Short Wave - What's up with recycled wastewater's PR problem?

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

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 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: When the wells run dryPart 2: The world’s groundwater problemPart 3: Freshwater’s growing salt problemEmail us your questions about water, the wider environment – or anything else to do with science at [e-mail]. 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.Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.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 for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, ShoreWavers, Regina Barbara here with producer Rachel Carlson. Hi, Gina. Okay, I'm really excited because, as you know, we've been talking about water this week. Yes, I am aware. As part of this last episode in the series, I am making you do an experiment with me. I love science experiments. I'm so excited.

I have our intern, Arunair, who is going to bring you. the experimental object, I guess we'll call it. Yeah, Arou is right here. I see their face just so mischievous. It's just a glass of water. Oh, I even know. Oh, there's something in the water. What is in the water?

Describe it. It's a cockroach. It's a cockroach. I mailed like 20 of them to Arou, but I have a glass of water that also has a plastic cockroach in it. So it is fake. Okay, okay. It's fake.

Sorry, I should have said that first. I had this, like, visceral reaction. Mm-hmm. Why are we drinking this cockroach water? Throughout this week, I know we've been talking about a lot of scary problems when it comes to water. Yes. So I wanted to ask some experts about solutions. And initially, I was looking for, you know, a cutting-edge solution.

Yeah. But what I found was that we've had the solution, or at least one solution, for decades. Oh. Recycling wastewater for drinking water. But it's caught up in something people referred to as the yuck factor. Yeah, the idea of using wastewater grosses people out. 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, like sipped by a convicted murderer. What? Or exposed to a heat sterilized cockroach. That's why you have the cockroach. 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. Okay, okay, I see where we're going here. 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. 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. And we'll get into how lots of places have been successfully using recycled wastewater for decades. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. 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. Yes, people find it super icky. But using recycled wastewater is not a new idea. 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 Vindhook Namibia has been doing it since the 1960s. So when you start to look international,

it's even older and more common. Yeah, I mean, I honestly thought a lot more cities were doing it. Yeah, it's not new. Peter Annen 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.

And then before that, he wrote a book on the Great Lakes Water Wars. Sewage is too precious to waste anymore. I never thought about sewage being precious. So let's hear about what you and Peter talked about. Yeah. First, I just had him walk me through the recycling steps. Wastewater goes through once it's recollected before it's drinkable. 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. And then step number two is the deep clean, in many cases that's reverse osmosis, reverse osmosis takes out chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, Phafos,

and any viruses that might have slipped through the micro filtration 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, 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. 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 or a reservoir called an environmental buffer in the industry. So it mixes with what's already in the aquifer and then it gets sent to customers. Exactly. Okay. And some people in the water, recycling industry thing because it's silly to take this super pure water and mix it with groundwater, which isn't quite as pure in that indirect polo reuse system. So we were 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. That's a lot. I mean, but that idea of treating wastewater isn't new, right? Yeah, yeah. So could you walk me through some earlier examples of people doing this? 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. And this is when the idea was more controversial because it was so new. 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. Wow. And they have been 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 mind over matter, and we really need this as an additional water source in large swaths of the Sunbelt and around the world.

In the Sunbelt, is that southern part of the U.S., kind of from Southern California to Florida-ish. Yep. In your work, have you found a time when the technologies failed? 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, as an example, and I think it was 2013, they had an industrial customer that illegally dumped a large amount of acetone into the sewage system. Oh, no. And so that ended up getting into the wastewater system in Orange County, passing through the wastewater treatment. It entered into Orange County's potable water recycling

program. The real-time monitoring picked it up. They took a sample of their water. That acetone was so diluted by that time that it did not reach the level of their permit with the state of California. Oh. 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 detectives. acetone since. At unsafe levels. Because of the dilution level. Yeah.

But in and that 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. known as the acetone incident in Orange County. Now polish remover gate.

Right. Yeah. Okay. So close call, but not necessarily from a health perspective. 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. People always got to go. They always got to 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 bringing it on. 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. 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 going to play the doom and gloom card? 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, you know, solution to any water crisis is more a conservation. Right. And so when you can conserve your way out of a problem, there's no reason to spend the money on water recycling or desal or anything like that. Can we conserve our way out of the problem, though? Well, I think that's the debate that we're in right now. We're not going to be able to solve the long-term water solutions in the country, in 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. Yeah, it takes community buy-in. Exactly. Peter, thank you so much for chatting about wastewater with me. You're welcome. Thanks for your interest. Gina, after hearing this conversation with Peter, where's your head at? Would you drink the water in front of you right now? I'd drink it. Can you do it right now?

I'll do it with you. It's plastic, right? It's plastic. Yeah, I'm going to drink the water. Ready? One, two, three. Yeah, that's fine. Thanks, Gina, for doing this experiment with me.

I loved it. If you like 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. I produced this episode, and it was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Aruneyer checked the facts. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. I'm Rachel Carlson. And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you so much for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.