Texas Town Turns To Treated Sewage For Drinking Water 242
Scientific American reports that Wichita Falls, Texas has taken an unusual step, precipitated by the years-long drought that Texas has faced: it's using treated sewage for drinking water. From the article:
To launch what it calls its "Direct Potable Reuse Project," the city pipes water 12 miles from its wastewater treatment plant to this treatment facility where it goes through microfiltration. A pump pulls water through a module filled with fibers that removes most of the impurities. Then it is forced through a semi-permeable membrane that can remove dissolved salts and other contaminants. The process, called reverse osmosis, is used by the U.S. military, in ships and in the manufacture of silicon chips. The water then gets blended with lake water before going through the regular water treatment system. ... At 60 cents per 1,000 gallons, it's far cheaper than any other source of water, [Wichita Falls' public works director Russell] Schreiber said. ... He said there have been few complaints so far. A glass of the finished product, sampled at a downtown restaurant, tasted about average for West Texas.
because drinking water is so pristine (Score:2, Insightful)
not like the wild animals and fish don't piss and shit into our water
who drinks straight from a lake or river?
Re:because drinking water is so pristine (Score:5, Informative)
not like the wild animals and fish don't piss and shit into our water
The concern is not piss and shit --- it's synthetic chemicals, such as rubbing alcohol, medications, petrol/motor oil, ethylene glycol; pesticides, fertilizer, and materials containing heavy metals or other toxins, that folks sometimes flush down the drain.
Some of these chemicals may be non-particulant, solvate in water, and have similar physical properties that water has.
Re:because drinking water is so pristine (Score:5, Informative)
Assuming the process is something akin to the Groundwater Replenishment System [gwrsystem.com] in Orange County, CA, those shouldn't be a major problem. I'm too lazy to look up the treatment plant in this story, but I'd guess that the article leaves out a few steps in the treatment process, including some sort of advanced oxidation process. At the GWRS in CA, that would be a hydrogen peroxide / UV step that oxidizes the crap out of anything that might make its way through the RO process -- which isn't much, except for possibly neutrally charged, small molecules. Further, it if it's a well run wastewater collection system, there should be source control measures in place to minimize a lot of nasty stuff, like heavy metals and toxins, as that throws off advanced wastewater treatment processes as well.
Re:because drinking water is so pristine (Score:4)
Or just plain ol activated charcoal. My sailboat has an RO system with a charcoal canister that I replace twice a year. Bigger systems have more complex pre filters. I'm sure that the system in TFA is at least cleaner than any river water or shallow well system. Possibly not as pure as a deep artesian system but if it passes EPA criteria, it's going to be pretty clean.
Really Slashdot, RO systems are old hat. You can buy them on Ebay. Soon they'll be in breakfast cereal.
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Soon they'll be in breakfast cereal.
A cereal RO system to remove antibiotics and steroids from cow milk? Oh, my.
Re:because drinking water is so pristine (Score:4, Informative)
not like the wild animals and fish don't piss and shit into our water
The concern is not piss and shit --- it's synthetic chemicals, such as rubbing alcohol, medications, petrol/motor oil, ethylene glycol; pesticides, fertilizer, and materials containing heavy metals or other toxins, that folks sometimes flush down the drain.
Some of these chemicals may be non-particulant, solvate in water, and have similar physical properties that water has.
My local water company sends out an annual quality report and I'm pretty sure that the stats they report include information on levels of most of these. And we're getting ours mostly from a deep aquifer.
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My local water company sends out an annual quality report and I'm pretty sure that the stats they report include information on levels of most of these. And we're getting ours mostly from a deep aquifer.
What is the level of estrogen in your water?
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The concern is not piss and shit --- it's synthetic chemicals, such as rubbing alcohol, medications, petrol/motor oil, ethylene glycol; pesticides, fertilizer, and materials containing heavy metals or other toxins, that folks sometimes flush down the drain.
Medicines are a big part of that mix also. Especially estrogen and it's mimics. lot's of goodies in the water, some times from discarded pills, some teims from pissing. There is even some thought that this has been part of the issue of men "growing boobs" that's been going on for some years now. Between the Phytoestrogens we've been eating in larger and larger amounts, (soybeans, peas) and the Mimics in Bisphenol A plastics, and the estrogenated water we're drinking, men are growing their own set of hooters
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Giardia comes from animals, and is more dangerous than the things you "fear"
Giardia is a microscopic particulant and 99% will be removed with a 1 micron filter. Combine with disinfection using Chloride dioxide, and you have a very effective treatment.
It is much easier to safely eliminate the Giardia threat than medicines/chemical liquids such as alcohols which pass right through a filter.
Re:because drinking water is so pristine (Score:5, Insightful)
The wild animals don't tend to piss and shit birth control hormones and other still quite bioactive medications.
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pretty much everyone. Water that is treated is stored in reservoirs that are sent directly (with a little extra filtering and bleaching) to your tap.
Mineral water out a bottle is even worse.
but that said, this is the way its supposed to be. You don't want to live in a sterile bubble, you'd never be able to leave it if you did. A little bit of what you don't fancy does you good :-)
but though a reservoir is a lake, its not the same as the ones filled with untreated water - they're full of bad stuff, mostly pr
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Your water comes from Clear Lake? Ewwwww.
American river water here.
There's an "ick factor" but... (Score:4, Insightful)
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There is some towns in california already doing this since the 90s.
Maybe not exactly this way but they are treating their sewage for potable water
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As long as the coliform bacteria levels are beneath measurement, you're good to go.
People sometimes forget how much chlorination has done to positively affect our longevity.
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Exactly. My town pulls drinking water from a river, then sends the sewage out a mile downstream.
The next town 10 miles to the south gets all of our sewage (somewhat treated), and does some treatment itself, then repeats the process.
My guess is that the "closed loop" system from TFA is actually cleaner than what I'm drinking, simply because they know they are dealing with something completely polluted to begin with and have to win the public on it.
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Obtain 2 Glass or stainess steel water pitcher. One with a Lid, and one without. (I use a glass pitcher and a gallon glass Jug in place of a pitcher with lid)
Obtain 1 cheesecloth.
Optional: obtain 1 Brita water filtration pitcher and filter.
Sort your 2 pitchers into Pitcher A, the open top pitcher, and Pitcher B, the one with a lid.
Fill Pitcher A from the tap, place the cheesecloth over the top
Lots of places don't have potable water (Score:2)
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I think the worry with these systems is that as the economy gets worse there's a temptation to stop running them correctly to save money. In the1800s kids drank booze because it was a good way to get safe water...
Up until "recently" (think 1940-1950), beer was the best option for a safe supply of water, and most people would drink a few pints daily.
Naturally, this was with a lot less alcohol than most beer today.
How is this new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you need to treat sewage before putting it in the ground, and ground water before putting it in the water supply, what is new about connecting those two points? Do people think the sewage magically stops being sewage once it leaves the system?
Re:How is this new? (Score:5, Funny)
Do people think the sewage magically stops being sewage once it leaves the system?
Yes. Don't disturb the illusion!
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This reminds me of Asimov's short story "Strikebreaker", where a person becomes untouchable by pressing the button for a remote-controlled waste treatment plant.
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False dichotomy.
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Usually towns located at a river will pipe their (hopefully treated) sewage into that river.
Towns downstream will often get at least part of their drinking water from groundwater taken near the river (the river guarantees a steady groundwater level), treat it again, then use it.
This adds some cubics of soil as additional filter, but is basicly the same thing.
Really, unless the town is lucky to get first access to some mountain's stream, the drinking water will always be at least part 'treated sewage'.
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the mountain's stream is technically said sewage evaporated and rained on top of the mountain (or "sewage treated by nature"). Water molecules don't magic out of thin air.
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I was assuming that we would at least stop at destilled water.
Applying the "sewage' attribute to pure water molecules would be superstitio, unless you assumed the sewage was somehow radioactive.
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Wildlife also pees and craps. Surface water is always 'contaminated'. UV helps sterilize it but the world is filthy.
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Or "homeopathy".
unless you assumed the sewage was somehow radioactive.
Unless it's been kept isolated for a few hundred years it probably will be slightly radioactive
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Technically RO filtration would remove radioactive contamination from water. If you can filter sodium out, you can filter all the bigger atoms which can be radioactive in it.
And done elsewhere (Score:2)
In Tucson 10%ish of the drinking water comes from reclaimed water (aka filtered sewage). Makes sense in an area with not a lot of fresh water resources. Also in those areas you can have different kinds. You can purchase a non-potable (not for consumption) water source for irrigation. Again, reclaimed water, but it undergoes less filtering and thus is cheaper. Plenty of larger places get a hookup to keep their watering costs down.
It is a very sensible way of doing things and you actually have more control of
Bad news for you (Score:2)
Some bad news: unless you live in Bemidji MN (or one of the towns on the watershed divides of the Rockies or Appalachians), you are already drinking treated sewage.
sPh
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Dust is the nasty one. It's 50%+ UV sterilized/powdered and blown away animal crap.
Not new, and not shocking. (Score:3)
If anything it's shocking the process isn't used more. I know in my hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska, reverse-osmosis waste water filtering was used at least as early as the 1980s, perhaps even the 70s. I'm trying to find a reference for proof, but haven't come up with one in a couple of minutes of Googling.
The Wikipedia article on RO, by the way, is in pretty shabby shape if anyone gets a rise out of improving such things.
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Singapore experimented with it in the 1970's, but the news is that it is now possible to do it at competitive price point. This means that cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles will not have to be abandoned when their natural water supplies run out.
I imagine that if the technology can be miniaturized and made to work in lower than Earth gravity it could also be hugely important for human space flight and colonization of other bodies in the solar system.
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You need about 700 meters of depth with the current off the shelf parts to make a RO well in the ocean. I think there is some technology that might let it work at 250 or so meters. You still have to pump the water up from that depth unless you can play games with building a saline density pump. Then there is the problem of changing a filter at depth.
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The newer membranes need quite a lot less pressure than early versions (which is where the energy requirement was). That and membrane longevity has improved considerably. As is typical with high tech stuff, the costs come down and the quality improves over time.
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as the summary says, 60c per 1000 gallons its more cost-effective to treat it this way than traditional ways. I guess that either means energy is very cheap there (solar perhaps?) or their traditional systems are very energy intensive too.
About average for West Texas? (Score:5, Funny)
A glass of the finished product, sampled at a downtown restaurant, tasted about average for West Texas.
So the water tastes like shit. Good to know.
Not normally done, but no big deal (Score:3)
My wife has multiple certifications in water and wastewater treatment, and she claims that it is only impractical from a P.R. standpoint; in most places, people would raise bloody hell if you told them that they were drinking water straight from the wastewater treatment facility, but it really is no different than drinking water from a municipal watershed. As she puts it, we are all drinking dinosaur pee anyway :)
I'm a WFTX resident (Score:5, Informative)
It's strange to me that there is all that much of a fuss with the locals, considering the fact that the process prior to this required treatment of said wastewater and greywater that was eventually let back out into the ordinary water table, became grimy with exposed air and otherwise ground contaminants, and was just filtered back to the city again through the lakes all over again anyway.
When suggested that there was no telling how many people had drowned in the lakes, how many cars had been run off the road into them and rusted over and still leaking gasoline and oil, and not to mention how many dead animals and super-toxic algae were present in the lake in the first place that we were "drinking" before this new filtered idea came about, they tend to clam up (perhaps from being grossed out by my description).
The city put out a lovely and sciencey YouTube video (which is now a year old), interviewing local chemists and otherwise credible local water experts who examined the setup and offered their input on it, here, for those interested in some of the more technical aspects. I've tried to link to it in most discussions I find online, but even still there are only 2790 views currently, out of a city of 100k+ pop, which is perhaps indicative of how terrible of a PR team our city does genuinely have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MKrU1yi5Yc [youtube.com]
Possibly the biggest local water controversy aside from the "poo-water" issue is how our city operates a water park, of all things. Supposedly it creates more profit that investment and is using outside, trucked-in water that is filtered and recirculated within its own closed system, but that doesn't stop torrents of naysayers leaping at every opportunity to inject it as shitstorm material, instantly derailing any city-admin discussion.
Not major news (Score:2)
In most of the country, treated sewage is simply piped into the nearest creek/river/lake, and then at least some of it gets pulled in by the intake for the next municipality down the line... the only real interesting bit here is the fact that it's getting piped directly into the freshwater plant instead of floating downstream first.
Its called "recycled water" (Score:2)
If its purified to normal drinking water standards its fine.
Loco (Score:3)
Whoever came up with this osmosis thing must have been...
*puts on sunglasses*
Texas (Score:2)
Where you can drink the same water over and over again, like in a spaceship.
There is plenty of room for water in Lake Lavon (Score:2)
Lakes in the Dallas Fort Worth area have more trees growing in them than all the parks combined. Do like they do with White Rock or Bachman lakes.
This 'news' and the twitter storm to follow.. (Score:2)
drought and water price (Score:3)
My state of Oregon is fully in drought. California is in extreme drought. Pretty much all the west has been in drought in a more general way for over a century.
Now in California if you have 100 year water rights then you might own water you can sell privately. Since the public sources are no longer there for many uses then buying on the spot market might make sense. The spot hit $2200 acre foot recently. You can play with this and see that this might be 250 1000 gallon units untreated. So i guess this Texas town is maybe paying $200 for an acre foot and this treated. These numbers are pretty much just in my head approximations and you can recalculate as needed.
California if this this goes on will be in a humanitarian crisis in 18 months. If so, you may be affected. You might want to support what this Texas city did after making the scat jokes. Or maybe shut down high water use export industries. When we ship a pound of beef out of country, how much water is effectively being shipped with it?
Re:Ewww... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ewww... (Score:5, Funny)
I just know there's a homeopathy joke in there somewhere...
Re:Ewww... (Score:5, Funny)
I just know there's a homeopathy joke in there somewhere...
Yeah, a crappy one.
Re:Ewww... (Score:5, Funny)
A homeopath might tell you so, but there isn't really.
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What you need, son, is a homeopathic cure for your gullibility.
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believers in homeopathy must love living there...
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Except they mix it with lake water *after* filtering it, so you've got different shit in it now.
Re:Ewww... (Score:5, Informative)
"Don't know about memory but reverse osmosis water certainly does contain some of the pharmaceuticals you crapped out."
Uh, considering the membrane has pores small enough to remove a sodium ion, and pretty much every pharmaceutical made is much larger than a single sodium ion, good luck getting through the filter.
Re:Ewww... (Score:4, Insightful)
The only brain membrane that is of concern is the one that let's out greed driven bad ideas. The biggest risk with attempting to recycle storm water and sewerage as drinking water are right wing thinkers and cost saving or profit gaining short cuts. By far the majority of places when they attempt this do not do it as drinking water only as irrigation water, reason why, risk. The risk is enormous, you just have to keep in mind some extremely dangerous water borne diseases and just one system failure and now that whole town ends up with that disease, town goes bankrupt as a result of civil suit. I will be interested to see if they can get insurance coverage for this idea and how much it will cost. Personally based upon Texan ideal for taking money saving or profit gaining ring wing short cuts I'd be moving out rather than taking that chance.
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So you're saying Republicans drink poop water?
Re:Ewww... (Score:5, Insightful)
False. Water memory, a form of homeopathy, has been around since 1796, long pre-dating understanding of molecules. The idea of water memory comes from people who start with a conclusion, and grab random scientific jargon to supply "evidence". It's like science, but backwards and nonsensical. The specific "facts" people use to sell their fake cureall potions change over the years depending on what scientific buzzwords are popular at the time.
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I like that you are omitting any comment on what the life span of water-water interactions in liquid form is. Because it's on the order femtoseconds or shorter.
And it is transient to the existence of an actual solute or surface to create any statistically significant effects - i.e. anti-fouling coatings achieve part of there action by changing the water-packing order near the surface. But that doesn't persist once the surface is removed.
Also frankly, your entire comment sounds like a bait and switch on home
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Let it flow (Score:4, Insightful)
For all practical purposes and time scales it doesn't.
Just let it flow.
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The idea of water memory comes from the fact that water molecules form long chains.
Im pretty sure the water molecule is 3 atoms "long", and it doesnt form anything unless its chilled to 0C @ 1atm.
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My Australian education would recall that water structure is constantly changing, and that no "memory" lasts more than a few nanoseconds. No structure has been observed in any form for a longer period than this, or any kind of cyclical/regenerative states based on non-reacting impurities or solutes in the water.
Of course, this is all in relation to room- or body-temperature water, which is quite energetic and liquid. Environmental effects are a bit different. Closer to freezing everything slows down and the
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Liquid water does not form permanent chains of that sort. If its doing that, its called ice, and has transitioned to a solid form.
If you're convinced that I require education, you could perhaps link to an educational source mentioning something about this. When I google "water dipolar chain", however, I get nothing but articles on other substances forming chains, and nothing whatsoever on these chains.
You're telling me to google; I did that before posting, and I've done it again, and found absolutely noth
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I thought I'd have a go at your ignorance but then decided that it would just be stirring.
Hey kid - want to buy some bitcoins? Got a bridge going really cheap too.
Water memory does not exists (Score:3)
1) life time of those is negligible on our level, on the order of magnitude of microsecond or lower, needless to say 1 second after dilution it is long gone.
2) most homeopathetic (pun intended) stuff is sold on [u]lactose or alcohol[/u] for which such a things is not even demonstrated to exists
3) even if it stayed longer than
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I don't think you fully comprehend my point. I'm only saying RO will easily remove the pharmaceuticals. You might still get other elements present besides oxygen and hydrogen, but you're not getting any molecular structure much larger than a water molecule through those pores, which would incidentally include pretty much every pharmaceutical ever made.
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It's a well-known survival trick [youtube.com] actually, see?
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Moby Dick ain't got no Porta Potty (Score:5, Informative)
Because all the fish, crustaceans, sea mammals and every damn thing else in the oceans, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs of the world climb out to take a leak or a dump.
Start thinking. You've been drinking recycled shit and piss since the day you were born.
Re:Moby Dick ain't got no Porta Potty (Score:4, Informative)
There is a difference between human pathogens and other pathogens, we don't get dolphin flu and they don't get hepatitis. Taking one quick look at Wichita Falls and it seems those idiots should take the simple step of banning lawns but I suppose freedom to waste water on something your will burn fuel cutting comes first. Also make the installation of rainwater tanks http://tankworld.com.au/produc... [tankworld.com.au] compulsory at all locations. Make dirty vehicles a matter of civic pride.
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Re:Moby Dick ain't got no Porta Potty (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, but it's filtered by natural processes rather than by the lowest bidder.
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This process is called "toilet to tap" and is perfectly safe. I would guess that any first world location that doesn't have easy access to ground water will be completely doing this in the next twenty years; it's that damn useful.
Probably the worst part about reverse osmosis is that it eliminates the water "taste" that people are used to because it gets rid of minerals as well. That's why they usually mix it with some other source like lake or ground water before it gets piped out to homes. Unfortunately
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Ever taste a Loanstar? They're used to it.
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Agreed. It's sort of like saying "The water in NYC tatested about average for West Virginia"
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I've had NYC tap through clean pipes and it was the best I've had so far. Florida's aquifers will still be kicking when it starts to *really* dry up out west too.
Side note - NYC's water system is amazing. Piped in from upstate New York through huge underground tunnels, ending up deep under the city and piped back up. It is very clean, and is very tasty. I was going to post a link from youtube, but it turns out there are a lot of them on the NYC water system at the site.
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Not necessarily any complete molecules. Water gets broken up and reassembled, by photosynthesis and other chemical processes (water breaks up spontaneously and rejoins, too.) But probably some of the atoms, yes.
--PM
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Jesus titie fucking christ, move. Life is short. Don't spend anymore of it, then you have to, living in a shithole. I'm sure there are people who like the place, let them have it.
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Joining the service is you giving up your say about where you live. It's their own choice.
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People serve *in spite of* Wichita Falls, not because of it.
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In that particular case, it helps that desalinating the required amount of water doesn't do any more than slightly jiggle the noise in the graph of your propulsion energy. That is not, in general, true.
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Let me just say that, if you offer a trip to space as the companion event to drinking this water, I will drink and I will go. :)
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