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Comment by sidewndr46 | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> The city and state were both distributing bottled drinking water and non-potable water for toilets

Is there a risk to using untreated water from the river & reservoir to flush your toilets? Why would the city need to distribute toilet water?

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It’s not a risk of contamination, it is that the treatment plant pumps can’t keep the water pressure up right now. Otherwise, river water is hopefully cleaner than what you’re trying to flush. Though in Jackson, MS, I wouldn’t take that as a given.

Over time, yes. Not so much a risk to humans but a risk to plumbing. As an example I have water risers on my fields that are fed by a lake. The horses also drink from this. Their water trough gets full of algae and moss. All the fittings I use have to be large enough to not get plugged up by the growth. I've tried using filters in the past but they plug up almost instantly.

A spin down filter solves for this. Manual ones are $50-$65, nice automated self cleaning ones are $175-$250. Great for well water imho to take the load off of disposable sediment filters further down the system. Depending on the make, you can typically swap out the stainless steel screens to change how aggressive your filtering is.

I might give this a shot. I've used them on wells and they are great for sediment. I wasn't sure if it would work the same with the moss but if it works that would save me from using the tank pellets.

If you have control over where your water supply is within the lake, and you're up for it, I recommend introducing lily pads, cattails, or watercress in the vicinity. Those flora will absorb the nutrients algae requires to grow, inhibiting its growth. Non uniform foreign debris near water intakes is just an overall pain :/

Unfortunately I don't. The lake is in national forest and it also powers a small hydroelectric dam.

Sounds absolutely lovely. Enjoy!

There's currently no/low water pressure, so supply of even non-drinkable water is difficult.

My experience with residential toilets is the tank refills often enough with low pressure anyways. I guess they are in really bad shape if they can't even fill peoples toilet tanks.

There should be no risk to using untreated water to flush the toilet.

Presumably they are shipping two types of water- potable and non-potable. The non-potable is less difficult to produce and ship.

You can flush a toilet by dumping a bucket of water into the bowl.

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