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Research Highlights - October 2004Water--the Resource With Many Lives Unlike some of earth’s other natural resources, water has many potential lives. After serving a primary function in urban or agricultural settings, water may be reclaimed, treated to meet a desired degree of purity, and reused for many nonpotable (nondrinking) purposes. These might include the maintenance of golf courses, highway medians, or office parks. Many communities use reclaimed wastewater in utility cooling towers and manufacturing processes, for fire fighting or street cleaning, to irrigate agriculture, or recharge wetlands in times of drought. In 1980, in the absence of national reuse regulations, EPA published the first edition of Guidelines for Water Reuse. While sources of water for reclamation may range from industrial process wastewaters to stormwater runoff, the EPA guidelines focused on the effluent generated by domestic wastewater treatment facilities. In 1992 a second edition was published, doubled in size and updated with new information including an inventory of state regulations and treatment guidelines. This year the book is being updated again. Published and distributed by EPA’s Technology Transfer program, the 2004 Guidelines for Water Reuse include public health issues, state requirements and problems of emerging pathogens and chemicals of concern. But the basic objectives of the document remain the same: to make water managers and resource planners aware of the proven practices of water reclamation. Americans draw about 350 billion gallons of fresh water every day from surface sources (rivers, lakes) and ground sources (aquifers, wells). About 80 percent goes to powering humans and their habitats–that is, to irrigate crops and produce electricity–although most water used for cooling power plants is quickly returned to the environment. Water departments deliver to households and businesses another big gulp of about 13 percent, while industry uses 5 percent and mining about 1 percent. The basic idea behind water reclamation is that many of these needs do not require potable water and should not be draining precious reserves from aquifers. As early as 1958, the United Nations Economic and Social Council recommended that no higher-quality water should be used for any purpose that could tolerate a lower grade water. Americans are beginning to heed the UN’s advice and water reuse is now a large and growing conservation practice. Some 1.7 billion gallons of U.S. wastewater are reused every day, and reclamation continues to grow at an estimated 15 percent per year. Twenty five states have adopted regulations for water reuse and 16 others have guidelines or design standards. Florida is the top user of reclaimed water (about 585 million gallons per day), but California is close behind. Since California has the nation’s largest population and is the largest user of fresh water (about 11 percent of the U.S. total), it’s not surprising that, by 2010, the state plans to double its present water reclamation rate of 525 million gallons of water per day. Other states with major reclamation systems include Texas, Colorado, Nevada (annual rainfall: 4 inches, and the first state to use reclaimed water in 1926), Georgia and Washington. The new EPA Guidelines for Water Reuse offers many case studies from states that use reclaimed water. Technical details will interest water supply professionals; the following sidelights may interest browsers.
The 2004 Guidelines for Water Reuse, compiled by a team of 75 authors and 50 reviewers–all experts in their fields–offers many case studies of successful reuse programs in the U.S. It also devotes a chapter to reuse projects and issues in other countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/pubs/625r04108/625r04108.htm. Contact: Patricia Schultz, Office of Public Affairs, 513-569-7966, or e-mail to: schultz.patricia@epa.gov. New Risk Management Research Publications Gonsoulin, Mary E.. Jason R. Masoner, Mike L. Cook and Thomas E. Short. 2003. “Water Quality Assessment of Lake Texoma Beaches, 1999-2001.” Proceedings of the Okla. Acad. Sci. 83:63-72. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/ Holub, Scott M. and Kate Lajtha. 2004 “The Fate and Retention of Organic and Inorganic 15N-Nitrogen in an Old-Growth Forest in Western Oregon.” Ecosystems, 7(4):368-380. http://www.springerlink.com Risk Management Research Meetings "Pit Lakes 2004" is a conference to exchange scientific information on the characterization, modeling and remediation of pit lakes to be held in Reno, NV, November 16-18. Registration information is available at the conference web site http://www.epa.gov/ttbnrmrl/pitlakes.htm. Or contact Alina Martin, SAIC, at 703-318-4678. The 15th Annual West Coast International Conference on Soils, Sediments and Water of the Association for Environmental Health and Sciences will be held in San Diego, CA, March 14-17, 2005. Abstracts are invited from EPA researchers, as well as EPA-funded researchers from outside the agency, to be presented at a special session on Developments in Bioremediation Strategies for Contaminated Sediments, sponsored by Nationa Risk Management Research Laboratory’s Land remediation and Pollution Control Division. For full information, please go to http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/announce/announce03172004.htm. The Environmental & Water Resource Institute (EWRI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is holding its annual World Water & Environmental Congress in Anchorage, Alaska on May 15-19, 2005. The meeting will be organized around the theme "Impacts of Climate Change," and will include Continuing Education seminars and short courses with opportunities to accumulate professional development hours. The flyer announcing the 2005 World Water & Environment Congress is currently posted on the ASCE web site: http://www.asce.org/conferences/ewri2005. Environmental and water resource professionals are invited to submit sessions or papers. Past Issues
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