Saved from the Drain The concept of “One Water” gains traction in Colorado with regulatory updates and innovative design BY KELLY BASTONE
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n most households and businesses, every drop of clean, incoming water has just one job to do. That task might be to wash clothes, fill a drinking glass, bathe a human or flush a toilet—but once its job is done, water has historically shared the same fate: It’s swirled down the drain to a wastewater treatment plant and released back into nature. Then the cycle of collecting water begins again. Yet water is scarcer than ever, thanks to climate change and growing human populations. So across Colorado and nationwide, communities are developing systems for recycling their wastewater. While municipal and larger regional water reuse systems are increasingly common in Colorado, not everyone is located near them. Even within municipalities where water is reused through a large centralized system, some big water users want to take the next step toward sustainability—by conducting their own localized water treatment and recycling efforts, on site.
Rural homes have long used septic systems, the most common form of on-site wastewater management. But since the 1980s, particularly in the eastern United States, a growing number of homes, neighborhoods, housing developments, office and school campuses, and communities have also installed localized water treatment systems that let residents use their own recycled wastewater for irrigation, toilet-flushing, and other non-potable uses. New York’s 92-acre Battery Park City redevelopment uses wastewater and rainwater recycling systems in six of its buildings. There, localized reuse demonstrates sustainable urban development—a goal driven by the city’s ambitions—with reuse improving water quality by reducing the amount of discharged wastewater and the quantity of water supply needed. The water is then reused for flushing toilets, cooling, laundry, and garden irrigation. And at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots in Foxborough, Mass., a localized system was developed because
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