Let's have this discussion, with the understanding that my experiences in wastewater treatment do not jive with many of the facts listed in this article.

1) I've never seen any municipality oppose water treatment in theory. They're big, beautiful public works projects that are always paid for via municipal bonds. They're sold as jobs projects and think of the children. Infrastructure is an easy sell at the local level because they allow job creation through borrowing without costing much if anything to the local elected officials.

2) I've never seen any locality agree to water treatment in practice. NIMBYism rules the roost in water treatment of any kind because it's (A) loud (B) smelly (C) is most effective at the water table which means treatment plants are usually on the shoreline, where property values are the highest.

3) Localization is going to be even trickier considering water districts have nothing to do with any other boundaries most of the time, and water boards make their money by buying and selling water rights and the like from each other. "Localization" pretty much means the annihilation and reset of an entire industry because the places with lots of water are seldom the places with a need for lots of water.

But yes. fuck lawns. And fuck the laws against drilling wells, installing cisterns, rainwater catchment and all the rest. It's an industry in dire need of annihilation, but that doesn't mean it'll happen any faster.