Today is World Water Day.

Many people think that the majority of costs in providing clean drinking water comes from the reservoirs, filtration, piping and provision of water to homes and businesses. That is not the case in the water rich northeast. Most water is pressurized by gravity.

In contrast, disposal of waste water (sewage) is the main cost driver in providing water. Waste water is generally not gravity fed, at least once it leaves a neighborhood. It must pumped uphill, and that’s very energy intensive. Sewage pumps often clog from things like paper towels, baby wipes, and grease.

The Town of Bethlehem maintains 32 wastewater pumps but only 5 fresh water pumps. The waste water pumps use vastly more energy to pump the sewage than clean water pumps.

When wastewater reaches the sewage treatment plant, it has to be pumped again and agitated with electric motors to settle out grease and solids, and encourage natural bacterial to convert organic matter into carbon dioxide. Waste water has to be heated to 70 degrees, regardless of the outside temperature so bacteria can be effective at eating the waste. The dried sludge and solids (using energy) not digested by bacteria have to landfilled, although some cities like Albany incinerate it or compost it and sell it to farmers as fertilizer.

There is a lot of talk these days about consumptive water use — water bottling plants, trains and trucks hauling water for the oil and gas industry, agricultural use, and power plants. The argument is that those uses permanently consume a lot of fresh drinking water out of a water basin.

That argument isn’t totally false, but ignores that the cost (both in money and energy) to non-consumptive uses of water. When water is used for consumptive purposes, it doesn’t have to be disposed of later on. Consumptive users if water subsidize sewage treatment for everyone else. This money helps improve the often inadequate existing sewage treatment infrastructure, especially in our older cities.

The biggest user of clean fresh water in the Town of Bethlehem is the SABIC plastics plant. They use town drinking water to generate steam which is used to power the plant and generate electricity for the process. All that drinking water is turned to steam and is ultimately released into the atmosphere. But in purchasing that consumptive drinking water, they subsidize everybody else’s waste water treatment and help control pollution in our rivers and creeks.