Taking the Waste Out of Wastewater:
Drinking water reclaimed from sewage might sound disgusting, but the
psychologist Paul Rozin argues that it is a necessary solution to our
domestic water woes.
Fourteen states suffering under drought. Water use in Southwest heads
for day of reckoning. Water-pollution laws violated more than 500,000
times in five years. Ruptures in aging water systems cause pollutants to
seep into water supplies.
The above reporting from The Times speaks to a growing reality: the
United States faces a water crisis. In making the feature documentary “Last Call at the Oasis,”
I found the flow of evidence bracing in its breadth and acceleration,
but the underlying dynamics are not new: we use more water than the
system can naturally replenish, and we abuse the supply we have. During,
say, periods of drought, we might fitfully curtail our consumption
habits, but when it comes to long-term management strategies requiring
long-term sacrifices, we balk. Isn’t clean and abundant water a basic
right? We just need to find more water!
While we can’t “make” more water, there is one solution to water
shortage problems that addresses issues of both quality and supply.
Without mining an ancient aquifer, draining a natural spring or piping
in the pricey harvest from a greenhouse-gas-and-brine-generating desalination
plant, there is a solution to provide a valuable source of extremely
pure water: reclaim it from sewage. The stuff from our showers, sinks
and, yes, our toilets. In Israel, more than 80 percent of household
wastewater is recycled, providing nearly half the water for irrigation. A
new pilot plant near San Diego and a national “NEWater” program
in Singapore show it’s practical to turn wastewater into water that’s
clean enough to drink. Yet, in most of the world, we are resistant to do
so.
Why?
We think we are rational beings, but we are not. We are emotional
creatures, subject to obscuring feelings like fear and disgust. No one
knows more about this than Paul Rozin, the subject of this piece, who
has studied disgust for decades. His work shows us the fallacy in
assuming that, given the facts, people will make logical choices. While
recycled water may be a smart and clean way to manage our water supply,
our primitive instincts are more programmed to fear the murky water hole
than to worry about climate change,
new contaminants and population growth. We should think green, but we
can’t help thinking brown. Until we understand the very human,
irrational component to our actions — or lack thereof — we’ll still be
throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
