We know we live in a dry part of the county.

Water is scarce but essential for everything we want to do — drinking, washing, bathing, gardening, landscaping, material processing, even recreation.

Water is precious. Is there a solution for easing the shortage?

Many proposals have been made and innovative approaches proposed, from conservation to billion-dollar pipelines.

Sometimes the answer can be right under our noses but may require a profound change in our thinking and a little ingenious engineering. We all wash our clothes and dishes, take our showers, brush our teeth, flush our toilets.

All of the runoff goes into the sewer pipes and to the treatment plant for the tricky process of trying to convert a huge flow of waste into safe products. The sheer volume makes this difficult and expensive.

When I was growing up (obviously a long time ago), waste water was considered in two categories —“gray water” and “black water”. The “gray water” (from showers, clothes washing, etc.), was non-toxic and was drained onto the garden or landscape.

Only the “black water” from the toilet (no, I’m not that old) was channeled to the septic tank. If the building codes were to be modified to require that “gray water” be disposed on-site into gardens or lawns, only the “black water” (a tiny fraction of the total) would have to be dealt with in the treatment plants, which could become more efficient and have far less water purification problems.

To carry this further, building codes for new subdivisions could include a common underground storage tank (one for each “block” of 15-20 homes) into which the “gray water” would be channeled and stored.

The tank would be fitted with a pump. Each home in the “block” would have the water piped back to their sprinkling/irrigation systems on a rotating basis of so many minutes per week.

In addition, each home would have a modern (and very efficient) solid waste disposal system into which the toilets would be channeled. Groundwater would not be affected and, since hookups to the regional treatment plants would be unnecessary, no extensive underground drainage system would have to be installed by the developers.

The cost savings from this would offset the installation of the common “gray water” reservoirs. Then, since no monthly sewer bills would be necessary, that charge could then be applied to the maintenance and upkeep of the reservoirs. Engineers and planners will immediately take issue with this concept for many traditional reasons, but it has so many win-win aspects that it is worth challenging our best engineers to work out the logistics.

Donald Larkin is a St. George resident.

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