Denver Water has asked the state for permission to expand the allowed uses of reclaimed water. The proposal is in response to the recently approved Water Management Plan for the City of Denver. The plan calls for at least doubling the amount of recycled water that Denver Water provides by 2020. This would mean increasing the current 2.6 billion gallons a year to more than 5 billion gallons.[1] “This is where the world is going,” said Denver Water Chief Jim Lochhead to the Denver Post. “Utilities are exploring this concept of ‘one water’, the right water quality for the right […]

The state of Florida reclaims and reuses more wastewater for non-potable demands than any other state in the nation. While Florida’s west coast has embraced the use of reclaimed wastewater,  the southern part of the state has struggled to implement reuse projects. This is likely to change, however, due to a law that requires counties that dump wastewater offshore to reuse a minimum of 60 percent of their wastewater by 2025.[1] In 2016, Florida’s west coast and inland farming counties reused close to 100 percent of their wastewater, primarily for irrigation purposes. In South Florida, on the other hand (Miami-Dade, […]

Beginning in December 2017, the City of Modesto will begin selling highly treated wastewater to struggling farmers in an effort to curb reliance on groundwater. Once the project is up and running, it will be California’s largest wastewater-to-agriculture reuse project, marking the first time recycled water flows through a federally owned canal. According to the News Deeply, the North Valley Regional Recycled Water Program “will collect tertiary-treated sewage from the cities of Modesto, Turlock, and Ceres and transport it through new pipelines into the Delta Mendota Canal, owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.”[1] Costing over $90 million, the treated […]

According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the city is promoting the concept of reuse through a collaborative “demonstration project to explore what it would take and how much it would cost to treat a portion of the city’s wastewater stream to the higher standard drinking water, instead of discharging it to the Halifax River.”[1] In an interview with the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Hardy Smith, Daytona’s government relations administrator reminded readers why the City is looking at reuse. “Daytona Beach is about capped out on the amount of water it’s allowed to withdraw from city wells under the permit from the […]

As Hawaii continues to struggle with the pressures of climate change, water scarcity, and salt-water intrusion, the creation of a resilient water supply has become paramount. In an effort to establish a sustainable water source, the Hawaii state legislature passed a bill mandating all new buildings be equipped with a gray water reuse system.  [1] [3] Utilizing gray water as an effective means to offset potable water use is not a new idea in the Aloha State. Throughout the island residents have used primitive methods of gray water recycling for generations, as Sen. Clarence Nishihara, co-founder of the bill described to […]