"Mmmm...sounds tasty, huh?"

.. like breathing the fresh air out at the Lakeshore walking trail.

We already drink water pulled from Lake Loudoun -- ever contemplated what's upstream?

From the article:

After a process of microfiltration, chemicals, ultraviolet light and reverse osmosis...

They're practically sterilizing the stuff. This isn't just "toilet to tap."

Betty's absolutely right. After this sort of treatment, that water's probably purer than what runs out an opened spigot in Knoxville. I don't think that Knox County uses UV or RO in their process.

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With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene II

King. Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
Ham. At supper.
King. At supper! Where?
Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service; two dishes, but to one table: that’s the end.
King. Alas, alas!
Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
King. What dost thou mean by this?
Ham. Nothing, but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

Everybody is crapping in sombody else's drinking water.

Always have, always will. It's only the self deception that is changing.

We already drink water pulled from Lake Loudoun -- ever contemplated what's upstream?

When we were buying a water purification apparatus for our backpacking trips we joked about the old saying that water is drinkable after it rolls over seven pebbles in the wild and there are a lot of pebbles between here and Canton, NC. Of course there are a lot of old cars, sofas, and refrigerators, too.

I have a friend in Volcano, HI, who catches rainwater on his roof. I'm not sure I would trust rainwater here even if I could get it.

Remember rainwater?

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I remember my high school ecology teacher telling us that Knoxville drinks ours, we drink Clinton's, Clinton drinks Lake City's, etc. (Maybe that's a little backwards, but the point is the same.) Whenever I think of that, I just remind myself it's all H20. Well, mostly it is.

He was a great teacher. One reason I'm an eco-wacko, I guess.

"Girl, I'd drink your bath water" - juke joint patron commenting about Shug Avery in The Color Purple

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I understand that most of the Titanic victims who did not succumb to hypothermia were killed by the inhalation of hydrogen hydroxide.

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Re. the recycling, I guess the path from toilet to tap is the perception problem. At least when somebody upstream dumps theirs in and we pump it out and process it, and we dump ours for the folks downstream, etc., it doesn't seem so direct. There's a middleman, and we can pretend we don't know for sure where he got the product or what's in it.

I suppose Knoxvillians can take solace in the fact that Farragutians drink their sewage.

I always thought it wasteful that wastewater is not treated more before discharge. It just makes the downstream treatment more difficult.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 2 scene 2

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