The Acceptance Of Water Reuse

Navigating the regulatory map when it comes to water reuse is difficult. The repurposing of wastewater for clean water purposes falls somewhere between the federal Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Currently, each U.S. state is tasked with coming up with their own regulatory framework for water reuse within the context of their other water quality and water rights regulations.

Water Online Radio recently sat down with Guy Carpenter, President of the WateReuse Association, to understand the issue. “We don’t really want the federal government to come in and set an overall standard because of the variability that exists from state to state,” explains Carpenter. “We do want to let them know that this is the right way to go, and to promote opportunity, promote funding, promote whatever we need to do, an imperative about making sure that reuse becomes something that we all turn to as a reliable and sustainable water supply.”

To learn more about the funding for reuse available through the Water Resource Development Act (WRDA), the research into water reuse that has come out of the Water Reuse Research Foundation and the level of public acceptance of reuse, listen here: