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WRAP Quarterly Update - April to June 2023

WRAP Quarterly Update

July–September 2023

A Message from Felicia Marcus, William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program

What a quarter it has been for water reuse! As an environmental lawyer, advocate, and former public works director who has advised on and advocated for water reuse for over three decades, the acceleration of motivation and action to implement water reuse the past few years is inspiring and has arrived not a moment too soon.

Around the country, communities are turning to water recycling as never before, and state and federal partners are responding with funding (though never enough) and state-level regulations (e.g., in Florida, Arizona, Colorado, California) that are improving the ability to develop smart recycled water projects.

The interest in water reuse is there, but we still have obstacles to overcome—obstacles of agency fragmentation, funding, and regulatory complexity. I’m particularly pleased EPA is using its convening power to bring people together across the country and across operational and regulatory silos to figure out how to bridge gaps and accelerate positive momentum through the WRAP. This is the kind of high-value—and often low-glamour—work that made me proud to have worked at EPA in the 90s and to be engaged again today.

Last year, I was pleased to be a part of the WRAP Action 2.16 team that completed a report on the challenges of achieving the cross-agency collaboration needed to make water reuse projects possible, since it is rare to have a single agency responsible for both water supply and wastewater treatment. Currently, I’m engaged with a team on WRAP Action 2.19 to identify how to make the NPDES permitting process more effective and responsive to innovative projects, like water reuse. We have been fortunate to engage a strong group of state and federal regulators, utility leaders, and NGOs to determine and prioritize measures that will really make a difference. To do this, our team held both a webinar in May to gain useful insights from a wide group of leaders, and an intensive retreat in August with a smaller group to dig deeper and hone our ideas. The beauty and utility of the meeting stemmed from the experience and candor that participants brought to the room, along with their commitment to making progress on next steps. Stay tuned for our report on findings and lessons learned from the innovative permitting convening to be released in early 2024!

Abbreviations are defined at the end of this document. See the Online Platform for more information about each action.

 

New WRAP Actions

WRAP actions seek to advance water reuse planning and implementation across the country. Actions are organized by strategic theme to help focus efforts and inspire future action. We are pleased to announce that the following new actions are now underway. To get involved or provide input, please email the action leaders using contact information from the Online Platform.

Implement the DoD-Funded Water Reuse Consortium for Water Resiliency at Military and Municipal Facilities (Action 7.10, led by the Water Reuse Consortium and USACE)

The Water Reuse Consortium is a collaboration between USC; the University of Arizona; the University of Nevada, Reno; and USACE-ERDC-CERL, funded by DoD to advance water reuse adoption and provide national leadership on the integration of water reuse into water supply portfolios. The Water Reuse Consortium will accelerate the integration of water reuse into military and municipal water supply portfolios to ensure the security, sustainability, and resilience of our nation’s water resources through research, education, communication, and technology transfer. The consortium aims to ensure uninterrupted water supplies, improve the detection and treatment of pathogens and emerging contaminants, and educate a workforce invested in forming partnerships to facilitate technology export that support global water security.

Identify Opportunities for Industrial Reuse to Supplement Water Supply in Northeast Illinois (Action 7.11, led by UIC Freshwater Lab)

Regions of Illinois—particularly in the more populous northeast—face water supply constraints due to aquifer drawdown, geologic barriers to recharge, and withdrawal limits on Lake Michigan. Action leaders will convene stakeholders and conduct research to investigate the regional benefits of and opportunities for selling recycled treated wastewater for industrial and irrigation applications. This action aims to supplement the water supply of communities and lower demands on increasingly strained potable supplies.

We welcome federal, state, tribal, local, and water sector partners to propose actions to advance water reuse. Ideas for new actions may be sent to waterreuse@epa.gov. For information about how to propose, lead, or collaborate on a WRAP action, visit this webpage. 

 

Completed WRAP Action

A WRAP action was completed this quarter, demonstrating productivity and progress under the strategic theme of Outreach and Communications. Completed WRAP action summaries are developed with action leaders and highlight impacts, lessons learned, and potential future activities.

Engagement with Disadvantaged and Rural Communities on Water Reuse 

(Action 8.5, led by EPA and Ochotona LLC)

This action team engaged small and underserved communities by helping them access resources needed to implement water reuse. Key action efforts included listening sessions; reuse-focused trainings; and community specific trainings with relevant technical assistance providers, called train-the-trainer presentations. The team also conducted technical assistance pilots with three self-identified small, underserved communities in California, Idaho, and Kansas. Action leaders detailed the engagements and lessons learned from those experiences in a final report.

See the full quarterly update for all WRAP action outputs produced this quarter.
 
Abbreviations Used in this Quarterly Update

CERL

Construction Engineering Research Laboratory

NPDES

National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System

DoD

U.S. Department of Defense

USACE

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

EPA

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

UIC

University of Illinois, Chicago

ERDC

Engineer Research and Development Center

USC

University of Southern California

NGO

non-governmental organization           

 

 

 

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