Don't Eat The White Snow Either

loteck writes "An interesting article about an Australian ski resort that is converting human waste into freshly driven snow. The waste is converted "through a three-step purifying process of UV light filtration, ozonation and ultra-filtration", and they say it's "even cleaner than that made from nearby creek water." I think that says more about the creek than it does the waste."

Comments

Interesting, but...

[Latrommi]

Why not use the recycled water to fill up the toliets again instead of putting it on the mountainside. Not sure if I'd want to be skiing on a wastewater snow slope.

What would you consider "clean" ?

[NKJensen]

I wonder what the writer of the write-up think happen with all other human waste?

You and I both live in the middle of mother natures great recycler.

There is no such thing as to remove human waste, you may MOVE it at best.

You drink waste water anyway..

[MikeFM]

Where do you think waste water goes? Back into the drinking water! Sure they run it though a filtering process when they make it drinking water again but the process probably isn't a lot different except these guys probably don't add as many nasty chemicals. If it were me I wouldn't even bother telling my customers. I'd run a monthly (weekly?) test to make sure my filters were doing their job and just go on about my business.

Re:You drink waste water anyway..

[br0ck]

What about all of the drugs and pharmaceuticals that make it into the water supply? Antibiotics passed from humans and feed animals have been found in the water supply. Hormones are present in greater concentrations than you'd think and are thought to be disrupting fish reproduction with males having eggs in their testes. Although being able to produce caviar at will could make you quite the party favorite.

Re:Creek?

[chamenos]

water purified from human waste can actually be cleaner than water purified through normal means. its just the idea that irks most people. singapore has started introducing water that is "reclaimed" from sewage for consumption. the purity of the water exceeded the standard set by the world health organization by quite a far margin. if i'm not wrong some places in america already use water reclaimed from sewage for consumption, so its not as if this is a completely new concept.

If you drink out of the river...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new about that at all, been going on for centuries, unless you were the settlement furthest upstream. Even then, you were probably drinking run-off sheep and goat...

Re:If you drink out of the river...

[ackthpt]

and they say it's "even cleaner than that made from nearby creek water." I think that says more about the creek than it does the waste."

the concept of water purified through man-made means, as opposed to nature which most people are more used to. in singapore's case, they're currently pumping the purified water into reservoirs, just to let it sit in the open so the birds and fish can crap into it and let nature do a bit of its thing, before purifying it again to pump into the water supply. all this, just to satisfy the odd inhibitions that a lot of people have to consuming purified sewage. weak-minded people really do bother me sometimes.

Don't be so hasty to cast stones. Clearly there is a double standard, born of ignorance on the part of many. A small ski resort I visited used to pump icky water from a swamp and make snow from it. You could tell because the air smelled terrible when they were doing it and the snow had a yellowish tinge from algae. However, look at what advertising has told the consumer:

Beer from the land of sky blue waters (can you name it? :-)

Mountain spring water (yeah, right... all 50 zillion gallons of it every day, that's no spring it's a river, in Cal. it's probably pumped from Colorado or Owens River, read Cadillac Desert)

Then there's the simple test of putting two glasses of water in front of someone, filtered from the town well and recovered water. Don't tell them before they taste test, then see if they make a face and call a lawyer once you've explained one came from recovered water.

People have been trained, since before the Bible to avoid water touched by human waste, because bacteria and fungi which cause some pretty bad aflictions grow in it. That was wisdom, it may seem misguided, until you run a marketing campaign to change people's opinion, then catch the local water filtration manager cutting corners. It's probably happening in your town and you don't even know it.

Me, I put a filter on my drinking water, for whatever good it does. Which it does to some small noticable degree.

Water is getting poorer in quality and reuse isn't a new concept, but reuse is growing and people will need to accept it, because alternatives (desalination, for example) can be very expensive.

Re:If you drink out of the river...

[chamenos]

actually i live in singapore...sorry if i gave you the wrong impression. currently, the water purified through some method called "reverse-osmosis" or something similar, has been tested in a laboratory to be cleaner than the water we currently consume, and as it is the water here is already clean enough to be consumed straight from the tap. i drink water straight from the tap all the time without any ill effects so much so that i've gotten used to it to the point, that when i went to china a few years ago my local host looked appalled when i proceeded to do the same there. apparently the water has to be boiled at least once before it is safe for consumption.

anyway i didn't mean to imply that the ski resort would purify water to the same standards that singapore does. i agree that they probably wouldn't, since it wouldn't be cost-effective. i was just attempting to dismiss the eek factor a lot of people have with reclaimed water, despite the fact that it can be cleaner than most forms of potable water today.

by the way, singapore's utilities services are strictly government monitored, and even small screw-ups are widely publicised. a few years ago a sewage pipe in an apartment buildling leaked raw sewage into the water pipes due to lack of maintenance, resulting in some people being hospitalized. the case was plastered all over the newspapers and i'm sure some heads were rolling after that, as they rightfully should ;)

Re:If you drink out of the river...

[ackthpt]

Just curious, but when you say, "Water is getting poorer in quality..." what do you mean?

Snowmelt/rainfall fills the stream or aquifer your water comes from (exceptions, like L.A., where it's pumped hundreds of miles _into_ an aquifer)

You live in city D, downstream from Cities A, B, C.

City A uses the water, some of it is treated then fed to streams or back into wells.

City B does the same thing.

City C does the same thing.

All this use increases mineral content of the water, since minerals are disolved into water, not chunks you can filter out. Most can only be removed by energy intensive evaporation.

In City D you turn on the tap and out comes a glass of water with the accumulated minerals, trace elements, pollutants it has acquired on its journey.

Most cities grow, thus increasing their need for water.

The mineral and other chemical content compounds.

There is a treaty between the US and Mexico governing use of the Colorado River, as concentration of salts in water have, in the past, reached levels which were harmful to mexican agriculture. Recently L.A. lost access to Mono Lake water (because they were draining it almost completely), more recently Southern California has lost access to extra shares of Colorado River water, unused by upstream states, until now.

In short, the more water is used after it falls from the clouds, the more things accumulate in it. Biologicals can be treated out, but salts and chemicals are much more difficult. Pumping water into wells, to "purify" water has resulted in their decreasing effectiveness.

Granted, in the eastern US and other regions which receive greater rain and snowfall, it's less of an issue (so far.)

When I was much younger I heard of some Army Corps of Engineers plan to run a pipeline from Lake Michigan to the California. I thought it was just another goofy rumor. After reading Cadillac Desert, I found it wasn't just proposed, but the Great Lake States fought it.

London water

[m00nun1t]

It's a widely known "fact" in London (not sure if it's an urban myth or not - I suspect not) that water goes through the system seven times. So, there's a good chance your tap water is someone elses piss. Their extensive filtration means the water is actually pretty good.

Anyway, waste liquid has to go somewhere - a ski slope seems pretty mild compared to many alternatives.

Isn't that how it works in nature?

[vasqzr]

Myself, along with all the other organisms on this earth, piss and shit all over. It evaporates (the liquid parts, at least) and then it condenses in clouds, precipitates back down....

This is a good idea.

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I personally would not be the least bit squeamish about this. First off, they make filters capable of filter guiarda(sp) and other microbes out. Even if they don't filter it out you can get rid of it by irradiating the water, or heck BOILING the water will kill most creepy crawlys. They can also filter other things that ain't so nice out of the water. If they make a filter that can filter chlorine out of the water at your house, then this filter or a similar one could work in this machine. They also recycle water on the shuttle because the weight of water costs so much for them to carry it up. They'd rather use as much weight for carrying satellites and other things that can help generate revenue then water for the astronauts.

Second, and I know some may dispute this, if we are running out of water where does it go? Water that evaporates down here usually turns up as a cloud and then rain somewhere on the planet. I know the planet isn't a closed system, but this water has to go somewhere. It doesn't just zoom off into space. I think that those who claim know have no idea what they are talking about when there's a water shortage. There's oceans full of it just wating to be desalinized. If they can find a economical process for desalinization, then most water problems could be solved.

Spoiled youth

[anno1a]

I think that says more about the creek than it does the waste.

This is what I'd typically expect from the spoiled youth of today, who think that what the water they drink is either synthetically created from pure Hydrogen and Oxygen, or at least have never been anywhere near anything even resembling filth. So when they hear that people are purifying waste and putting it on the hill side (which probably isn't too sterile as it is), or... say... Watch Dune, where people use a suit to purify their own bodilly waste products for drinking, they go "eeeeew! Gross!". Well, FYI, your water has been on this planet for millions of years! Just about every species that have lived on this planet has crapped in your water, and then it's been through natural followed by artificial purification... What the ski resort is doing is just the same, and they only put it onto the hills... Wake up and smell the water!

It's purified for God's sake!

[jordandeamattson]

Let me get this right: it has been purified three different ways, is pristine and clean, and people are still worried about it?!? One can only imagine what Freud could make of these "potty fetishes"!

We really have to think about what these "potty fetishes" are costing us. Here in the SF Bay Area, we are dumping literally millions of gallons of fresh, pure, clean water (cleaner than the the input sources)a day into the SF Bay. We are spending millions to try and protect the brakish marsh and watelands of the SF Bay from this invaison of fresh water. The open loop water economies that we practice through out the world are costing us a untold price economically and ecologically. Southern California, due to its cut off of Colorado River water by the Federal Government, will be setting up desilenation plants. If they wanted to do it cheaper, and with less ecologoical impact, they would start water recycling.

My call for economic and ecological reason is "Close the Loop! Drink Recycled Water!"

No reason not to use it

[failedlogic]

All water at some point has to go through a water purification process. If you can drink water from the Amazon jungle after boiling it for 1/2 hour and/or using a few iodine tablets,

Skiing on this snow shouldn't be a problem. Its not like you have to drink/eat the stuff. Urine is not hard to purify, there are much worse and much harder things to purify. I suppose there is a small psychological barrier to skiing on it at first.

If you're so paranoid about skiing on sanitized snow then I should mention you shouldn't taste your own sweat - it's 1 to 2 % urine. Another liitle known fact you probably didn't want to know ;)