Inside The Blueprint To Standardize State Water Reuse Regulations

By Christian Bonawandt

Water scarcity in the U.S. is increasing almost as rapidly as demand for clean drinking water. In response, more municipalities and public utilities are actively pivoting toward water reuse strategies. Yet many of these projects are running up against an archaic administrative bottleneck. Conventional drinking water and municipal wastewater programs are governed by unified, top-down federal frameworks established by the U.S. EPA. However, water reuse is only regulated at the state level. This lack of standardization introduces operational uncertainty that often stalls projects before they can break ground.

To fix this, a coalition of prominent water organizations has mobilized to fund and develop a definitive, first-of-its-kind administrative roadmap: the State Water Reuse Regulatory Guide. During a recent episode of The Water Online Show, Fred Gerringer, the national practice leader for water reuse at Brown and Caldwell, spoke with co-hosts Travis Kennedy and Kevin Westerling about this guide and the challenges to building a resilient, circular water economy.

One Water, 50 Frameworks

The Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act established a federal baseline, leaving states with the relatively straightforward task of adapting or enforcing those uniform standards within their local jurisdictions.

Water reuse departs significantly from this established norm. “Water reuse is regulated at the state level, unlike wastewater and drinking water where those regulations come top-down and then states build off them,” Gerringer explained. “With water reuse, it’s really the states on their own having to develop these regulations.”

As such, he said, when a state agency or a municipal utility explores water reuse to combat local scarcity, they are often forced to look across state lines to see what neighboring jurisdictions are doing. Historically, progressive frameworks like California’s Title 22 regulations have served as an informal model for non-potable reuse (NPR). Similarly, when states like Arizona and Colorado began drafting rules for direct potable reuse (DPR), other drought-prone regions looked to them as preliminary blueprints.

However, Gerringer argued that borrowing these frameworks has severe limitations. Regulations written for the specific legal structures, environmental conditions, and political realities of one state rarely translate perfectly over to another. Without a centralized, adaptable methodology, projects can often become trapped in regulatory limbo, adding years to critical infrastructure timelines.

A Collaboration Of Industry Heavyweights

Recognizing that this fragmented approach was fundamentally unsustainable, the WateReuse Association stepped forward to spearhead a nationwide intervention. Driven by consistent feedback from its regional and state sections — all of which were urgently seeking structured guidance on how to support and advance rulemaking at the state level — the association brought together an unprecedented alliance of the water industry’s most influential organizations.

The developmental coalition included the American Water Works Association (AWWA), the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA), the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), and the Water Environment Federation (WEF). Brown and Caldwell partnered with Hazen and Sawyer to provide the technical expertise and administrative synthesis. In addition, both firms sought feedback from regulators at several steps along the way.

“We had focus groups to get regulator feedback on what’s important to them in regulatory development so that we can then better inform the water reuse community about how to engage with them,” Gerringer said.

The Realities Of ‘One Water’

Gerringer noted that the rollout of this standardized framework comes at a time when the industry is reevaluating the philosophical foundation of water management. For generations, municipal infrastructure was designed around linear, siloed concepts: drinking water, stormwater, and wastewater were treated as entirely separate, isolated streams. Today, that model is rapidly giving way to the holistic “One Water” approach.

“All water gets used over and over again,” Gerringer emphasized. “It rains in the mountains, flows through the river, goes out to the ocean, evaporates off and then that cycle repeats. And then we use the water along the way and put it back. So there really is no new water, and we need to approach it with that understanding.”

When viewed through this sustainable lens, he added, potable water reuse looks less like a last-resort drought strategy and more like the foundation for both long-term municipal economic growth and environmental preservation. Gerringer highlighted several operational advantages of potable reuse programs over traditional groundwater pumping or surface water draws:

• Absolute drought resilience. The source water for reuse programs is structurally consistent. They are not vulnerable to shifting climate patterns and prolonged meteorological droughts like surface reservoirs or shallow aquifers. This guarantees municipal populations a steady baseline of wastewater flow through daily domestic use.
• Support for modern industrial expansion. As data centers and other water-intensive projects strain municipal capacities, advanced reuse offers a scalable solution to satisfy these demands without placing additional strain on drinking water resources.
• Mitigating environmental discharge impacts. Even highly treated effluent can disrupt sensitive aquatic ecosystems. Advanced water reuse avoids this by capturing that effluent and purifying it to a level where it can be safely redirected toward beneficial potable or non-potable uses. This allows utilities to drastically reduce their environmental discharge footprint.
• Regional infrastructure optimization. Water scarcity occurs in regional watersheds that often cross state and municipal borders. As such, water reuse is spurring increased regional cooperation among adjacent utilities. Major metro areas, such as those spanning Southern California, are pooling their resources to develop shared, large-scale reuse networks.

Balancing Regulation And Affordability

Despite the benefits of the One Water approach, Gerringer was clear about the obstacles it faces to widespread adoption. Chief among these is the very issue the new guide is designed to break through: project paralysis triggered by a lack of clear regulations.

When a state lacks an explicit, predictable regulatory pathway for water reuse, it introduces a level of risk that many utilities find unacceptable. Gerringer warned, “This creates a lot of uncertainty around projects. It can even prevent projects from going forward at all. And so having just that certainty set in place allows utilities to invest in reuse more easily.”

In addition, Gerringer pointed out that advanced water treatment facilities are both capital-intensive and competing for limited public funds alongside a massive backlog of aging infrastructure needs. Securing creative funding mechanisms and managing the long-term impact on customer water rates remains a central challenge for every utility director considering reuse.

Operating Advanced Treatment Trains

As utilities learn how to navigate the regulatory and financial hurdles to bring water reuse facilities online, Gerringer said the focus will inevitably shift toward how to manage complex, non-traditional treatment technologies. Potable water reuse relies on what the industry terms “advanced water treatment” (AWT) technologies. This can include a combination of technologies, such as membranes, ozone disinfection, and ultraviolet (UV) advanced oxidation processes. In many cases, they require specialized training and technical support.

“Oftentimes there’s a lot of focus on building a new facility, providing that water supply, and then once it’s up and running, it kind of gets forgotten a little bit,” Gerringer observed. “Clients sometimes need more support in how to operate and optimize these advanced treatment systems.”

Maximizing The Impact

For municipal managers, engineering consultants, and state lawmakers eager to capitalize on the standardized framework, Gerringer insists the guide offers a clear path forward. It will be distributed directly through the WateReuse Association’s extensive network, making it accessible to its membership and the members of its prominent partner organizations, including AWWA, AMWA, NACWA, and WEF. By putting this comprehensive toolkit into the hands of local practitioners and state environmental agencies, he hopes it will establish a shared, data-driven language for water resilience.

As communities confront the dual pressures of population growth and dwindling traditional water supplies, the transition toward water reuse is no longer a distant ideal — it is an immediate operational necessity. With the release of a standardized state regulatory guide, the water industry is finally creating the administrative clarity needed to transform the One Water paradigm from a visionary concept into reliable, permanent infrastructure.

Christian Bonawandt is an industrial content writer for Water Online. He has been writing about B2B technology and industrial processes for more than 25 years.