Someday, millions of Americans will be drinking their own urine, says Robert Roy Britt, managing editor of .“

In a recent commentary for the site, Britt said that because of imminent drought in the West, many people will have to rely on treated sewage - containing human waste - for their drinking water. "We now have too many people living in places where we don't have fresh water," Britt said.

As an example, Britt cited the Phoenix area, which gets its drinking water from a remote body of reservoirs, including Lake Mead, which sits more than 230 miles away. He suggested that Phoenix and other cities throughout the Southwest may soon go the way of Orange County, California, which does exactly what he's foretold – it recycles wastewater into tap water.

Orange County takes "highly treated" sewer water and sends it through various filtration and purification processes, until the final product exceeds the standards for most drinking water. The water is then seeped back into the aquifer, where it blends with natural water that eventually makes it to the tap. The treatment takes only about 45 minutes.

The method, called the Groundwater Replenishment System, or GWRS, went online in January 2008 and currently turns 96 million gallons of wastewater into 70 million gallons of recycled water daily. "Some people are already drinking their own pee and don't know it," said Britt, referring to the people of Orange County.