What's up with recycled wastewater's PR problem?

Would you drink recycled wastewater? It could be a solution to the global water crisis. But not everyone is ready to jump onboard. They say it’s not technology that’s keeping more cities from recycling their wastewater, but psychology. Experts call this resistance “the yuck factor.” We chat with water journalist Peter Annin https://www.burkectr.org/peter-annin about some history behind water recycling – and why more cities could adopt the solution soon. This is part of a whole series on the world’s dwindling water supply. Check out the rest of the water series: Part 1 http://lnk.to/Ty93au: When the wells run dry Part 2 http://lnk.to/os7Fci: The world’s groundwater problem Part 3 https://lnk.to/7Mz2Ng: Freshwater’s growing salt problem Email us your questions about water, the wider environment – or anything else to do with science at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. We may turn it into an episode in the future! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. Listen to Short Wave on Spotify https://n.pr/3HOQKeK and Apple Podcasts https://n.pr/3WA9vqh. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Aru Nair checked the facts. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from EasyCater, the workplace food platform. EasyCater helps organizations order food from favorite restaurants, meet dietary needs, and stay on budget with employee meal programs, flexible payment options, and 24/7 customer support, all on one platform. Learn more at easycater.com.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:26Regina Barber?

  Hey, Short Wavers. Regina Barber here with producer Rachel Carlson.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Hi, Gina. OK, I'm really excited because, as you know, we've been talking about water this week.

• 0:36Regina Barber?

  Yes, I am aware.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  As part of this last episode in the series, I am making you do an experiment with me.

• 0:43Regina Barber?

  I love science experiments. I'm so excited.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  I have our intern, Aru Nayar, who is going to bring you the experimental object, I guess we'll call it.

• 0:54Regina Barber?

  Yeah, Aru's right here. I see their face just so mischievous. It's just a glass of water. Oh, I don't know. Oh, there's something in the water. What is in the water?

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Describe it.

• 1:05Regina Barber?

  It's a cockroach.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  It's a cockroach. I mailed like 20 of them to Aru, but I have a glass of water that also has a plastic cockroach in it.

• 1:15Regina Barber?

  So it is fake. OK, OK.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  It's fake. Sorry, I should have said that first.

• 1:18Regina Barber?

  I had this visceral reaction. Why are we drinking this cockroach water?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Throughout this week, I know we've been talking about a lot of scary problems when it comes to water.

• 1:28Regina Barber?

  Yes.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  So I wanted to ask some experts about solutions. And initially, I was looking for, you know, a cutting-edge solution. But what I found was that we've had the solution, or at least one solution, for decades.

• 1:45Regina Barber?

  Oh.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Recycling wastewater for drinking water. But it's caught up in something people referred to as the yuck factor.

• 1:54Regina Barber?

  Yeah, the idea of using wastewater grosses people out.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Right, and I found this paper from 2015 that was looking at people's perceptions of wastewater. And it looked into the idea of water having been contaminated in some way.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Like sipped by a convicted murderer.

• 2:12Regina Barber?

  What?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Or exposed to a heat sterilized cockroach. That's, that's why you have the cockroach.

• 2:18Regina Barber?

  Oh.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  And even if the water went through this whole cleaning process, just the mere idea that it had been contaminated at one point in time was enough for some people to say, nope, not drinking that. Even if by the time they would be drinking it, it was completely clean.

• 2:37Regina Barber?

  OK, OK, I see where we're going here.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can kind of see where this is going. And people who were more sensitive to the water being contaminated were also more likely to reject wastewater.

• 2:48Regina Barber?

  Well, they're going to be thirsty. Today on the show, recycled wastewater has a PR problem, but it could be one solution to the global water crisis.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  And we'll get into how lots of places have been successfully using recycled wastewater for decades.

• 3:04Regina Barber?

  You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  This message comes from Avalara Aviator. Aviator is the agent hub for tax and compliance. If you've listened to enough podcasts, you know a confident answer isn't necessarily a correct one. Sources matter. The same goes for AI, tax, and compliance. Aviator is grounded in 20-plus years of Avalara tax intelligence and delivers source-backed audit-defensible outcomes with human oversight built in. Because the AI said so, won't pass an audit. Visit avalara.com/aviator.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  This message comes from BetterHelp. BetterHelp is in-network with more than 125 health plans with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Don't have eligible insurance? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/NPR to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash NPR.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  This message comes from EasyCater, the workplace food platform. EasyCater helps organizations order food from favorite restaurants, meet dietary needs, and stay on budget. With employee meal programs, flexible payment options, and 24/7 customer support, all on one platform. Learn more at easycater.com.

• 4:39Regina Barber?

  Okay, Rachel, we're talking about water recycling. So it's one of the ways scientists say we can begin to address water scarcity. But as you pointed out, there's this yuck factor. Like, some people are just grossed out by the idea, even if they know the water's clean.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yes, people find it super icky.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  But using recycled wastewater is not a new idea.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Orange County is tapped out. It is turning 100% of its sewage into drinking water right now. You know, it is kind of old news in some parts of the country. And then Vinhuk Namibia has been doing it since the 1960s. So when you start to look internationally, it's even older and more common.

• 5:18Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I mean, I honestly thought a lot more cities were doing it.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not new. Peter Annin is a journalist and the executive director of the Burke Center for Ecosystem Research up on Lake Superior in Wisconsin. And he's a self-described water geek. He wrote a book called Purified: How Recycled Sewage Is Transforming Our Water. That came out in 2023.

• 5:39Regina Barber?

  Okay.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  And then before that, he wrote a book on the Great Lakes Water Wars.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  Sewage is too precious to waste anymore.

• 5:46Regina Barber?

  I never thought about sewage being precious. So let's hear about what you and Peter talked about.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, first I just had him walk me through the recycling steps wastewater goes through once it's recollected before it's drinkable.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  The first step is it goes to microfiltration. And microfiltration takes out what I call the big, small stuff. So that's protozoa, bacteria, viruses. We're talking about things like Cryptosporidium and Giardia and things like that.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  And then step number two is the deep clean. In many cases, that's reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis takes out chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, PFOS, and any viruses that might have slipped through the microfiltration process. And so it is akin to distilled water. And it is so pure that minerals need to be added back into it so that that pure water doesn't leach minerals. From concrete conveyance pipes on the way to the faucet. And then throughout the water recycling process, there's this real time contaminant monitoring to make sure nothing slips through.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Then there's little tweaks and differences depending on the system, but the next step is ultraviolet disinfection with hydrogen peroxide, which is an extra layer that's somewhat redundant with reverse osmosis. And then the water tends to be held on site a little bit longer. And then it's either put into a groundwater system.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Or a reservoir called an environmental buffer in the industry.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  So it mixes with what's already in the aquifer and then it gets sent to customers?

• 7:39Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  And some people in the water recycling industry think it's silly to take this super pure water and mix it with groundwater, which isn't quite as pure in that indirect pulver reuse system. So we're increasingly seeing that purified water is just mixed with the rest of the water that goes out to homes and businesses in a community. So it's a lot.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  It's a lot. I mean, but that idea of treating wastewater isn't new, right?

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  So could you walk me through some earlier examples of people doing this?

• 8:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the leader in the United States is Orange County, California. They started 1971 with this project called Water Factory 21. And they went through the treatment process, starting in the 1970s.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  And this is when the idea was more controversial because it was so new.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. So Orange County managed to sort of snake through that controversial era without, you know, public relations problems. In part because they've always been really aggressive and assertive regarding public relations. They hired General Norman Schwarzkopf's PR guy from the Persian Gulf War. And he came in and with this really kind of assertive, super, super proactive public relations program. And Orange County never got pulled into that, kind of that hysteria that was in the early 1990s and 2000s.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  And they have.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  Ben, at the forefront for so long that many water utilities will go to Orange County, get a briefing from the Orange County folks, not only on the technology, but also on the public relations, because the technology has not failed. What's failed in some of these systems is public acceptance because of rushed or inadequate public relations to help people understand that this is safe, it's mine over matter, and we really need this as an additional water source in large swaths of the Sun Belt and around the world.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  And the Sun Belt is that southern part of the US, kind of from Southern California to Florida-ish.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  In your work, have you found a time when the technologies failed?

• 10:03Speaker 04

  There haven't been. I mean, there have been moments that the treatment system has picked up, things that have gotten through the process. So, Orange County, again, is a example, and I think it was 2013, they had an industrial customer that illegally dumped a large amount of acetone into the sewage system.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  And so, that ended up getting into the wastewater system in Orange County, passing through the wastewater treatment, and entered into Orange County's potable water recycling program.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  The real-time monitoring picked it up, they took a sample of their water, the acetone was so diluted by that time that it did not reach the level of their permit with the state of California.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  And so, they decided to let the water go through into the groundwater system where it dissipated, and neither Orange County nor the state of California have detected acetone since.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  At unsafe levels.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Because of the dilution level.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  But, and this incident was first reported in my book, and in my interview with Orange County, they said, you know, "We don't regret that decision from a health standpoint, but from a public relations standpoint, if we were to do that again, we would offload the water and shut down the system temporarily, just for public relations." So, that's as close as we've come to any kind of an incident that's known as the acetone incident in Orange County.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Nail polish remover gate.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Okay, so, close call, but not necessarily from a health perspective.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Right. So the cost benefit analysis is there. It's cheaper than desalination, generally speaking, of ocean water. And often, it's cheaper than diverting water in from other parts of a state or other parts of the country. And it's local, and it's drought resistant, because there's always sewage.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  People always gotta go.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  They always gotta go. That's right. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So it's really, over time, the big factor has been psychological. But what we're seeing is that the water crisis is getting so bad in so many parts of the country and the world, that people are, in some places, just already over the psychology of it, and they're, they're, "Bring it on. We need this option. We need this locally drought resistant source of clean, purified drinking water." And the cost is worth it from a security standpoint.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, so we've talked about the yuck factor. We've talked about the PR component. You mentioned cost earlier. What are some of the arguments against using recycled wastewater, if we're kind of gonna play the doom and gloom card?

• 13:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I think in some communities, they're just not ready for it. They're just not psychologically ready for it, or their water situation isn't dire enough for them to include it in their water supply portfolios. Other places, I think psychologically, even though it's more expensive often, and it has a more significant environmental footprint, some people just prefer to go for desalination when they have it as an option. And, you know, the cheapest, easiest...

• 13:38Speaker 04

  Uh, you know, solution to any water crisis is more conservation.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  And so when you can conserve your way out of a problem, there's no reason to spend the money on water recycling or D cell or, or, or anything like that.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Can we conserve our way out of the problem, though?

• 13:57Speaker 04

  Well, I think that's the debate that we're in right now.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 04

  Uh, we're not going to be able to solve the long-term water solutions in the country and the world without embracing and working with agriculture. And that that debate about how much ag can conserve on top of all the urban conservation programs that have been in place in many parts of the Southwest in particular, is sort of another stage in the debate.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it takes community buy-in.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Peter, thank you so much for chatting about wastewater with me.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  You're welcome. Thanks for your interest.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Gina, after hearing this conversation with Peter, where's your head at? Would you drink the water in front of you right now?

• 14:43Regina Barber?

  I'd drink it.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Can you do it right now? I'll do it with you.

• 14:46Regina Barber?

  It's, it's plastic, right?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  It's plastic.

• 14:48Regina Barber?

  Okay, I mean, yeah, I'm gonna drink the water. Ready? One, two.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  One, two, three.

• 14:52Regina Barber?

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Thanks, Gina, for doing this experiment with me.

• 14:56Regina Barber?

  I loved it. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. It really helps the show. And hey, give us a follow on the NPR app or wherever you're listening from.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  I produced this episode and it was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Arun Iyer checked the facts. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. I'm Rachel Carlson.

• 15:15Regina Barber?

  And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you so much for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  The 2026 midterm elections are upon us. On November 3rd, voters will determine what the next two years of their local leadership and the balance of national government will look like. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast for all the updates you need ahead of and after November 3rd from NPR News.

• 15:54Speaker 06

  Oh, Kevin, it feels good to be back. It sure does, Casey. And what a time. The world is talking about AI and what's going on in Silicon Valley. And we are here with a new show to tell you all about it. That's right, Kevin. On our new show, Machine Gods, twice a week, we'll be bringing you the biggest news in tech and bring you unmatched access to the real titans of this industry. You can find Machine Gods from NPR on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.