When you live in a hot part of California and can only water your garden on certain days during the drought, you may have to make some hard choices about letting trees or shrubs die. What if there was a no-guilt, free water source you could use anytime, without the water cops coming after you? People in parched Fresno have a new option starting Wednesday. They can lug filtered water home from the sewage plant.
It’s pretty simple, really. It looks like a do-it-yourself car wash. Residents can get a special key card to access a side gate to the wastewater treatment plant and pull up in their trucks to a stall with a hose.
Stephen Hogg, who heads up the plant, shows me around as they’re getting ready for the first customers.
"This water cannot be used for drinking, but can be used for essentially anything else, such as gardens, washing of vehicles, any non-consumable kinds of uses," Hogg explains.