Given the torrential, El Nino induced downpour this week you wouldn’t think that water availability would be at the top of anyone’s mind, but in California water means power.
As such it also plays a major role in development, and that means home construction. As reported in this mornings Enterprise Record, during a Board of Supervisors review of the draft Butte County General Plan yesterday long-time Chico Developer Mo West raised the question of the “W” word during the public discourse. Mo it seems has seen the writing-on-the-wall and it’s not in ‘water’-color. Indeed, Mr. West appears to know his stuff, citing the fact that “80 percent of the water used in a community ends up going into the sewer system”. Mo knows…no water, no houses, but… “there are technologies that can purify that water and make it drinkable again”. So he encouraged the board to make sure that the topic of converting wastewater to drinking water was included in the plan.
Indeed, Butte County water now seems to have risen to a level of importance formerly seen in southern California and the Owens Valley. Butte Environmental Council has been at the forefront of battling for our underground water rights in recent years, fighting to make sure that our aquifer is not sold out from under us.
Are we ready to embrace ‘toilet-to-tap’ here in the land of sky blue waters? When locals see three creeks running through town, A major river five miles to the west, another to the south with a giant reservoir (Lake Oroville) attached to it…isn’t drinking recycled sludge a hard-sell?
I’m all for making the hard (gulp) switch that Mo suggests when the time comes, but for now how about this instead…WE keep OUR water and sell THEM the pee!
*From: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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