Water Groups Release Guidance on Wastewater Reuse

Water Groups Release Guidance on Wastewater Reuse

By Paul Shukovsky
Sept. 15 — Faced with burgeoning demand and stressed supplies, four major water resource organizations released a framework document on how municipalities can convert wastewater to drinking water.
The “Framework for Direct Potable Reuse,” unveiled Sept. 14 at the annual WateReuse Symposium in Seattle, is intended to provide comprehensive guidance to policy makers and water professionals on implementing direct potable reuse (DPR) of wastewater, including regulatory, technological and public outreach considerations.
With interest growing in introducing highly treated wastewater into community water supplies, the organizations—WateReuse, American Water Works Association, Water Environment Federation and National Water Research Institute—acted to fill what they see as the need for authoritative information and guidance not being addressed by government.
The framework seeks to provide regulatory guidance on potential public health risks and ways to mitigate them, elements of the permitting process, and operator training and certification.
It includes a review of technological capabilities to produce advanced treated water protective of health; a range of operational, maintenance, water quality and source control programs; the use of multiple treatment barriers; and blending advanced treated water with other water sources.
Also addressed in the guidance is the importance of engaging interested parties and the public; DPR specific outreach challenges and goals and planning tools, materials and support for an effective DPR outreach program.
The organizations convened an expert panel of engineers to guide the work. One of them, Andrew Salveson of Carollo Engineers Inc., told a packed conference hall of colleagues the framework “is a soup to nuts” compendium of how to implement DPR or indirect potable reuse in which treated wastewater is first introduced into ground or surface water before entering the drinking water supply.
‘Confluence of Interest.’
“In my view it provides substantial guidance on what is necessary, whether it is IPR or DPR,” Salveson said. “It is in my view a very valuable tool that the industry can pick up and carry forward whether you are trying to implement regulations in a state that doesn't have them or you are looking to start running through a project. It gives you the cornerstone of what you need.”
The framework said that even as interest in potable reuse has grown along with the need for guidelines to implement DPR, “national guidance or regulations are not expected in the near term.”
That void and “a confluence of interest,” said Jeff Mosher of NWRI, is “why we took this on. There was a gap in the knowledge; there wasn't a compilation of this information. There were also not specific regulations for this.”
After reviewing the framework's structure, Salveson said he felt “that we are ready to move ahead with DPR. We think that there is continued work that is necessary, not from a health-based standard but from a perception and implementation-based standard.”
The Environmental Protection Agency's Phil Oshida, deputy director of standards and risk management in the Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, said the framework “allows us to look at what kind of guidance might we produce to help our co-regulators: basically the state agencies.”
EPA Undecided
“We'll look at the technical aspects; we'll look at the regulatory aspects; we need to look at some of the legal aspects,” Oshida said. He posed the as-yet unanswered question: “What are the interactions between the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act?” For example, suppose you've got a five-foot pipe with a mix of advanced treated waste water and the rest from a river: What is it from a statutory perspective?
“There are questions this document will help us more clearly ask so that hopefully we can get some clarity on what needs to be explained to our co-regulators and to you,” Oshida said.
Oshida made clear that the decision to promulgate a regulation has not been reached.
“When you sit in this room—IPR, DPR—it's like a rally,” he said. “But there are people out there that don't want it to happen, just like in any regulation. So it's a matter of getting the sound science to support the conclusions that you are making to make a determination first if you are going to do a regulation; then if you decide to do a regulation that you have even better science to be able to implement that regulation.”
Oshida speculated about possible future regulations or guidelines.
“I think it is going to be very local because I don't think at the national level we have the authority” to mandate particular treatment levels, he said.
“It's going to probably be some guidelines; it's going to be local. But we're not even there yet. We're not even to the point where we think we are going to do a regulation. Right now we are using this document to think about what kind of guidance might we provide to our co-regulators using this as a jumping off point,” Oshida said.
Dealing with ‘Yuck’ Factor
Jim Fiedler, chief operating officer of the Santa Clara Valley Water District in California, said the framework “is really foundational to help us better understand those issues, certainly how to communicate those to our electeds and also to reassure our public. We're confident with this type of research—that we can give the confidence to our public, to the elected officials, that this is a reliable, safe, local, sustainable water supply.”
“You want to be able to drink the water,” Fiedler said. “So we're having an open house in October. And yes, we are going to let people drink the water from our van purification facility and really bring it all the way home to them and realize this is water that is safe enough for not only our electeds to drink, but also for the regular public.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Shukovsky in Seattle at pshukovsky@bna.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Pearl at lpearl@bna.com
For More Information
Text of the “Framework for Direct Potable Reuse” is available at http://src.bna.com/ia.