shampoo, soap, detergent etc. would all be in the greywater and could hence also end up in the potable reuse water. - Also, we should cite some high quality sources here. EvM-Susana (talk) 14:16, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The treatment for the blackwater would have to be quite elaborate though (could not be done at household level) and you'd need two separate piping systems. Greywater reuse is simpler and is relatively common now e.g. in Australia and probably also in California. Perhaps we should channel some of our energy into the page on greywater and link to it better from this page. - And I still think that all the stuff that is in shampoos, soap etc. is also not harmless, so potable reuse from greywater is also not that attractive in my opinion. EvM-Susana (talk) 07:35, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Health aspects (potable use) 

message: I've just realised that there is now an article on wastewater reuse which had a redirect to here but where the redirect was taken out in October 2016. It seems to be totally overlapping with this topic here so I propose to put the redirect back into place and to move anything that is worth saving to the article here. What do people think (for example User:Velella, User:Thewellman)? EMsmile (talk) 13:40, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I agree. An SPA populated the redirect with 65K of content in one go and insisted on it being retained there despite the best efforts of other editors. It looks very much like an undergraduate dissertation  that the editor thought highly of. There is absolutely no point in having both articles, and any useful content (and there may well be some significant useful material) should be integrated here. In one sense it is a pity because the title was good, but it will still be there as a redirect. Since I received no ping from the mention above, I will ping    Velella  Velella Talk   17:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirect article [[wastewater reuse]] to here?

message: There are a lot of examples in this article. Some are provided in the type of reuse section. And some in a country section. I am wondering if this could be somehow streamlined but am not sure what's better. I am leaning towards putting examples by country, rather than by type of reuse. EMsmile (talk) 16:12, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now moved them all to be grouped by country. The number of examples given is probably a bit excessive, should we cull them down? EMsmile (talk) 02:00, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples shown by technologies or by country?

message: Giving you an update about further work I am doing today: After speaking to another Wikipedian, I realised that the article is still too long and drawn out. So I will do some more work on compressing the content. E.g. the examples section is far too long. I will move some examples to other Wikipedia articles where it fits. EMsmile (talk) 10:43, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. EMsmile (talk) 22:51, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Further improvements: reducing length

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: I've just replaced the text for two of the country examples (United States, South Africa) with excerpts from the respective sub-articles. The aim is here to not duplicate content and to only update content in one place, not in two. The same could now be done for the other country examples. However, I wonder how we determine which countries to include here? How many? When does it get tedious? Maybe only those countries that are very active with those wastewater reuse activities. I am also mindful that we shouldn't just think of wealthy countries (Euro and US bias). Then again in developing countries, wastewater reuse takes place too but usually without advanced treatment (or even any form of treatment) and sometimes this causes dangerous side effects (health and pollution). Not sure if this is adequately covered/explained in this article yet. EMsmile (talk) 04:09, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I've done the same now also for the other country examples, i.e. replaced them with excerpts.EMsmile (talk) 08:03, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  How do deal with the country examples? 

message: I propose creating created a short section containing basic information about WateReuse.  The existing article about WateReuse contains conflicting statements and other flaws, however, WateReuse appears in many citations, and at least 10 Wikipedia articles link to WateReuse.  Wikipedia should tell readers what is known about WateReuse, without offering unsupported details.    Comfr (talk) 18:02, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed the section heading to "trade associations" to be broader. Also shortened content. If people want to know that sort of detail they can just click on the website. Why should this trade association be given more limelight than others, given that this is a global article, not specific about the US. Consider adding such content to the article water supply and sanitation in the United States. - By the way, whether other Wikipedia articles link to WateReuse or not is irrelevant when it comes to determining notability of a topic. EMsmile (talk) 08:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've now placed a redirect at WateReuse as it looks to me like the merger was completed. I don't think any of the other detailed content at WateReuse was worth bringing across to here, although some could be added to  water supply and sanitation in the United States,  I guess. EMsmile (talk) 07:52, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge WateReuse into this article

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 
The result of the move request was: Not Moved  Mike Cline (talk) 12:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Reclaimed water →  – I propose to change the title to the more accurate term "wastewater reuse" as per discussion on the talk page. The page "wastewater reuse" is currently a redirect to "reclaimed water" so would have to be deleted first. EMsmile (talk) 09:04, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

text: Comment: the discussion so far is shown here (just above on this talk page): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Reclaimed_water#Rename_to_%22wastewater_reuse%22? EMsmile (talk) 09:05, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

text: The Ngram of Google books is only one way of looking at this, and even there you see clearly how the usage of "reclaimed water" has declined since its peak in 1994. From my observation with the literature (and I used to work in the field), water reclamation is becoming an outdated term. It's either water reuse or wastewater reuse now. The latter is the more accurate term. In Google, "wastewater reuse" currently gets 745,000 hits, "reclaimed water" gets 1,490,000 hits, "water reuse" gets 2,850,000. I wouldn't base the decision just on that though, as there are combinations of the term, e.g. reuse of wastewater, reused wastewater, waste water reuse etc., so it's difficult to compare. It might also be that "reclaimed water" is more of a U.S. term. The WHO in its landmark publication of 2006 used "wastewater reuse" (actually they called it "safe use of wastewater"). EMsmile (talk) 10:48, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

text: FYI, I've asked on the talk page of the closer why this was closed so quickly before a consensus was reached (in my opinion), see here. EMsmile (talk) 10:55, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 16 May 2022 

message: — Assignment last updated by Branchiobdellid (talk) 16:51, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: ECOL 4950- Senior Seminar