It has come to this: DeKalb County residents may have to drink their own sewage.

Sure, it would be purified like the drinking water the county now provides, but the thought remains -- it might travel through someone's toilet before it gets to your faucet.

As the record drought continues, officials across metro Atlanta are looking for more water sources. One possibility in DeKalb is a sewage re-use plant on the South River. It would treat effluent the county dumps there, and inject it into the drinking water system.

Sewage re-use has occurred for years in parched places. Treated wastewater usually gets used for agriculture, industry and other non-potable purposes, but some communities use it indirectly for drinking water.

Orange County, Calif., for instance, has poured treated wastewater into the aquifers that supply its water since the 1970s, and recently expanded capacity, opening one of the world's largest re-use plants.

DeKalb officials say they will explore a variety of options, even direct potable re-use, which critics derisively refer to as "toilet to tap."

"We can treat the water to drinking water quality and put it straight into the water pipes," said Francis Kung'u, who runs DeKalb's water system.

He said DeKalb needs more water to accommodate projected growth, but acknowledged one potential problem.

"People don't like the idea of drinking water that's gone through the sewers," said Kung'u, the director of DeKalb's watershed management department.

He will ask the County Commission to pay for a feasibility study this month, and said a re-use plant could be operational in five years.

Commissioner Jeff Rader, a city planner, said re-use makes sense. After all, the county's current water source, the Chattahoochee, is filled with discharge from upstream communities.

"We already informally recycle wastewater into drinking water," Rader said. "It's not as though any of the water we are using is pristine."

Conservationist Sally Bethea said there is an advantage in drawing water from the Chattahoochee. Though it contains upstream sewage, a lot of the water is fresh from Lake Lanier.

The mix dilutes pollutants present in effluent, including pharmaceuticals that are difficult to filter.

But Bethea, who is executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, said re-use makes a lot of sense.

Full Story: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2008/02/12/drought0212.html