A big area of the earth doesn’t have what we have, clean sanitation, clean drinking water and a system of infrastructure that includes pipes coming and going delivering drinking water and taking away waste to be treated. No matter the condition of our infrastructure today, it would be almost impossible to build a new one even for a country like ours.

Our infrastructure was built 100 years ago and is in desperate need of attention. It may be possible to fix it as we need too and continue to use it but for most countries, it just doesn’t make sense to replicate it.

The new processes that modern technology provide, smaller more efficient, and less costly ways can take wastewater one step further and produce a valuable supply of usable and even purer water then it was before. Not only making drinking water, where it is desperately needed but using a self-sustaining process that can run on the energy that it produces itself.

Wastewater treatment which uses Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary treatments simply removes solids, chemicals, and anything else that doesn’t belong in purified water. This can be done on a large scale with huge tanks and filters that biologically, physically, and chemically clean water. That’s how we do it here and in Europe and places that can afford the energy cost that is necessary for these plants to run.

There are different types of efficient treatment solutions that can use less energy but need large spaces for a natural process. They can be found where water is scarce like in the Middle East, or California in the States. We have had processes, and the ability of Advanced wastewater treatment called Tertiary treatment for some time now.

In days before the modern Clean Streams Water Act in 1972, there was a saying that “the Solution for Pollution was Dilution”

As the years went by, this attitude caught up to us. Water became much more important. The conditions of streams, groundwater, and advancement in the science of analyzing chemical compounds, along with the disappearing of what we thought were endless supplies of water, became shockingly apparent.

What is apparent now is that wastewater itself can be used to provide energy, irrigation and even drinking water in places that need to harvest it. We have the technology and the knowledge to implement it.

Sewage treatment can come in smaller packages using less energy by separating the resources from it, and using them in a sustainable manner as we do in other recycling operations. The new problems like Water Scarcity that we will be facing in the future will demand we do this. The world is smaller and more crowded.

There is a lot of water on earth, in fact, its the same amount that we had when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. But it is dangerously scarce in some regions and abundant in others for many reasons.

The caveman that was peeing in the stream he was drinking from never had a second thought about it. But millions of years later, we are all drinking his pee whether you can fathom that thought or not, water is limited.

Harvesting sewage effluent that has always been dumped in rivers and streams only to be pumped back out a few miles downstream to be treated as drinking water or for irrigation and farming could be a huge benefit. On-site wastewater treatment that is available is a huge idea who’s time has come. These methods are needed in places like India and Africa where water and energy don’t exist. They are needed now!