Rest room to faucet: El Paso is about to embark on a complete new strategy to save its restricted water provide

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This text is a part of Working Out, an occasional collection about Texas’ water disaster. Learn extra tales concerning the threats dealing with Texas’ water provide right here.

EL PASO — All of it begins with a flush of a bathroom.

Wastewater travels underground by this arid metropolis’s pipes to a wastewater therapy facility the place it goes by a number of therapy steps to filter out contaminants. The subsequent step is purification. Membranes filter out contaminants at excessive stress. Ultraviolet mild and chlorine disinfect the water. A splash of minerals is added.

The tip end result? Clear ingesting water.

Behind this effort is El Paso Water, the utility that serves 220,000 properties, companies and authorities companies in far West Texas. The Pure Water Middle, which is anticipated to be totally operational in 2028, is the company’s newest try to make use of each drop of water and make it drinkable — an answer the town sees as important for its future.

El Paso has turn out to be a nationwide chief in water innovation — pioneering brackish groundwater desalination, wastewater reuse, and aggressive conservation efforts, in response to water specialists. Now, it is taking one other step ahead. This superior water purification system will ship 10 million gallons each day in a metropolis that used roughly 105 million gallons per day final 12 months. Some say it will likely be the primary direct potable reuse, or “toilet-to-tap” facility within the nation.

Different cities have reused wastewater for ingesting, together with Huge Springs. Nonetheless, they ship it to a reservoir or river the place it blends with floor water after which deal with it once more earlier than it reaches faucets. El Paso’s facility would be the first to ship purified water straight into the distribution system — pipe to pipe.

Gilbert Trejo, vice chairman of operations and technical companies at El Paso Water, mentioned the utility gained public help and eased the “ick factor” by educating residents on how the venture maximizes the town’s present water provide.

“A lot of cities pay money to bring water to their community through reservoirs or investing in water importation. We owe it to our customers to develop our current water,” Trejo mentioned.

As Texas faces mounting water challenges, with lawmakers looking for options to an impending water disaster — together with transporting water from water-rich areas to dry ones by pipelines — some water specialists say El Paso’s method may function a blueprint for different cities, particularly these in West Texas, the place communities get little to no rain and have restricted water sources to faucet into.

El Paso, a metropolis of almost 679,000 individuals, occupies a singular geographic and hydrological place. Nestled within the far western nook of Texas, it sits on the headwaters of the Rio Grande inside the state, the place the river first enters Texas after flowing by Colorado and New Mexico. Simply throughout the U.S. border lies Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a metropolis of about 1.5 million, and to the northwest the state of New Mexico. El Paso’s water challenges are deeply interconnected with its neighbors, making water administration a fancy balancing act between three governments and a number of companies.

Like a lot of the state, El Paso depends on two predominant water sources: groundwater from its aquifers and floor water. Town’s two underground aquifers, the Hueco Bolson and Mesilla Bolson provide about 55% of the town’s water provide. Whereas the Rio Grande, fed by snowmelt from Colorado and saved in New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Reservoir earlier than being launched downstream to farmers and cities, provides about 40% (in a 12 months with out drought). Each provides are shrinking and turning into more and more unreliable.

Specialists warn that this freshwater provide might solely final a number of extra many years at present utilization charges. Elephant Butte is at historic lows, typically holding simply 6% of its capability. Town’s floor water allotment, which final 12 months was from March to October, is predicted to dwindle to about eight weeks this 12 months. This has metropolis leaders juggling as they decide how a lot water to suck out of its aquifers.

Whereas some border cities are simply now starting to face extreme water constraints, El Paso has been grappling with that for many years. Not like different components of Texas, the place huge reservoirs had been constructed after the devastating drought of the Fifties to retailer rainwater for dry years, El Paso’s dry local weather — the place annual rainfall averages lower than 9 inches — reservoirs have by no means been a viable possibility for El Paso.

Shane Walker, director of the Water and the Surroundings Analysis Middle at Texas Tech College mentioned El Paso has turn out to be one of the vital progressive water utilities within the nation.

“They’re always thinking ahead. They’re thinking 50 years or even 100 years down the road,” Walker mentioned. “There are so many other water utilities that benefit from El Paso Water leadership because they’re willing to to spend the extra work to figure things out the first time.”

El Paso grew to become a frontrunner out of want

Contained in the utility’s water middle, or TecH2O, there’s a timeline of the town’s water historical past. A black and white photograph from 1892 reveals the town’s first water provide plant — a small constructing and water pipe bursting with water flowing right into a canal.

Within the early 1900s, the town relied virtually completely on groundwater from the Hueco and Mesilla Bolsons. Because the inhabitants grew, metropolis leaders acknowledged that groundwater alone wouldn’t be sufficient. Within the Nineteen Twenties, the Rio Grande Challenge was developed to handle and distribute river water every year for irrigation. Once more, there was nonetheless not sufficient.

El Paso’s pioneering efforts in water reuse started within the Nineteen Sixties, when the town began utilizing handled wastewater for irrigation. By the Nineteen Eighties, the Fred Hervey Water Reclamation Plant was treating wastewater to ingesting water requirements utilizing ozone disinfection — one of many earliest examples of superior water reclamation within the nation. That handled wastewater was used to replenish the aquifer. (As we speak it’s bought to El Paso Electrical Firm for cooling towers, and used to water a golf course, parks and a cemetery within the metropolis.)

Within the Nineteen Nineties, El Paso expanded its recycled water program with a purple pipe system that delivered handled wastewater for irrigation and industrial use. Inside that very same decade, the town additionally launched conservation rebate and incentive packages, together with a bathroom rebate program that supplied a $50 rebate per bathroom, as much as two bogs per family, for patrons who buy water-efficient bogs that use 1.28 gallons per flush, versus older bogs that use as a lot as six gallons per flush.

“This time was a massive change in the way people thought about water and used water,” mentioned Jennifer Barr, the utility’s water conservation supervisor.

As the town’s water challenges intensified, El Paso continued to diversify its water portfolio. In 2007, it opened the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant, a big inland desalination facility able to producing at max capability 27.5 million gallons of contemporary water each day from brackish groundwater. Town has additionally embraced aquifer recharge, storing handled water underground for future use. It additionally reuses handled wastewater for irrigation or to replenish and preserve the Rio Bosque Wetlands, a 372-acre nature protect situated close to the U.S.-Mexico border alongside the Rio Grande.

Town has additionally secured extra water rights from close by Dell Metropolis. Nonetheless, treating and transporting the water 90 miles to the town might be costly. The water from the town would should be desalinated.

For the reason that Nineteen Nineties, the utility has delivered greater than 180,000 acre-feet of recycled water for irrigation and industrial use, serving to to cut back the quantity of groundwater pumped from aquifers. That’s sufficient to produce water to 1 million Texans for a 12 months. Recycled water — 80,000 acre ft — has additionally been used to recharge the Hueco Bolson Aquifer.

In the meantime, the town’s conservation packages have reduce water use by 40% because the Nineteen Seventies. With out these efforts, the utility estimates it will want to provide a further 35,000 acre-feet of water every year to satisfy present demand. Though the town has a drought contingency plan in place to handle water shortages, it hasn’t carried out obligatory water restrictions since 2003 — when a extreme river drought pressured residents to restrict outside watering to as soon as per week.

What can the state study from these water leaders?

Generations of El Pasoans have developed what Trejo, with the water utility, calls a “high water IQ,” formed by fixed drought and the unpredictable Rio Grande. Many grew up with the utility’s smiling mascot, Willie the Waterdrop, which some residents bear in mind from once they had been younger.

“The generation that grew up having to be very water conscious are now the adults in the room,” Trejo mentioned, which he sees as a possibility.

This long-standing consciousness helped El Paso achieve public acceptance for its new toilet-to-tap venture. Greater than a decade in the past, El Paso Water launched an outreach marketing campaign, coaching staff to ship a transparent, informative pitch. They put collectively a 30-minute presentation that walked residents by the town’s historical past of water reuse, defined why the subsequent step was obligatory, and broke down the superior therapy course of.

Over the course of a 12 months, the utility visited 30 group organizations, together with neighborhood associations, rotary golf equipment, and information media shops. The discussions weren’t one-on-one however held in group settings, the place residents may ask questions and voice considerations.

The timing helped. The area was simply coming off the extreme 2013 drought when El Paso had solely six weeks of floor water left and needed to ask residents to chop again. That contemporary reminiscence underscored the necessity to put together for the long run, in response to the utility’s spokesperson.

The utility’s message was easy: “toilet-to-tap” was a logical subsequent step. By the point the venture moved ahead, the groundwork had already been laid for group buy-in.

An preliminary survey in 2013 confirmed 84% of residents authorised the idea — proof, Trejo says, that years of public schooling paid off.

Whereas “toilet-to-tap” might sound unappealing, utility specialists emphasize that superior therapy removes prescribed drugs, without end chemical substances and different contaminants, with a number of safeguards inbuilt. The water from the resident’s sink, bathe or bathroom is so totally purified that minerals are added again for style.

The state’s environmental regulator, the Texas Fee on Environmental High quality, approved El Paso Water to start development of the superior purification facility in October 2024. The utility broke floor earlier this 12 months.

As water provides dwindle nationwide, different cities are watching. Two Arizona cities are already exploring comparable techniques.

“When you’re the first one to do something novel and unique, it’s a pain in the butt,” Robert Mace, govt director of the Meadows Middle for Water and the Surroundings at Texas State College, mentioned. “But once that first entity goes through and figures it all out, it becomes easier for everyone else.”

El Paso isn’t the primary Texas metropolis to aim direct potable reuse. Huge Spring in West Texas grew to become the primary within the U.S. to deal with wastewater for ingesting in 2013, mixing the purified water with uncooked water earlier than sending it to a therapy plant. Wichita Falls carried out a brief system throughout a extreme drought in 2014. A number of different Texas cities, together with San Marcos, Buda, and Marble Falls, wish to implement direct reuse tasks as a part of their water provide planning for the long run, in response to Mace.

Trejo says this method gives a better various to costly new reservoirs or water pipelines.

“Everything is about recycling — except water? If we’re investing in desalination, why not reuse what we already have?” he mentioned.

At a state degree, Trejo mentioned he’s disenchanted that water recycling isn’t extra a part of the water technique discussions on the Capitol.

Lawmakers are anticipated to pledge billions of {dollars} to avoid wasting the state’s water provide. Many of the dialog has been round what water specialists name “new water supply.” That features desalination or the method of eradicating salt from seawater or brackish groundwater to make the water drinkable. One other technique: developing pipelines to move water from the water-rich areas of Texas to arid, drought-stricken areas. Some fear that different water methods, like what El Paso is doing, will get unnoticed of the funding.

“Communities will need to have funding,” Trejo mentioned. “If the state is not going to include water recycling in the discussion, it will affect us greatly.”

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation awarded El Paso $3.5 million in 2019 for the ability’s design. It later dedicated a further $20 million in 2022 to help development. The full venture price is at present estimated at $295 million. The utility says it continues to pursue extra state and federal funding.

Based on suggestions within the state water plan, Texas may depend on direct potable reuse for 62,000 acre-feet per 12 months by 2070 — sufficient to produce 372,000 individuals yearly.

The cash is vital. Nevertheless it received’t clear up each disaster.

El Paso has approached water administration with preparation fairly than panic. That regular, forward-looking mindset has helped construct the belief with the general public wanted to take daring steps pushed by imaginative and prescient, not desperation.

Trejo’s recommendation to different utilities: Begin getting ready now.

Disclosure: El Paso Electrical Firm and Texas Tech College have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full record of them right here.

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