“Sewer Mining” – Efficient Water Recycling

It sounds yucky at best, but mining sewage is growing in popularity, especially in Sydney, Australia, where a decade of drought forced some creative thinking about how to get, use and manage water.
In 2004, when reservoir levels around Sydney hit record lows during the Big Dry, Sydney Water, the municipal water provider, tightened water-use restrictions to stretch the city’s drinking water supplies.  One of its customers, the Pennant Hills Golf Club, founded in 1923 and boasting a championship course, got anxious that the curbs on water use would cause its prized greens to turn to ugly browns.
The club decided to take an unusual step: it requested permission to tap into the sewer line that ran through the golf course, and then treat and use that wastewater to irrigate its 23 hectares (57 acres) of greens.

SEWER MINING...
Just as the name implies, sewer mining involves tapping into a wastewater collection system, siphoning some of the sewage off to a treatment facility, and then reusing the reclaimed water onsite for landscape irrigation, toilet flushing or other uses not requiring water pure enough to drink.
When well planned and designed, sewer mining can yield a variety of benefits.  It can relieve overtaxed wastewater systems, trim water and wastewater infrastructure costs, reduce energy and chemical use, and save drinking water for activities that really need drinking-quality water. These water-savings, in turn, can help keep more water in rivers, lakes and streams – which is especially crucial during droughts and summer months, when river flows are low and water demands are high.