Water Reuse for Sustainability

Water reuse is recycling treated wastewater for beneficial purposes such as agricultural and landscape irrigation, industrial processes, toilet flushing, and replenishing a ground water basin (aka ground water recharge.) Water recycling offers resource and financial savings, but there are concerns that some chemicals, like pharmaceuticals, may remain in treated water.

We have 328 resources (and counting) on Water Reuse in our Documents Database that provide valuable information on this topic. You can search for documents on constructed wetlands for greywater recycling and reuse, a list of common terms used when discussing water reuse, potable reuse to diversify water supplies, and many other useful guides that will help you to provide excellent service to utility customers.

To access the wealth of knowledge on Water Reuse within our database just select "CATEGORY" in the dropdown then choose "Water Reuse." Once you make that selection, a second dropdown will appear where you can choose "HOST," “TYPE,” or “STATE” to narrow the search even further. If you have a specific search term in mind, use the “Keyword Filter” search bar on the right side of the screen.

This is part of our A-Z for Operators series.

Is Water Recycling the Future?

Water recycling could be the answer to one of the country's greatest challenges in the coming years as drought worsens because of climate change.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, if signed into law, could provide $1 billion for water recycling and reuse projects, including funding for large-scale projects to ease dwindling supplies in Western states.

This explainer from Bloomberg Law offers a plain language overview of water recycling, including why direct potable reuse isn't as 'icky' as the public might think. As attention grows on these projects, public education will be a key factor to garner support. A United Nations report from 2017 also touts wastewater as the ultimate untapped resource. 

Featured Video: The Future of Water

Water is a scarce resource for many communities around the globe, and this scarcity is becoming more and more widespread. Our featured video this week from Quartz Media looks out how one locality half a world away has addressed this challenge, and how the rest of us can learn from systems like these where the "future of water" has already arrived.

While this video focuses on a larger metropolitan area, there are some interesting takeaways for smaller systems as well such as:

•  Solutions to water challenges are best solved at the individual and/or community level. 
•  Water reuse is most likely already happening in your community and efforts can be made to change public perceptions. For example, a wastewater pipe enters the Mississippi River every 8 miles - meaning almost every community using the river as a water source is already drinking someone else's wastewater!