HOW I ALMOST MADE MILLIONS (AND NEARLY SAVED AMERICA FROM THE DROUGHT)

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I knew that saving a couple of billion gallons of water a day wouldn't be an easy task, but the present world water shortage—compounded by the problems of disposal, pollution, and humankind's generally wasteful habits—caused me to set my brilliant mind to work. Surely, I thought, I could find a solution, save America . . . and (ahem!) maybe make a few bucks in the bargain!

I must have flushed my toilet—a device that I know is a legendary waterwaster—a hundred times in one day while researching the problem. My poor well gave a hollow echo as it dried up from overuse . . . and just as the last droplets dribbled slowly into the tank, my own sudden water shortage provided inspiration. I had the answer! My idea was, in fact, so simple that I wondered why no one had ever thought of it before. Since only about a third of a tank is necessary to flush away liquid waste efficiently, why do modern commodes use a whole tankful of water to do so? What's needed, I figured, is a two-way toilet flush valve: Turn it one way for solid waste and the opposite way for liquid waste!

In order to get a rough notion of the worth of such a device, I contacted the Philadelphia Water Department, which informed me that it costs almost $500 to purify and then dispose of one million gallons of "used" water. By my own estimate, I calculated that each American flushes five times a day: twice for solid wastes and three times for liquids. (I didn't even count those folks who use five gallons of pure water to get rid of cigarette butts, and I left out about 25 million little children . . . as well as people with outhouses and an assortment of other nonflushers.)

On the basis of those figures, I quickly recognized that a two-way valve could save ten gallons per person daily. Then, by multiplying that amount by an estimated 200 million people in the U.S. who use conventional commodes, I concluded that two billion gallons of pure drinking water per day wouldn't need to be taken from our streams and wells . . . wouldn't have to be treated with chemicals . . . and wouldn't eventually be dumped into our rivers. Furthermore, at an average processing cost of $500 per million gallons, the dollars saved each day would total a nice round million . . . or $365 million a year. If I got only a 5% royalty on the money saved by my invention, I'd be in the megabucks, earning over $18 million a year.

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