water.... not a drop to drink

[MallowTheCloud 41]

It isn't broken. It is a real world solution that allows us to build cities in the desert. Recycled water allows us to have "infinite" water.

 

No.

 

First and foremost, name a city that gets 100% of its water from treated sewage. It doesn't happen. You can't get "infinite" potable water from your city's sewage, that's not realistic.

 

Secondly, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. You're claiming this is a realistic solution. So why don't we have the option of the most realistic water solution for a city--the reservoir? In other words, why are we limited to the water table when we have a body of water in our region?

[Californiaz 33]

Don't most cities in real life, at least in dry areas, use this method? Why else is there treatment plants in the game. I honestly think it was a designed feature. Perhaps they are spending too much time in Los Angeles though

[JeffCraig 3]

This is clearly a broken system.

 

Requiring your users to jury-rig their cities to provide them with fresh water is not 'working-as-intended'. And 'realism' is not a valid excuse to try and justify it. If it's so 'realistic' right now, why aren't there any water filtration add-ons for the sewage facilities (ie: ones that output fresh water)?

 

It's a problem, and lots of people are noticing it. Especially since the region-sharing features are shaky at best right now, and it's hard to keep a city running on bought water. The water flow from other cities drop out all the time, taking half your city with it before you can get a pump working again.

 

It needs to be fixed.

 

In the mean-time, I guess we'll just have to perfect this sewage exploit. Can someone post a screenshot of their system?

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Don't most cities in real life, at least in dry areas, use this method? Why else is there treatment plants in the game. I honestly think it was a designed feature. Perhaps they are spending too much time in Los Angeles though

 

Maybe as a source, but not as their only source of potable water. And as far as I know, there's nowhere in real life where it's dumped into the ground untreated, then re-pumped out and treated. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's treated at the sewage treatment plant (to make it non-hazardous), sent directly to a treatment facility (or dumped into a surface-water source like a lake or river), and re-treated (to make it potable).

[Gulch 0]

Don't most cities in real life, at least in dry areas, use this method? 

 

Don't forget about de-salinazation plants also. 

[JeffCraig 3]

Don't most cities in real life, at least in dry areas, use this method? Why else is there treatment plants in the game. I honestly think it was a designed feature. Perhaps they are spending too much time in Los Angeles though

 

Maybe as a source, but not as their only source of potable water. And as far as I know, there's nowhere in real life where it's dumped into the ground untreated, then re-pumped out and treated. It's treated (to make it non-hazardous) and the re-treated (to make it potable).

 

Exactly. 

 

Trying to compare this game to real life is just taking this thread off topic. We need to focus on the issue at hand: how to keep our cities from running dry until EA patches the water-table refill rates.

[Fobok 1]

I haven't got the game yet due to some budgeting issues (which, perhaps, were lucky for me), so I can't test anything, but it sounds like the only bug in the water system is that you're unable to pump water from a source like a coast. The filtration method makes perfect sense to me.

 

I think if they get water working from the coast, assuming it isn't actually working as intended, (and they get trading working properly), then you'll be able to water the dry cities by trading until such time as you can setup the filtration method in the city, (Or, perhaps it'd be better balanced if trading was cheaper than the costs for the filtration method, to encourage trading.)

[Californiaz 33]

The stat I used isn't appropriate, removed.

[Trooth 22]

The treated water isn't the only source, their is an initial source of water obviously, but the treatment recycles the water which drastically decreases the strain on the original water source. This called water reclamation and it is huge for cities in the desert like Tucson and Phoenix. Without water reclamation they would go dry.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

The stat I used isn't appropriate, removed.

 

Ya, I was gonna say, that's for non-potable water. Actually I did find one stat on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_treatment

 

See the first paragraph. The ONLY place that even USES this method is Singapore, and it's not their only source of water. No other developed country currently (directly) uses treated sewage for their municipal water supply.

[JeffCraig 3]

Well, they left de-salinazation plants out of the game: so it's safe to say the coast will not be a source of potable water any-time (soon, at least).

 

All they need to do is tweak the water refresh algorithm a little so water comes back a little quicker. Some cities will still have more water than others, and you'll still need to make up the difference through region-trading. That's how they designed the game and that's how it is supposed to work.

 

Things are just a little wonky right now with region-trading being haphazard, and from the lack of a real mass beta test. It'll get patched.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

The treated water isn't the only source, their is an initial source of water obviously, but the treatment recycles the water which drastically decreases the strain on the original water source. This called water reclamation and it is huge for cities in the desert like Tucson and Phoenix. Without water reclamation they would go dry.

 

But it is almost exclusively re-used as non-potable water. In other words, it's a way to put less of a strain on the main potable water supply, not to actually increase the amount of potable water coming in.

[SirChick 184]

I think they have increased the frequency of rain now so the water table stays topped up.

[JeffCraig 3]

The treated water isn't the only source, their is an initial source of water obviously, but the treatment recycles the water which drastically decreases the strain on the original water source. This called water reclamation and it is huge for cities in the desert like Tucson and Phoenix. Without water reclamation they would go dry.

 

But it is almost exclusively re-used as non-potable water. In other words, it's a way to put less of a strain on the main potable water supply, not to actually increase the amount of potable water coming in.

 

And if this were to be a game mechanic, there would need to be an actual building called a 'Water Reclamation Station'. 

 

They put this issue on a big Reddit SimCity Bug List. Hopefully someone at EA reads that thing.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Well, they left de-salinazation plants out of the game: so it's safe to say the coast will not be a source of potable water any-time (soon, at least).

 

All they need to do is tweak the water refresh algorithm a little so water comes back a little quicker. Some cities will still have more water than others, and you'll still need to make up the difference through region-trading. That's how they designed the game and that's how it is supposed to work.

 

Things are just a little wonky right now with region-trading being haphazard, and from the lack of a real mass beta test. It'll get patched.

 

This, this, and more this. It's not like it's unreasonable to have water problems, but right now we have two options in a developed region:

1. Run out of water. Sorry, you're screwed.

2. Dump your sewage into the ground untreated, then pump out the dirty water and treat it for drinking water. And you can essentially get infinite water this way. There is nothing about this option that is logical, it's completely unrealistic, and there's no documentation that suggests that this is a potential solution.

 

If they allowed the aquifers to replenish more frequently (especially in cities with "high" water supplies), this wouldn't be a problem, as you said. You'd still have to work with the challenge of building in cities with "low" water supplies and having the water run out, but at least you could source it from the regions with "high" water supplies.

I think they have increased the frequency of rain now so the water table stays topped up.

 

If that's the case, great!

[Sunfighter 186]

No Simcity accurately portrayed this system, Though id say 2000/3000 was probably the best. Honestly, they should tweek the water to make it at least possible not to run out of water.

 

They also need to add a reservoir  great work that provides water to every city in the region for a moderate fee and provides a small amount of worker demand.

[Prankemperor 3]

More importantly, if this dump-the-sewage-and-treat-the-dirty-water was an intended part of the game, it should be documented somewhere. It shouldn't be up to us random folk to figure it out on our own (via the other helpful people on here or elsewhere). I wasn't expecting to run out of water so soon in my city, and when I did, I expected there to be a logical in-game solution. The dumping-waste-and-putting-in-a-pump method is not something I would have figured out on my own.

 

I disagree.  This is exactly the kind of thing I like figuring out and should NOT be documented in the help docs.  Half the fun of playing new games is figuring out all the tricks and features and how to use them.

 

I am with you on this one. If everything was just documented than all we would be doing is running the manual and where would our creativity come into being? I like having to figuring things out. I have yet to get my game but hopefully over the weekend I should be playing it and I already have a quiet a idea of the advanced game mechanics just from watching couple of letsallbemayor and other streams. It really is not that difficult to figure things out.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

No Simcity accurately portrayed this system, Though id say 2000/3000 was probably the best. Honestly, they should tweek the water to make it at least possible not to run out of water.

 

They also need to add a reservoir  great work that provides water to every city in the region for a moderate fee and provides a small amount of worker demand.

 

This. Using an illogical exploit is not "challenging" or "stimulating" in any way. If the idea is to challenge us to prevent from running out of water, don't make it to where the only solution is an undocumented method that provides "infinite" water.

 

 

 

More importantly, if this dump-the-sewage-and-treat-the-dirty-water was an intended part of the game, it should be documented somewhere. It shouldn't be up to us random folk to figure it out on our own (via the other helpful people on here or elsewhere). I wasn't expecting to run out of water so soon in my city, and when I did, I expected there to be a logical in-game solution. The dumping-waste-and-putting-in-a-pump method is not something I would have figured out on my own.

 

I disagree.  This is exactly the kind of thing I like figuring out and should NOT be documented in the help docs.  Half the fun of playing new games is figuring out all the tricks and features and how to use them.

 

I am with you on this one. If everything was just documented than all we would be doing is running the manual and where would our creativity come into being? I like having to figuring things out. I have yet to get my game but hopefully over the weekend I should be playing it and I already have a quiet a idea of the advanced game mechanics just from watching couple of letsallbemayor and other streams. It really is not that difficult to figure things out.

 

Please tell me exactly how I was supposed to "just figure out" that placing a water pump next to a sewage outflow pipe was a good idea. Especially when it doesn't actually register as increasing the water table. I like having to figure things out too, but when you end up having to figure out online that "oh, well, if you do these completely illogical things you can get an illogical infinite water supply", it's not very winsome.

[Trooth 22]

The treated water isn't the only source, their is an initial source of water obviously, but the treatment recycles the water which drastically decreases the strain on the original water source. This called water reclamation and it is huge for cities in the desert like Tucson and Phoenix. Without water reclamation they would go dry.

 

But it is almost exclusively re-used as non-potable water. In other words, it's a way to put less of a strain on the main potable water supply, not to actually increase the amount of potable water coming in.  

And if this were to be a game mechanic, there would need to be an actual building called a 'Water Reclamation Station'. 

 

They put this issue on a big Reddit SimCity Bug List. Hopefully someone at EA reads that thing.

There isn't a need for a water reclamation station. You have wastewater treatment plants for your sewer, and water filtration systems at your water facilities. Yes few places directly transfer treated waste water to a water plant. Most often it is used for irrigation or other non pottable sources. Still it goes back into the water table. Hence in the game if you do not have a sanitation system, you pollute your water source. If you treat it, it should replenish the water table as all water on the planet is recycled naturally. Yes you will see some districts name their wastewater plants as water reclamation plant, it is still in essence a wastewater treatment plant. The add ons to the facilities in simcity reproduce this effect. They need adjustments, and i agree one of the region projects should be a water resovoir as well, for realism.

[UnkleS27 24]

I like how in the "Vanity Mayor" tv spot they had he mentions putting the sewage plant next to the water supply as if it is a terrible idea. Turns out it pretty much the only way to keep water flowing to your city.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

 

 

The treated water isn't the only source, their is an initial source of water obviously, but the treatment recycles the water which drastically decreases the strain on the original water source. This called water reclamation and it is huge for cities in the desert like Tucson and Phoenix. Without water reclamation they would go dry.

 

But it is almost exclusively re-used as non-potable water. In other words, it's a way to put less of a strain on the main potable water supply, not to actually increase the amount of potable water coming in.  

And if this were to be a game mechanic, there would need to be an actual building called a 'Water Reclamation Station'. 

 

They put this issue on a big Reddit SimCity Bug List. Hopefully someone at EA reads that thing.

There isn't a need for a water reclamation station. You have wastewater treatment plants for your sewer, and water filtration systems at your water facilities. Yes few places directly transfer treated waste water to a water plant. Most often it is used for irrigation or other non pottable sources. Still it goes back into the water table. Hence in the game if you do not have a sanitation system, you pollute your water source. If you treat it, it should replenish the water table as all water on the planet is recycled naturally. Yes you will see some districts name their wastewater plants as water reclamation plant, it is still in essence a wastewater treatment plant. The add ons to the facilities in simcity reproduce this effect. They need adjustments, and i agree one of the region projects should be a water resovoir as well, for realism.

 

I might not have as much of a problem with this explanation were it not for two important points:

1. Treating this as an "infinite" water supply defeats the purpose. If the purpose is to challenge us in water usage, then don't make it possible to completely solve the "challenge" with one easy-to-use trick.

2. There should be some hint that this is what was intended, like showing the water table replenishing under the sewage outflow pipes. This isn't occurring, so there's nothing in their data layers that would suggest this should actually be a thing that could happen.

[TURDxSANDWICH 6]

Seems like this topic has focused mostly on the sewage outflow/filtered water pump solution...

 

Has anyone confirmed that putting a water pump (Not a water tower) next to a body of water is a viable solution to having the water table dry up?

[GoldenShadowGS 0]

It seems to be the case, I had some spare water, but the coastline was solid dark blue along the entire thing. I haven't tested if the dark blue doesn't get sucked dry though.

 

There are some cities in certain regions that don't have a water table at all.

 

If you have a spare water table. spread out your water towers across the map instead of putting one large pump somewhere, the pump will suck the ground dry in just a few months, leaving it to be a big waste of money not doing anything. However, water towers that are spread out will last much longer.

[TinyWeeny 6]

I placed a water pump as close to the coast as possible earlier today and I'm keeping an eye on it to see what happens.

 

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't take water from the ocean, but I'll confirm that first and post back here when I have a solid answer.

 

I still haven't tried the sewage loop thing yet, but I plan on giving that a try as well and will post about it here as well later.

[epyrion 1]

I placed a water pump as close to the coast as possible earlier today and I'm keeping an eye on it to see what happens.

 

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't take water from the ocean, but I'll confirm that first and post back here when I have a solid answer.

 

I still haven't tried the sewage loop thing yet, but I plan on giving that a try as well and will post about it here as well later.

I bought an eguide from prima guides yesterday and it said if you put a water tower next to a "river" you wont run out of water.

 

I tried to test this but nearly all the cities that i came across with "rivers" or bodies of water next to them have huge water tables.

 

I usually play for about a year or 2 before giving up on the region and i have came across this problem exactly twice. I usually solve this by claiming another city and buy water from there.

[gmart530 6]

Can someone post a screenshot of a successful pipe/sewage/water pump setup?  The amount of space required is seems excessive.

 

The issue I have with this is that basically, the waterpump + sewage treatment facility, when fully upgraded to max modules (needed for a large city) take of an incredible amount of space.  In a private region maybe this isn't so bad as you can dedicated a city to this, but who really wants to be the "water guy" in a multiplayer region who's wasting a ton of space on what's basically what, 20 'grid units" of civics?

[Rhadamant5186 19]

No Simcity accurately portrayed this system, Though id say 2000/3000 was probably the best. Honestly, they should tweek the water to make it at least possible not to run out of water.

 

They also need to add a reservoir  great work that provides water to every city in the region for a moderate fee and provides a small amount of worker demand.

 

Reservoir Great Work, now there's a brilliant idea. It's silly that you need to basically feed cities with processed grey water for any city over about 50k population, but a Reservoir Great Work would fix this brilliantly! 

[nhgriffith 179]

This thread is getting pretty dumb.

I explained to the OP several methods, and he's still insisting the only two options are

1) Run out of water

2) Dump out raw sewage then pump it with a filtered pump, which he considers an exploit or something.

First off, you claimed that the sewage pumps don't show the water table replenishing under them. They do. If you put a sewage pump in a corner (better yet, a dry corner) by itself and leave that as your only sewage solution and let the simulation run for quite some time, that dry, white area, will turn darker and darker shades of brown. Just as the deeper shades of blue refer to areas of the water table with more water, the deeper shades of brown refer to more quantities of sewage. It hasn't added fresh water to the water table... it's added sewage to the water table.

Second, pumping raw sewage onto the ground then pumping it with a filtered pump is not the only solution. There is a Sewage Treatment Plant. This is the building that you guys want to be called a "Water Reclamation Station" or something. This plant takes sewage and cleans it. Now, I'm not sure 100% exactly how it works, as I haven't plopped it and played with it myself yet (unlike a lot of people around these forums lately who want to talk about things in the game despite the fact that they haven't played it), but given that the sewage outflow pipe shows the water table replenished (with sewage), I can't imagine why the treatment plant wouldn't show the water table being replenished with the treated water.

[gmart530 6]

Also, I found this image: https://imgur.com/zDRKPKj on Ocean's twitter, he responded as saying it's not close enough, here's the convo.

 

https://twitter.com/oceanquigley/status/309704157969920000

[GoldenShadowGS 0]

Actually, I've discovered that sewage treatment plants also put water back into the water table. Clean water, too.

So you should build your water pumps next to your sewage treatment plant. No need for the polution generating sewage drains.