San Diego is having a rough year. Universities are requiring students to take final exams. Naked. One can imagine that if the University of Alaska were to demand such a thing, lawsuits might be filed on behalf of the popsicled pupils. The pup-sicles?
Making much bigger headlines are the hapless San Diego Chargers, with a measly record of 3-8. People are upset. Government officials are very concerned that sober and bored stadium-goers will see through the common core vendor pricing scheme and realize they are paying $12/oz for their beer-flavored beverages.
This would, of course, be a disaster for city leaders who spend the proceeds wisely quickly.
In an effort to improve team performance, the city council recently ruled the team must drink recycled sewage. I’m pretty sure that will work. The team will be greatly motivated to move to Los Angeles. In fact, they are investigating that possibility even as you read this. LA would welcome such a shining example of mediocrity into their midst. Going into a 5-11 record for the 2015 season, they might even raise the bar for cultural expectations.
To be fair, everyone will have to drink the recycled sewage water. For this privilege, residents will be charged 16% higher water bills, which will cover an estimated 1/20 of the total cost for the sewage processing plant. The total comes to $3.5 billion in 2015 dollars. By the time everything switches over, this will be $35 billion and water price increases will be much, much higher. The Chargers will, however, win more games. So everybody is on board with the plan.
Let us examine what the $3.5 billion will cover. First, we’ll have the marketing campaign. If I were to offer you recycled sewage water in an environmentally-tortuous plastic bottle, you’d probably think I was joking. “Pay no mind to the crazy spork,” you’d say. Now picture The Most Interesting Man in the World selling this. “I don’t always drink processed waste from strangers, but when I do, I brush my teeth before asking the adventurous models I hang with to sign their consent forms.” You’d buy it. You’d drink it in a heartbeat. You’d do it because you are an American, and trained from an early age to believe everything a slick advertising campaign tells you.
Just look at the success of Obamacare.
In fact, officials are already proceeding with this stage and calling their effort Pure Water. It will eat the first $750 million out of the budget. Don’t worry, this will be reclaimed on the back end with the other waste products.
Important people don’t drink recycled sewage. Spending taxpayer dollars is a full-time responsibility, and they can’t risk the possible side effects. If you’ve seen rocks going through the machines on Gold Rush, you’ll have a good idea about how government gets money. The machines are the same, but instead of boulders they feed taxpayers through the conveyors. When something breaks, everything gets ugly. Imagine what would happen if taxpayer dollars suddenly stopped flowing? A strategic bottled water reserve will need to be created to protect against this disaster.
I’m sure the good people at Evian will provide the necessary supplies for this. It shouldn’t be more than $2 billion. Artesian water is rare and the Artesians will have to work even harder to provide the quantities necessary. Nobody is sure what they drink to produce their water, but at the prices they charge I’m guessing extra virgin olive oil.
The strategic reserve will need to be kept secret. If the peasants learned that “important people” were pre-processing the post-processed “water” the peasants were forced to drink, complications would ensue. Scapegoats would need to be produced. More marketing would be required. Environmentalists would be forced to hold more awareness rallies. There might be Tweets. Fortunately the budget has room for a security force to protect against this horrifying scenario. The Policing Urethan and Rectal Emissions cops will cost a mere $650 million.
The final component for making Pure Water is the waste processing facility itself. This will consist of five gallon Home Despot buckets and oversized coffee filters. There are a lot of people in the San Diego area, however, so this in itself won’t be cheap. We have $150 million left of our original $3.5 billion. That should cover everything. It will have to; government never goes back to the well to cover shortfalls. Taxpayers would be furious.
Environmentalists have been sacrificing their own wealth buying beachfront property that will be worthless due to climate change in just a few years. However, these purchases allow only the wealthiest Patreon account recipients to save the planet. With the “Pure Water” decision, the San Diego city council has given every environmentalist the world over a chance to buy the most environmentally-friendly bottled water on the planet. They can put their money where San Diegan butts have been. I’m sure they will do so. This water is perfectly safe to drink. The science is settled and everything.
Dogs are going to love it.
Are you under the impression that you aren’t drinking “recycled” water now? From your sink drain to a sewer to an extraction facility to a river to the ocean to a cloud (via evaporation) to your water source (via precipitation)…
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Are you saying they need to add a “blow drying phase” to the bucket and coffee filter processing center? I’m not sure how they’d do that, the budget is tight as it is.
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I believe that you’ve forgotten that during the processing, they filter it through Snowflakes. Because (global) warm water would be bad. Normally one would need to budget for that, but there are plenty of volunteers, so those savings can be used for the blow drying.
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Well, they do seem to get a lot of volunteers to clean ducks that collide with oil spills. This isn’t all that different. Blow dryers it is. The marketing campaign should be expanded to include the phrase “artificial evaporation”.
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No, No, No!
Any use of “artificial” will bring down the ravening hordes of Outrage (a sizable California city not found on any map, fyi.)
What you want is “organic evaporation”. I’d prefer “evapidation” but the spell-check says that’s not a word. Stupid spell-check.
PS: No article on Wikipedia for either Evapidation or eVapidation. Hmph. Seems to me that eVapidation would pretty much cover the modern internet.
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:::snickers:::
You win!
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I’m sure they won’t screw that up and poison anyone. Fortunately, even if they do, everyone is disarmed, so that’s okay.
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Coffee filters and buckets are well-understood technology. Nothing could possibly go wrong!
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Of course, the science is settled. What was I thinking?
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Well, well, well, seriously!
I’m wondering what it will be like when the entire population is all taking each others drugs in the tap water.
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The water is pure if the proper people claim the water is pure. Words are magic, right?
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Only if spoken in an ancient shamanic language. English has no power.
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Oooh, yeah. Forget “Pure Water” for the marketing campaign… call it “Voodoo Water”. Think the first lady would be willing to dress up like the voodoo chick from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies to promote it?
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Oh, I hope not. She’d look good in an orange jumpsuit, hanging in the weight room.
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