Ewww! A lot of Houston's drinking water comes from toilets and showers in Dallas/Fort Worth

One thing that I did not want to hear while drinking coffee during my morning commute? That the very water that went into my coffee came from toilets and showers in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Sure, that wastewater may have passed through sand, cloth filters, chlorination and dechlorination before a trip down the Trinity River, and then more treatment outside of Houston and a pass through my Brita before reaching a 212-degree boil on the stovetop — but still, the thought of drinking it made my gag reflex kick in, really hard.

As reported by Dave Fehling on StateImpact Texas,

It has long been a joke to those who know where Houston gets it's [sic] water: take a drink from a tap in Houston and say 'thank you' to your friends in Dallas for flushing their toilets and doing all the other things that create a city's wastewater."

In a normal year, about one-eighth of the water in the Trinity comes from DFW toilets, but the lack of rain this summer has upped the percentage of their waste in our tap water. According to the Trinity River Authority, concentrated wastewater accounted for nearly one-half of the water flow of the river at Lake Livingston.

"The treated water has met all Federal and State standards during the drought, and no significant changes were observed in constituent levels," Alvin Wright, spokesperson for the Houston Public Works and Engineering Department, told StateImpact Texas.

Though experts assure that this poses no threat to human health, it seems dubious. Or, at the very least, gross.

Listen to the story here:

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