In an effort to be greener, the City of San Marcos will be one of the first Texas cities to consider a graywater ordinance.
Gray water is water from showers, bathtubs, and sinks that is reused, usually as irrigation or in toilets, before being treated.
"Yeah, it's been used once, but it can be used again,” said the city’s Assistant Director of Public Services, Jon Clack. “It's still good water."
Under the city’s proposed ordinance, new builders would be encouraged and given guidelines to install graywater plumbing systems in new residential and commercial construction.
In residential systems, graywater would be permitted to be used for irrigation. Commercial construction would also be allowed to use gray water in toilets.
"It's not disgusting,” said Ellen Waller of Garden Ville of San Marcos. “To me it's more disgusting to use purified paid for treated drinking water for our toilets. That is a disgusting waste to me."
Waller said she uses rainwater on most of her nursery’s plants and would have no hesitation about using graywater.
“Water is a finite resource that we have used and abused for years,” she said. “It’s not nasty. It just has to take a different attitude and devotion to conservation."
The state has guidelines for graywater use, but city officials said by making it a city ordinance they hope to encourage more of its resident to give it a try.
The first reading on the graywater reuse ordinance is scheduled for Tuesday’s city council meeting.
