Each day, American municipalities discharge enough treated wastewater
into natural sources to fill Lake Champlain within six months. Growing
pressure on water supplies and calls
for updating the ancient subterranean piping infrastructure have
brought new scrutiny to this step in the treatment process, which is
labeled wasteful and unnecessary by a spectrum of voices.
“As the
world enters the 21st century, the human community finds itself
searching for new paradigms for water supply and management,” says a report released this month by the Water Science and Technology Board
of the National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of
Sciences. The report investigates the potential for establishing a more
resilient national water supply through the direct recycling of
municipal wastewater.
“Law and practice have always been that
water goes back into a river or into groundwater or the ocean before it
returns for further treatment,” said Brent Haddad, founder and director
of the Center for Integrated Water Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the committee
that wrote the report. The critical question, he said, is “whether that
natural stage of treatment is actually an efficient stage of
treatment.”
Sixteen experts representing industry, government, and research fields in the social sciences and hard sciences collaborated over three years to produce the study, examining everything from pathogenic risks to public attitudes about reuse.
Sixteen experts representing industry, government, and research fields in the social sciences and hard sciences collaborated over three years to produce the study, examining everything from pathogenic risks to public attitudes about reuse.
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