Chapter 1: What is recycled wastewater and why is it controversial?
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey Shore Wavers, Regina Barber 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, Aru Nair, who is going to bring you the experimental object, I guess we'll call it.
Yeah, Aru's right here. I see their face just so mischievous. It's just a glass of water. 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 a roo, but I have a glass of water that also has a plastic cockroach in it.
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Chapter 2: What is the 'yuck factor' and how does it affect public perception?
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, 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 and It's mind over matter. And we really need this as an additional water source in large swaths of the Sun Belt and around the world.
And the Sun Belt 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.
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