WASHINGTON, May 6 (UPI) -- The new water reclamation facility that began operating this week at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico presents just one example of how such efforts are increasing nationwide, though the technology's full potential remains untapped, experts told United Press International.
Only a "tiny fraction" of the wastewater effluent produced every day in the United States is reclaimed, said G. Wade Miller, executive director of the WateReuse Association in Alexandria, Va.
Water reclamation removes or reduces organic matter, solids, nutrients, disease-causing organisms and other pollutants from wastewater before it is discharged into a river, stream or other body of water.
Miller estimated only about 2.6 billion gallons of wastewater are reclaimed per day out of the 38 billion gallons produced in the United States, even though treated wastewater is a good alternative to potable water in many applications -- including industrial uses, edible and non-edible crop irrigation, and watering of landscaping and golf courses.
The Sanitary Effluent Reclamation Facility, the laboratory said in a news release, will use treated wastewater in cooling towers to remove heat from equipment and computers, saving 21 million gallons of freshwater a year that normally would be drawn from aquifers.
Before Los Alamos could undertake such a project, however, it first had to find a way to remove dissolved silica from the effluent, because the mineral would lower the cooling towers' efficiency, lab spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas said.
"Living in the desert we all recognize ... how important water is," DeLucas told UPI. "We thought there must be a way to remove silica from the water."
The solution, it turned out, was technology typically used in water-desalination plants, she said.
DeLucas said the lab plans to expand the facility to save an additional 20 million gallons of water a year, or about 5 percent of its total consumption. At least one nearby municipality has taken notice of the technological breakthrough.
"I got a call from a local community (that) is also having water problems," she said, "and they would like to know how to get hold of the (people) who built the plant so they could have a similar plant installed."
Miller said more areas of the country are re-using water, but reclaimed water remains an underutilized resource.
"Water re-use is growing rapidly," he said. "About 90 percent of the re-use in the United States is in California, Florida, Texas and Arizona (while) Nevada, Colorado, Washington, and Virginia and Hawaii are coming on strong."
Miller said using reclaimed water in industrial applications is not only environmentally responsible, but also cost effective. For example, reclaimed effluent supplied by the Hampton Roads, Va., sanitation district to a refinery in Yorktown, Va., cost the refinery much less than it had been paying for potable water.
"It makes more sense to use reclaimed water in industrial applications to offset the demand in potable supplies," he said. "That's happening in a number of places around the country."
For the past 10 years, oil refineries near Los Angeles International Airport have used reclaimed water produced to their specifications from a local water-reclamation facility, Miller said.
"It's a way to reduce the demand on very scarce potable water supplies in the Los Angeles area," he said, adding much of the electric-power industry remains ripe for reclaimed water use.
Many areas in Florida, such as St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, already have dual-use plumbing, where people can recycle household wastewater to irrigate their lawns.
Reclaimed water also can be used in high-rise buildings, Miller said. In Irvine, Calif., for example, 15 high-rise buildings installed dual-use plumbing that recycles water from urinals -- and it can be used to recharge groundwater aquifers.
Groundwater supply is a particular concern in areas such as Southern California, which is scrambling to obtain new water sources as its population grows and its allotted draw from the Colorado River diminishes, said Mike Markus, assistant general manager of the Orange County Water District. Markus's district has partnered with the Orange County sanitation district on a project to recharge the county's groundwater aquifer.
The project, Markus said, not only would add water to the aquifer, but the county's sanitation district also would not have to build a new ocean outfall pipe to discharge treated wastewater.
"Right now, in Southern California, the cost of imported water is about $500 per acre-foot," Markus said. "The project water will cost $476 an acre-foot, so we're actually a little less expensive than imported water, and the beauty of the project is that it provides for us a new sustainable water supply."
With sustainable water sources becoming harder to come by, particularly in arid areas like California, it will be up to local governments and organizations to come up with solutions, he said.
"Local agencies are being looked at more to develop their water supplies and so this is a major step toward that -- what we're doing here in Orange County," Markus said.
Asked what needs to happen to increase U.S. water reclamation, Miller said: "The federal government needs to step up and play a leadership role," he said. "Right now there's no national water policy and there's no national water policy on water use and desalination, which are good alternative sources of supply. We need some federal leadership in that area and we need some federal funding."
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Dar Haddix is UPI's Deputy Business Editor. E-mail: [email protected]
