> i'm pretty sure that there are ways to disinfect water without
> chlorine. i know for a fact that there are ways to treat it.
There certainly are. Of course, they're not always appropriate. And they almost always cost more in similar situations. Some cities, such as Vancouver, spend very little on water purification, and reserve significant chlorination for special instances - but they're the beneficiary of good luck with respect to location. For cities which draw from lakes and river systems, there are few alternatives.
> the problem is that most urban sewage systems are the type that need
> to rely on engineering processes and an industrial
> infrastructure--which in turn means big government contracts, taxing
> mechanisms, and those wonderful municipal bonds!
Perhaps I'm being overly dense, but water purification has little if anything to do with sewage treatment. There are instances of municipalities which don't treat their sewage (or treat their sewage very rudimentarily), such as Victoria, and I'd rather not emulate them.
If you are challenging the very concept of sewage treatment, that's much more difficult. While it's easy to significantly reduce one's personal production of garbage through wise choices in consumption and recycling, it's very difficult to reduce one's personal production of sewage - most urban sewage is human waste.
marco
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> Marco Anglesio | Whenever books are burned <
> mpa at the-wire.com | men also in the end are burned. <
> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | --Heinrich Heine <
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