Citation:

RamMohan, G., T. F. Speth, D. J. Murray, AND J. L. Garland. Municipal Wastewater: A Rediscovered Resource for Sustainable Water Reuse. Chapter 6, The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, Volume 30, Potable Water: Emerging Global Problems and Solutions. Springer International Publishing AG, Cham (ZG), Switzerland, 30:153-179, (2014).

Impact/Purpose:

To inform the public on infrastructure and alternate water resources.

Description:

Both population growth and movement puts forth the need for increased regional water supplies across the globe. While significant progress has been made in the area of building new infrastructure to capture freshwater and divert it to urban and rural areas, there exists a considerable difference in the supply and demand of high quality water. The cost and non-sustainability of diverting ever increasing volumes of water to stressed areas has become difficult to justify. Therefore, the first step in finding a solution to it is to identify alternate water resources. Given that approximately 45 million cubic meters of municipal wastewater is discharged every day in the United States, researchers and water industry planners have identified municipal wastewater as a viable source for water reuse. Given this potential source, an appraisal of the varying qualities and characteristics of municipal wastewater affecting water reuse is made. This is followed by a discussion on different sectors such as urban, agriculture and industry that are potential consumers of reclaimed water. The conventional and advanced treatment technologies used to treat municipal wastewater to meet reuse standards are then evaluated; and a number of case studies demonstrating water reuse schemes in different parts of the world are described in brief.

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