This blog has been gestating for a long time. Mostly because it will end up being a series of blogs- but the connection between them took a bit of doing. So, I’ve been massaging them to make the connection clearer.

Let’s start with water reuse. Which will involve aquaculture, agriculture, and food chemistry. All that is a viable enterprise when effected by responsible companies and governments. Then, we’ll consider what happens in a part of the world where those concepts are never considered (nor are there standards to ensure the intended quality for each purpose is met). And, what those situations mean for all of us.

Israel has been among the pioneers of water reuse for decades. Their technology has been shared around the world, and many of their regulations have become the basis for the standards that the World Health Organization (and several US states) promotes.

In the Negev (the desert region of Israel), fish ponds have been developed, as have fish raceways. (The difference between a pond and a raceway is simply related to the amount of fresh influent that passes through the water network; when the influent replaces  up to 10 to 15% of the water volume daily, that would be a pond. As the percentage increases, we refer to those systems as raceways.)

The water feeding some of these ponds have been geothermal water obtained from deep wells in the region; other ponds are fed with purified wastewater. Being a nation with severe water shortages, Israel reuses most of its water and maintains a dual distribution system- one for fresh water (or desalinated water) and the other for treated wastewater. The treated wastewater ends up being used by industry and agriculture, leaving the best quality water for those uses that require such quality (like drinking).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlUfCpuGl8k&list=RDtjBugtV8GHc&index=4

As fish grown, the water in which they live has elevated levels of ammonia and phosphates. If you consider that agriculture needs to add fertilizer to the farm areas, it becomes obvious that the fish pond/raceway effluent (with some additional treatment) can be used for agriculture and save those farms significant money in purchased fertilizer.

In Israel, the crops that receive this water resource include olives and dates. There even are lagoon systems that employ the aquaculture effluent to grow lilies for export (to Europe) and another complex uses the water to grow algae. The algae actually is used as food for salmon aquaculture, too. (Interestingly, the salmon that grows on this algae is pink- a prized color for the fish; one that normally involves using chemical additions to develop that color [meaning the fish are not “organic”]- a special benefit, since using algae means the salmon can be marketed as organic (and at higher prices)!

This is what happens when a responsible authority is controlling the farming process.

Tomorrow, we’ll see what happens when there is no such consideration.

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