Water reuse systems are becoming more common because of population growth, climate change, aging infrastructure, and drought conditions. This is reducing demand on aquifers and groundwater, thereby extending the use of such water supplies, say a government official and members of a trade association focused on water reuse.

“By using wastewater for different potable and nonpotable purposes, it decreases demand for extraction of groundwater, and that is extending available water supplies in the same way as through different conservation metrics,” Justin Mattingly, an official with the EPA’s water reuse program, told The Driller. “The difference here is instead of just conserving water, the water is just being used again,” he said.

Using reclaimed water for nonpotable uses helps preserve groundwater and aquifer resources and is an up-and-coming practice, said Allison Deines, the chief water quality officer for AlexRenew, the wastewater treatment authority for Alexandria and Fairfax County, VA.

AlexRenew produces about two million gallons a day of reclaimed water that can be reused in our community for nonpotable uses such as for irrigation, cleaning, and in fountains, said Deines, who added that doing so “offsets a lot of our processed water.”

Because water reuse helps preserve groundwater and aquifer resources, “water reuse can and should be one of the key components to addressing these challenges,” said Amanda Waters, the general manager for AlexRenew, who is a trustee of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the WateReuse Association, which is a dedicated to the practice of reusing water. Waters spoke at the Mid-Atlantic Chapter’s conference on water recycling in the Washington, D.C. region held July 16, 2024. “So our section is committed to sharing and to expanding upon these achievements and supporting water reuse projects in the region through advocacy, knowledge, sharing, and public education,” she said.

The growth of water-reuse programs and their funding needs is reflected in the latest Clean Watersheds Needs Survey (CWNS), which is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) survey that provides Congress with data to help legislators prioritize funding decisions for water infrastructure.

Delivered to Congress on May 13, 2024, the latest CWNS polled more than 17,500 publicly owned treatment providers across all U.S. states and territories about their financial needs to address existing and anticipated water quality problems. It found that compared to survey data collected in 2012, U.S. storm-water management needs increased $115.3 billion sector-wide, which is a spending increase of 385 percent.

While water-reuse systems are growing, they need to prosper, according to members of the WateReuse Association. The success of a new centralized water-reuse system or the expansion of an existing system depends on finding customers who contract for recycled water.

To be successful, reuse systems need to be effective for their clients, and to be effective requires becoming knowledgeable about a potential customer, according to Michael McGrath, the director of the Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD) of Fairfax County, VA. McGrath, who is also a member of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter and who was on the “Centralized Municipal Water Recycling Panel” at the Mid-Atlantic chapter’s conference, said there is a lot of information about a customer that reuse systems need to become aware of, as well as “a lot of trying to find interest intersections.”

Reuse systems need “to understand what was important for the customer, what their needs are,” said McGrath, who stressed that while the WTD only has three customers, “it is producing over a million gallons of reused water every day and distributing” that water to customers that include waste to energy facility where the WTD’s water is used for cooling purposes; a golf course operated by the Fairfax County Park Authority; and little League fields neighboring the WTD’s wastewater treatment plant. “These three customers, though, are really key to the implementation of the system,” he said.

Pamela Kenel, executive director of planning and water resources at Loudoun, (VA.) Water, whose system supplies water for home use, irrigation, and data centers to cool computers, said, “We had a couple of customers in mind” during planning for Loudoun Water. “We were looking at irrigation customers and so we had connected with those folks early on, but the data centers were legacy potable water customers. They predated the reclaimed water system, so they saw the opportunity (of using recycled water).” The data centers “influenced our business in terms of creating the bigger system that we now have because that particular industry needs water for cooling,” she said.

In addition, the technology that is the basis of the data industry is evolving rapidly, so cooling technology also has to evolve, according to Kenel. For example, when America On Line started, systems were air-cooled, now systems are water-cooled, she said, adding, that “is how that area has grown up there.”

Educating a potential customer on water reuse is a primary strategy used by Watek Engineering Corp., which provides solutions for wastewater, water reuse, and contaminant removal, said Zoreh Movahed, senior engineer for Watek. “All our customers needed to recognize the importance of what they’re putting down the drain in terms of protection of source water,” said Movahed, who worked on a water reuse project for West Minister, PA. “The city (West Minister) had already been developing best practices to inform industrial and commercial users, as well as their regular residents, to recognize that whatever they’re dumping down their toilets or drains is going to end up as a source at the purification facility,” she said. “We had to let our customers know this is happening and that they are a very important key player in this equation for our source water to become their own drinking water.”

Ben Movahed, Watek’s president, added that it is also important to make government officials and lawmakers aware of the value provided by water reuse projects. That value “is simple,” he said. For every gallon (of water) that you recycle and reuse, you’re taking one gallon less from the aquifer.”

In addition to customers, other revenue streams can help sustain a water-reuse system, according to Brian Steglitz, executive director of the Upper Occoquan Service Authority (UOSA) located in Virginia, where the UOSA provides recycled water to nearly two million Virginia residents.

Among the additional revenue streams includes biogas that UOSA burns to generate over a megawatt of power, about a quarter of which is used to power the facility, Steglitz said. UOSA also collects gasses from drying solids, and uses them for Ph adjustment, and for land application products such as fertilizer and soil amendments, Steglitz said. Those are some “pretty innovative ways” used by UOSA “to create a sustainable treatment facility,” he said.