Latest news with #NoahGarrison
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The fix for parched Western states: recycled toilet water
If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you — but probably not in the way you're thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add back in. If it didn't, that purified water would imperil you by sucking those minerals out of your body as it moves through your internal plumbing. So if it's perfectly safe to consume recycled toilet water, why aren't Americans living in parched Western states drinking more of it? A new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Natural Resources Defense Council finds that seven western states that rely on the Colorado River are on average recycling just a quarter of their water, even as they fight each other and Indigenous tribes for access to the river amid worsening droughts. Populations are also booming in the Southwest, meaning there's less water for more people. The report finds that states are recycling wildly different proportions of their water. On the high end, Nevada reuses 85 percent, followed by Arizona at 52 percent. But other states lag far behind, including California (22 percent) and New Mexico (18 percent), with Colorado and Wyoming at less than 4 percent and Utah recycling next to nothing. 'Overall, we are not doing nearly enough to develop wastewater recycling in the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Basin,' said Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA and co-author of the report. 'We're going to have a 2 million to 4 million acre foot per year shortage in the amount of water that we've promised to be delivered from the Colorado River.' (An acre foot is what it would take to cover an acre of land in a foot of water, equal to 326,000 gallons.) The report found that if the states other than high-achieving Nevada and Arizona increased their wastewater reuse to 50 percent, they'd boost water availability by 1.3 million acre feet every year. Experts think that it's not a question of whether states need to reuse more toilet water, but how quickly they can build the infrastructure as droughts worsen and populations swell. At the same time, states need to redouble efforts to reduce their demand for water, experts say. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, for example, provides cash rebates for homeowners to replace their water-demanding lawns with natural landscaping, stocking them with native plants that flourish without sprinklers. Between conserving water and recycling more of it, western states have to renegotiate their relationship with the increasingly precious resource. 'It's unbelievable to me that people don't recognize that the answer is: You're not going to get more water,' said John Helly, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who wasn't involved in the report. 'We've lulled ourselves into this sense of complacency about the criticality of water, and it's just starting to dawn on people that this is a serious problem.' Yet the report notes that states vary significantly in their development and regulation of water recycling. For one, they treat wastewater to varying levels of purity. To get it ultra-pure for drinking, human waste and other solids are removed before the water is treated with ozone to kill bacteria and viruses. Next the water is forced through fine membranes to catch other particles. A facility then hits the liquid with UV light, killing off any microbes that might remain, and adds back those missing minerals. That process is expensive, however, as building a wastewater treatment facility itself is costly, and it takes a lot of electricity to pump the water hard enough to get it through the filters. Alternatively, some water agencies will treat wastewater and pump the liquid underground into aquifers, where the earth filters it further. To use the water for golf courses and non-edible crops, they treat wastewater less extensively. Read Next A California town's wastewater is helping it battle drought Naoki Nitta Absent guidance from the federal government, every state goes about this differently, with their own regulations for how clean water needs to be for potable or nonpotable use. Nevada, which receives an average of just 10 inches of rainfall a year, has an environmental division that issues permits for water reuse and oversees quality standards, along with a state fund that bankrolls projects. 'It is a costly enterprise, and we really do need to see states and the federal government developing new funding streams or revenue streams in order to develop wastewater treatment,' Garrison said. 'This is a readily available, permanent supply of water.' Wastewater recycling can happen at a much smaller scale, too. A company called Epic Cleantec, based in San Francisco, makes a miniature treatment facility that fits inside high-rises. It pumps recycled water back into the units for non-potable use, like filling toilets. While it takes many years to build a large treatment facility, these smaller systems come online in a matter of months, and can reuse up to 95 percent of a building's water. Epic Cleantec says its systems and municipal plants can work in tandem as a sort of distributed network of wastewater recycling. 'In the same way that we do with energy, where it's not just on-site, rooftop solar and large energy plants, it's both of them together creating a more resilient system,' said Aaron Tartakovsky, Epic Cleantec's CEO and cofounder. 'To use a water pun, I think there's a lot of untapped potential here.' This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The fix for parched Western states: recycled toilet water on Apr 11, 2025.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Arizona recycles more water than most Colorado River states, study finds
Arizona is growing fast, but its water supplies are not, so to stretch every drop, cities capture and use water even after it runs down sink and shower drains. The result: Arizonans reuse about half of all their wastewater, the second-highest rate of any Colorado River basin state, according to a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles. And if all seven basin states reused as much of their wastewater as Arizona does, the researchers found that the states could recycle a combined 1.3 million acre-feet of water each year, roughly 10% of the Colorado River's average annual flow. The number doesn't account for any potential losses from reusing water that would otherwise flow back to the river, though the authors expect that number to be small. Across the seven states, 27% of wastewater is recycled, according to researchers at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Natural Resources Defense Council. 'Even recycling 40% of our wastewater could make a dramatic difference, and we have two states already above 50% showing this is an entirely feasible solution,' said author Noah Garrison, a water researcher at the institute. Recycled wastewater in Arizona irrigates golf courses and lawns, recharges aquifers and supplies the cooling systems at the Palo Verde Generating Station, the nuclear power plant that provides 27% of the power generated in the state. In total, reuse adds about 264,000 acre-feet of water to the state's supplies each year, based on 2022 data. Reclaimed water represents around 5% of the state's overall water budget, according to a statement by the Arizona Department of Water Resources. 'Arizona has a strong history of water management and conservation success. Water reuse is becoming an increasingly important part of the state's overall water portfolio,' a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water Reuse said in a statement. Measuring water use: How much water flows down the Colorado River? The right answer is more important than ever The only Colorado River basin state that recycles more of its wastewater is Nevada, with a reuse rate of 85%. Las Vegas's overwhelming reliance on the Colorado River, combined with its location near Lake Mead, makes wastewater recycling more feasible there, according to Garrison and study co-author Mark Gold. Returning water to Lake Mead allows Nevada to stretch its small share of the river farther. California followed Nevada with a 22% reuse rate, followed by New Mexico (18%) and the three other states in the Upper Colorado Basin (Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming), all with rates below 4%. Garrison, Gold and their coauthors called hundreds of water districts in several states to find the numbers. Each state's rate is statewide, meaning they include some facilities that don't receive water from the Colorado River, but most of the largest cities in all seven states are connected to the river system in some way. The study does not include one of Arizona's largest uses for its wastewater, the Tres Rios Wetlands, in its percentage. At Tres Rios, Phoenix rehabilitated wetlands that naturally filter effluent from its 91st Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant. While an innovative project, the authors only included reused water that offsets water demand by sending wastewater straight to a human use (Tres Rios water ultimately flows back into the Salt River drainage). 'Tres Rios is such an amazing project, a nature-based solution,' Gold said in an interview. 'We're not saying that the use of recycled water for environmental purposes isn't there, but we're really trying to focus on what has an impact on water supply.' The study included one of Arizona's largest uses for recycled wastewater, the cooling systems at the Palo Verde nuclear plant. Palo Verde uses a quarter of Arizona's recycled wastewater each year for its cooling systems. Though the authors included the power plant in their reuse percentage, they also questioned the real benefits of such water-intensive energy production in Arizona. 'The recycled water consumed as cooling water by the Palo Verde plant also raises significant questions as to the sustainability of this use,' the study reads. Essential environment news: Sign up for The Republic's AZ Climate newsletter, delivered to you every Tuesday Arizona could see even more water-recycling projects soon. The authors note that Phoenix is working on water reuse projects at its 91st Avenue and Cave Creek wastewater facilities and that Palo Verde is exploring the possibility of a dry cooling system. Arizona also approved rules for advanced wastewater purification for potable reuse in March, a major step in advancing wastewater recycling in the state. Arizona Public Service, the primary stakeholder in Palo Verde, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While Arizona received high marks for its wastewater recycling, the authors said the state does not have easily accessible data on its wastewater management. The authors had to directly call wastewater treatment facilities for much of their Arizona data. At some of those facilities, operators couldn't quantify where much of their reused water went, instead relying on anecdotes, according to the authors. The Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality confirmed in a joint statement that they do not collect comprehensive data on the volume of the state's wastewater reuse, pointing to individual utilities as a direct source for that information. An ADEQ spokesperson noted that quantifying reuse is a challenging task, especially given that water can be reused multiple times. Arizona is not alone in having a tough information landscape around wastewater reuse. California is the only state in the basin with a compiled information portal on the subject, and the authors said they struggled to find information in other states as well. With better data and more encouragement from the federal government, the authors hope that wastewater recycling can make a serious dent in shortages on the Colorado River. 'We absolutely need to be developing these additional sources of water and investing in them now,' Garrison said. Austin Corona covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to Environmental coverage on and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Sign up for AZ Climate, our weekly environment newsletter, and follow The Republic environmental reporting team at and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona reuses half of its wastewater, more than other western states
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
As Colorado River declines, states are failing to tap an alternate resource
Five out of seven Colorado River basin states are failing to maximize a critical resource that could help alleviate the region's longstanding water crisis, a new report found. Across all the states, just 26 percent of treated municipal wastewater is being reused, according to the research, released by the University of California Los Angeles, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Arizona and Nevada, which both recycle more than half of their wastewater, stand out among the other five — California, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — all of which reuse less than a quarter of their wastewater, the report determined. 'We're facing a hotter, drier future and we need to pursue water recycling aggressively if we're going to ensure a sustainable, resilient water supply for the Colorado Basin,' co-author Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said in a statement. 'Even recycling 40% of our wastewater could make a dramatic difference, and we have two states already above 50% showing this is an entirely feasible solution,' Garrison added. The 1,450-mile Colorado River provides drinking water and agricultural irrigation to about 40 million people across seven U.S. states, 30 tribal nations and two states in Mexico. As the West becomes increasingly dry and a growing population consumes more water, this key transboundary artery is dwindling. On the domestic level, the seven U.S. basin states are currently negotiating an update to the Colorado River's operational guidelines, which are set to expire at the end of 2026. The UCLA-led research team drew their conclusions by analyzing 2022 data from publicly owned treatment works, which process more than 1 million gallons of wastewater daily across the states. They found that Nevada reused 85 percent of its treated wastewater, followed by Arizona at 52 percent. California, which is the region's biggest wastewater producer, recycled only 22 percent, despite setting ambitious water recycling goals in 2009 and boasting stringent regulations on the subject. Nonetheless, California fared much better than the remaining states, with New Mexico reusing just 18 percent, Colorado 3.6 percent, Wyoming 3.3 percent and Utah less than 1 percent, according to the study. 'This is a striking divide,' co-author author Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. 'The river is over-allocated by up to 4-million-acre feet a year, and state reductions can be less difficult,' Gold added. For reference, the basin states have the collective right to 15 million acre-feet per year, while Mexico receives a 1.5-million-acre-foot allocation. The average U.S. household consumes about half an acre-foot of water annually. In addition to identifying this dearth in water reuse, the researchers also flagged an apparent absence of basic monitoring as to how much recycling is actually occurring — creating a situation that they described as a 'data desert.' To quantify the amount of reuse that was occurring, the scientists said they had to in some cases call specific treatment plants to get answers. This absence of consistent reporting systems, they explained, speaks to other systemic issues: a situation in which prolonged drought, climate change, overuse and obsolete infrastructure have come together to create a regional crisis. The authors also criticized the lack of federal standards for wastewater recycling, while noting that just a handful of states track where their treated water goes and how much of it is reused. 'There is tremendous opportunity to expand recycled water use, but the lack of adequate data is a significant barrier for increasing wastewater reuse,' Garrison said. Going forward, the researchers suggested concrete policy recommendations for both state and federal governments. They advised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop model ordinances for states and work with them to create standardized reporting protocols and reuse targets. Also crucial, they added, would be the expansion of funding mechanisms, including grants from the Bureau of Reclamation. At the state level, the authors recommended assessing the effectiveness of individual state programs while also conducting comparisons between neighbors. Each state, they concluded, should establish its own numeric targets, timelines and interim goals, while working with local reclamation agencies. If the Colorado River basin states raised their water recycling rates to just 40 percent, they could gain nearly 900,000 acre-feet of new water each year, or enough to quench the thirst of almost 2 million households, according to the report. Although opportunities exist to ramp up the region's water recycling efforts substantially, the researchers stressed that doing so 'will require a strong commitment from all participants.' 'Water reuse won't solve the Colorado River crisis alone,' Garrison said. 'But it's one of the few solutions available today that can be rapidly scaled and sustained over the long term,' he added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
02-04-2025
- General
- The Hill
As Colorado River declines, states are failing to tap an alternate resource
Five out of seven Colorado River basin states are failing to maximize a critical resource that could help alleviate the region's longstanding water crisis, a new report found. Across all the states, just 26 percent of treated municipal wastewater is being reused, according to the research, released by the University of California Los Angeles, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Arizona and Nevada, which both recycle more than half of their wastewater, stand out among the other five — California, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — all of which reuse less than a quarter of their wastewater, the report determined. 'We're facing a hotter, drier future and we need to pursue water recycling aggressively if we're going to ensure a sustainable, resilient water supply for the Colorado Basin,' co-author Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said in a statement. 'Even recycling 40% of our wastewater could make a dramatic difference, and we have two states already above 50% showing this is an entirely feasible solution,' Garrison added. The 1,450-mile Colorado River provides drinking water and agricultural irrigation to about 40 million people across seven U.S. states, 30 tribal nations and two states in Mexico. As the West becomes increasingly dry and a growing population consumes more water, this key transboundary artery is dwindling. On the domestic level, the seven U.S. basin states are currently negotiating an update to the Colorado River's operational guidelines, which are set to expire at the end of 2026. The UCLA-led research team drew their conclusions by analyzing 2022 data from publicly owned treatment works, which process more than 1 million gallons of wastewater daily across the states. They found that Nevada reused 85 percent of its treated wastewater, followed by Arizona at 52 percent. California, which is the region's biggest wastewater producer, recycled only 22 percent, despite setting ambitious water recycling goals in 2009 and boasting stringent regulations on the subject. Nonetheless, California fared much better than the remaining states, with New Mexico reusing just 18 percent, Colorado 3.6 percent, Wyoming 3.3 percent and Utah less than 1 percent, according to the study. 'This is a striking divide,' co-author author Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. 'The river is over-allocated by up to 4-million-acre feet a year, and state reductions can be less difficult,' Gold added. For reference, the basin states have the collective right to 15 million acre-feet per year, while Mexico receives a 1.5-million-acre-foot allocation. The average U.S. household consumes about half an acre-foot of water annually. In addition to identifying this dearth in water reuse, the researchers also flagged an apparent absence of basic monitoring as to how much recycling is actually occurring — creating a situation that they described as a 'data desert.' To quantify the amount of reuse that was occurring, the scientists said they had to in some cases call specific treatment plants to get answers. This absence of consistent reporting systems, they explained, speaks to other systemic issues: a situation in which prolonged drought, climate change, overuse and obsolete infrastructure have come together to create a regional crisis. The authors also criticized the lack of federal standards for wastewater recycling, while noting that just a handful of states track where their treated water goes and how much of it is reused. 'There is tremendous opportunity to expand recycled water use, but the lack of adequate data is a significant barrier for increasing wastewater reuse,' Garrison said. Going forward, the researchers suggested concrete policy recommendations for both state and federal governments. They advised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop model ordinances for states and work with them to create standardized reporting protocols and reuse targets. Also crucial, they added, would be the expansion of funding mechanisms, including grants from the Bureau of Reclamation. At the state level, the authors recommended assessing the effectiveness of individual state programs while also conducting comparisons between neighbors. Each state, they concluded, should establish its own numeric targets, timelines and interim goals, while working with local reclamation agencies. If the Colorado River basin states raised their water recycling rates to just 40 percent, they could gain nearly 900,000 acre-feet of new water each year, or enough to quench the thirst of almost 2 million households, according to the report. Although opportunities exist to ramp up the region's water recycling efforts substantially, the researchers stressed that doing so 'will require a strong commitment from all participants.' 'Water reuse won't solve the Colorado River crisis alone,' Garrison said. 'But it's one of the few solutions available today that can be rapidly scaled and sustained over the long term,' he added.
