Ethan Huff–Water has apparently become so scarce in the Golden State that some municipalities are about to begin piping recycled sewer water back into people’s homes, new reports indicate.

The California State Water Resources Control Board recently announced new regulations that will allow treated wastewater to be reused as drinking water, though it won’t make up 100 percent of what comes through the tap.

A certain percentage of recycled wastewater will reportedly be mixed with fresh waterbefore people drink it, officials say. And after being used a second time, this recycled water blend will have to undergo a waiting period before being reused again for a third time.

“This is a type of indirect potable use – it’s not treated recycle water that goes directly to someone’s house,” stated Miryam Barajas from the Water Board in an attempt to reassure the public that the changes aren’t as disgusting as they sound. “It’s highly treated,” she says, not mentioning the residues of pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and other toxins that don’t get filtered out with current mass-filtration technologies.

The so-called sewer-to-reservoir setup – or what some are referring to as toilet-to-tap – isn’t necessarily new to California, especially in certain areas of Southern California that have been recycling water for several years now. But its implementation on a state-wide scale is new. In some ways, it’s also experimental.

California currently boasts 36 primary reservoirs that are used for drinking water, and Barajas says potentially all of them could end up being converted to toilet-to-tap by essentially flooding them with municipal waste water. Major upgrades still need to occur before these would ever be operational.

“The regulations are now there but the infrastructure is not,” Barajas told local Bay Area media…..more here