How the West Could Turn a Trickle of Water Into an Endless Supply

Why this story matters: While it may not dominate the 24-hour news cycle, the development highlighted in this article represents a significant shift toward a better future, proving that constructive action is consistently gaining ground behind the scenes.

Quick summary: This story highlights recent developments related to technology, showing how constructive action can lead to meaningful results.

Hotter, drier weather, poor planning and a ballooning population are putting enormous pressure on the American West’s water supply. So, to get more out of every drop, some cities and counties are beginning to recycle their water — collecting what goes down the drain, removing the icky stuff and then sending it back into the system to use again, one way or another.

A few of those places are getting so good at this that they’ve become global leaders in water recycling. To learn more about how they do it, RTBC Founder David Byrne spoke with Mark Gold, former director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council, about what it takes to make water something we can use again and again. —RTBC Editorial Team

We know the West is struggling with its water supply. So how bad are things? I remember seeing at one point that the Colorado River didn’t make it to the sea.

The demise of the Colorado River is really one of the United States’ worst environmental horror stories. It’s a combination of overuse and overallocation from the seven states and the 40 million-plus people that rely on it, as well as the massive impacts of climate change, extreme heat and 23 straight years of drought. In essence, more water is being pulled out than is flowing into the river.

It’s a dire picture. So we’re talking about using recycled water, and some of the places that have led the way on this are Las Vegas and Orange County, California. Orange County is a very conservative place — it’s not a county of treehuggers. I thought, Wow, you never know who’s going to adopt a kind of innovative policy and process.

It makes you realize that the environment, and especially water, has to be nonpartisan. Last I checked, we all need it every day to live — it doesn’t really matter who you voted for.

In Vegas, they really had no choice, in that they [Nevada] get so little water allocated from the Colorado River — about 300,000 acre-feet a year, which is less than the city of L.A. uses per year. So if you don’t have water, you’re going to be a lot more conservation-minded in how you deal with it.

In Orange County, the driver was quite different, because for them it was really more about water independence. They really wanted to control their own fate and their own destiny, and having more local water supply allowed them to grow much more quickly. And so they’ve been huge innovators on recycled water — actually one of the leaders in the entire world, because they treat the water to basically drinking water levels, and have been for quite some time.

Did the success of Orange County allow, say, Los Angeles, which is pretty close by, to think, Oh, they figured it out, maybe we could do that, too.

So we have this interesting situation where the outer part of Los Angeles County, run by the L.A. County sanitation district, has been a leader on water recycling for over 50 years. But the City of L.A. has been horrible, and so they’ve had a rethink and are supposed to be moving forward with this project called Pure Water Los Angeles, which is to take water from the enormous Hyperion sewage treatment plant and treat it to such a high level that it could be used for direct potable reuse. They’re finally moving forward on this project, but the pace is incredibly slow. … It wouldn’t deliver water before 2050, and that’s just way too long.

In Orange County, where they’re basically creating drinkable water, is that kind of high-level filtering expensive? And is that expense passed on to consumers? Are they going to go, Oh, we don’t want to have to pay extra for our water, maybe we’ll just pay for it to be filtered for bathing or showering or toilets.

I think it’s important for everybody to realize that you don’t have to treat every single drop to drinking water standards. We’re using this really precious potable water to water cemeteries and golf courses and parks, and that’s just not the best use of this increasingly scarce resource.

The concern is that, if you have a separate water distribution system — what we call purple pipe versus drinking water pipe — you’ve got to build a big infrastructure. But for more localized projects, it makes sense to do that. Stormwater capture and using that for irrigation is something we’re focusing a lot on right now.

Are there other cities recycling their water — places where their water level is pretty precarious?

Phoenix and Tucson are kicking ass on this, and they’re doing really incredible work. Phoenix has been a leader on water recycling for quite some time and they’re doubling down on that, adding more indirect potable reuse and direct potable reuse projects by 2030. Arizona and Nevada are best in class in the United States by a mile on water recycling as a whole.

Have you heard about any of these kinds of programs internationally? Other parts of the world that are doing it?

The Middle East is very big on water recycling. And one that you hear about a lot that makes folks kind of scratch their heads is Singapore. They’ve also been huge innovators.

Wow, they’re surrounded by water.

Right, but they’ve really embraced water recycling technology in an extraordinary way. They’re the co-world leaders, if you will, with Orange County.

Are they learning from us? Are we learning from them? Are Singapore and Orange County talking and saying, How did you do this?

There’s a great deal of knowledge exchange between Singapore and Orange County, and really the West. A lot of road trips from engineering firms between the two areas have occurred over the last few decades, that’s for sure.

When cities institute these things, how do they deal with what is called the “ick factor”? People going: Where’s that water been? Where does it come from?

Orange County spent a heck of a lot of time, effort and money on that exact issue. They had seen in the L.A. region that the “toilet to tap” push really set back water recycling a solid 25 years. But the way Orange County dealt with it was, they put the science right up front for everyone to see that there was minimal health risk. That educational effort was really successful, and so in Orange County they’re very proud of the fact that they use so much recycled water, and the ick factor doesn’t exist. The educational part is really, really important, and often that gets short shrift in how you move forward with these projects, because everybody just focuses on the technology.

Are there any downsides, besides the increased cost to consumers, that we should be transparent about?

With the advanced treatment that uses reverse osmosis, which produces drinking-water-quality recycled water, you’re pulling out all the solids and minerals and creating a brine. And the disposal of the brine can be an issue. So, for example, if you’re a coastal sewage treatment plant and you’re using reverse osmosis, well, all those pollutants that would be in the sewage are now going to be in the brine, and if you just discharge that out into the ocean, you’re still causing environmental harm. So you need to couple this with additional processes to, for example, reduce the amount of nitrogen that’s within that brine or come up with other disposal options. There are some folks who are actually looking at deep ground injection, if you can believe it — putting the brine 5,000 feet below the earth’s surface in abandoned oil wells and those sorts of things. So that’s not impossible to overcome, but it’s something that you need to address.

So there are some places that are looking the other way, but there are places that have kind of solved this. They’ve made it happen and other places can follow their example.

Yeah, embracing technologies that can give us greater water security, it’s just absolutely critical. Look, I’m not going to pretend it’s not going to cost more for rate payers. These projects are not free. But the reality is, we haven’t really been paying what water is really worth. [Water recycling] is a long-term investment that is going to keep paying dividends, and now’s the time to do it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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