Nine projects to be launched by WateReuse Foundation

A project to ensure that the technology used to reclaim wastewater is fit for purpose was one of nine approved by the WateReuse Foundation’s Board of Directors at its meeting on 16 March 2010.

Other projects include a workshop on desalination permitting issues, minimizing the environmental impact of intakes, and techniques to assess the health impacts of using reclaimed water. Requests for proposals should be issued for these projects between June and August 2010.

The Fit for Purpose Water: The Cost of “Over-Treating” Reclaimed and other Water Project (10-01) project aims to help ensure that the the right process and technology is applied to match water quality with its intended use, without expending unnecessary funds, energy, and greenhouse-gas emissions to treat water beyond what is suitable or necessary for the intended application. Using a triple bottom line approach to assess current and emerging policies or practices, the projects aims to reveal the full costs of over- treated water.

The objective of the project for Treatment, Public Health, and Regulatory Issues Associated with Graywater Reuse (10-02) will be to collect pertinent water-quality data on current graywater treatment technologies and determine their reliability (with recommended technology lifetimes identified). The project will also survey existing water quality codes and standards (eg, NSF 350) relating to graywater treatment and use, and use this information to populate a spreadsheet-based database matrix that can be used to track graywater system implementation.

To promote non-project specific communication between the desalination industry and regulators in a non-adversarial setting, the Regulatory Workshop on Critical Issues of Desalination Permitting (10-03) project will create and facilitate a workshop or series of workshops to gain common ground and understanding of what information, data and studies the regulatory community needs to be able to expedite project permitting. The main outcome would be development of a regulator “wish list” to formulate a set of research topics for WateReuse and other research institutions, specifically targeting permitting issues perceived as bottlenecks in the process.

The Improvements to Minimize I&E of Existing Intakes(10-04) project will develop a guidance document that identifies improvements to existing intake technologies in terms of reduction of impingement and/or entrainment (I&E). The recommendations will identify the potential of each technology to reduce I&E through design improvement criteria, cost associated with implementation measures, and comparative benefits to newly developed intake technologies.

Details of all nine projects can be found on the WateReuse website