The Political Whore

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor,“feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field

Charlie Miranda has come up with a plan to turn hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater into drinking water. All in the name of self-sufficiency.

Yes, we are in the middle of a drought. But we aren’t desperate:

In 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a study of the treated wastewater from the city’s Howard F. Curren Wastewater Treatment Plant and found 27 different kinds of micropollutants in the recycled water even after it passed through a filtration process.

A plan to punish South Tampa homeowners who refuse to use reclaimed water on their lawns is the way to go.

That’s right, let’s go after Buffy and Thurston Howell III.

Read the rest of this entry »

For decades, Tampa has faced a conundrum; every day tens of milions of gallons of treated wastewater is dumped into Tampa Bay, wasted in a word. In St. Petersburg, treated wastewater is used for residential lawn watering, thanks to the foresightful construction of special water lines in neighborhoods. But Tampa’s attempts to re-use its wastewater hasn’t met with the same success.

So now the Tampa City Council wants to skip the whole lawn watering step and move right to drinking the highly treated sewer water. It voted yesterday to ask voters in a 2010 referendum if they want to build a system to deliver the potty product back to their drinking faucets.

From Bay News 9:

Councilman Charlie Miranda is all in favor.

“This will solve our situation for water in this area for at least 50 years,” Miranda said.

The concept isn’t new.

In the 1980s, Tampa initiated a program to treat waste water. The program failed to get support.

Miranda said the potable wastewater system could cost as much as $200 million.

So the question is: Would you drink it?