When Janet Cruz lost an April election for a Tampa City Council seat, she became a political casualty of an increasingly high-stakes debate over recycled water. … Tampa’s showdown may be a harbinger of things to come as climate change and drought cause water shortages in many parts of the country. With few alternatives for expanding supply, cities and states are rapidly adding recycled water to their portfolios and expanding the ways in which it can be used. Researchers say it’s safe — and that it’s essential to move past the 20th century notion that wastewater must stay flushed. … Several projects were canceled in California in the 1990s because of such worries. In San Gabriel, Miller Brewing Company opposed a water reclamation project when people started joking about “beer aged in porcelain.”

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