... into near-potable water that's used to water crops, and potable water that used to recharge local aquifers.
Secondary effluent is treated with ozone to destroy microorganisms and break down most contaminants, goes through a 0.1 micron membrane filtration process, and then reverse osmosis. The final water stream is treated with ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide.
Cities throughout the arid Southwestern U.S.A. could be doing this. It's not an impossible dream, such systems are installed and running in many places throughout the world.
I agree with you. A lot can go wrong when sewage treatment is privatized. Here's a horror story from England:
UK Water Companies Pour Shit Into The Sea...
As the court documents show, the company knew it ran the risk of big fines, but calculated that they would cost less than upgrading its plants and treating the sewage. Even now, this calculation may have been vindicated. Hiding its discharges saved it more than £90m in penalties, even before the huge savings it made by failing to upgrade its infrastructure are taken into account. So while the £90m fine and the £126m penalty imposed by the Water Services Regulation Authority, Ofwat, were heralded as “massive” and explained as “deterrents”, I don’t see them as either. The occasional prosecution, which holds an amorphous thing called the corporation – rather than any human being – liable, seems to be treated by water companies as a business cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/13/water-companies-britain-seas-sewage-fines-environment-agency
This corporation deliberately diverted sewage into the ocean to increase their profits and was fined an amount that was less than the profits they made.
And nobody went to jail.
You definitely don't want that sort of thing happening with your recycled drinking water.
Alas, corrupt and incompetent public agencies can be just as bad...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis
Personally I think the "Reagan Revolution" turned the U.S.A. into an increasingly corrupt "CAN'T DO" nation.
If we want nice things we have to pay for them by investing in our young people, training them to be excellent scientists, engineers, and technicians, and being ever-vigilant to root out corruption.
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