ViewPoints
Complexities of water reclamation and reuse require holistic view

by Dean Shiskowski, PhD, P.Eng.
     Graham Lang, CEng, MiCE

Examples of communities experiencing some level of water stress can be found around the globe. Even in the developed world, unlimited access to clean, safe water cannot be taken for granted. Supply-side hydrologic and environmental realities, coupled with demand-side growth and high per capita water use by affluent societies, combine to stress available water resources. At the same time, the effort needed to provide sanitation that protects human health and the environment continues to grow with development pressures. in addition, society has become increasingly aware of the carbon footprint of its activities, including those related to managing our water resources.

Water Reclamation: integral component of Water Resource Management
Reclaiming water from wastewater and its subsequent beneficial reuse has long been recognized as one potential element of the water stress solution. The most common use of reclaimed water is for irrigation, a form of direct non-potable reuse (NPR), where many examples can be found around the world and in Western Canada. The communities of Vernon, BC, Taber, AB, and Moose Jaw, SK have long-standing agricultural irrigation programs using reclaimed water. Vernon also provides reclaimed water for golf course landscape irrigation, as does the Regional District of Nanaimo, BC via the French Creek Pollution Control Centre. At the other extreme of reuse implementation, only Windhoek, Namibia in Africa exists in the world as an example of a commercial-scale operation of direct potable reuse (DPR), where reclaimed water is directly piped to a potable water supply system. However, there are several examples of planned indirect potable reuse (IPR) schemes, where reclaimed water is blended with natural waters in surface water reservoirs or groundwater aquifers, the latter also being a form of groundwater recharge. The Singapore Public Utilities Board's recent NEWater program is an example of IPR using surface water augmentation. California's Orange County Water District has practiced groundwater recharge and IPR with reclaimed water for several decades. In the mid-range of reuse implementation is industrial applications (i.e. NPR). Again, many examples can be found around the world, but examples in Canada are still limited. One example is the Gold Bar Wastewater Treatment Plant industrial Water Reuse Facility located in Edmonton and owned and operated by EPCOR. This 15 ML/d facility provides reclaimed water to Petro-Canada and other industry for use and, at the moment, is the largest industrial reuse program in Canada. Regardless of these examples, the reality is that water reclamation and reuse, for all its potential benefits, has up to this point a limited history in wastewater / water resource management. However, continued development pressures and climate change related effects will certainly create future opportunities, as will ongoing technology development. But it could be argued that evolution of evaluation and decision-making approaches and tools may have the biggest impact in the future implementation of water reclamation and reuse schemes.

Triple Bottom Line Approach offers holistic decision-making approach
Consider the triple-bottom-line (TBL) concept and its inclusion of environmental and social considerations along with those economic. It provides a framework to broadly examine the "value" of alternate solutions where there are often disparate goals. This idea is relevant in making strategic water reclamation and reuse decisions because this water stress solution is not a panacea. There has to be a real need to implement such schemes and in many cases arriving at a suitable strategy requires a broad and holistic view. For example, how does the unit cost of reclaimed water compare to the incremental cost of the next unit of supplied potable water? What are the carbon footprint implications of providing reclaimed water versus potable water? Is effluent irrigation really a disposal scheme and are the groundwater/soil impacts understood and considered in the decision-making? Some wastewater constituents, whose origin is anthropogenic and not part of natural source waters, need to be removed from wastewater to allow industrial reuse and thus will be not be returned to the river. Thus, water reuse has another potential environmental benefit. Many of these example nuances would not be captured in a more traditional, narrowly focused, non-TBL evaluation and decision-making approach.

With the more holistic view provided by a TBL framework comes the challenge, in some situations, of performing diverse analyses to provide information for use in the TBL evaluation. Life Cycle Assessment Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a relatively new and comprehensive tool that may have application in these cases. Fundamentally, LCA attempts to quantify the environmental costs/benefits of a product, technology or system and the resulting information can be used to make relative comparisons between alternate solutions. LCA first quantifies life cycle impacts for a broad range of "mid-point categories" (e.g. human toxicity, aquatic eutrophication, global warming, non-renewable energy, etc.) in terms of a related reference compound (e.g. mass of carbon dioxide equivalents for global warming). These impacts can then be distilled down to a limited number of broad end-point impacts such as human health, ecosystem quality, climate change, and resources. Finally, the sum of these normalized impacts can be compared with the Total Environmental Burden of all anthropogenic impacts of the population served. Although such LCA has seen only limited application in the wastewater sector to date, ongoing development in LCA methodologies, the databases from which they draw information, and commercial software packages will undoubtedly increase their application in complex situations such as water management and water reclamation/reuse schemes.

Meeting the Challenge
The value of "water" is increasing as the supply-demand balance shifts. Advances in information and media technology inform an educated public who demand socially acceptable, environmentally sustainable, and economically responsible solutions, including those related to water management. It may be a long time before water rivals oil as a global commodity, but the economics of water will become ever more important in the coming decades. Water is central to life in so many ways and is an extremely emotive subject. The political, social, and environmental factors surrounding water will increasingly challenge the economics and, as such, planning and investment decisions will become increasingly complex. The development and refinement of more holistic techniques and tools to help "navigate" a path through these decisions is thus imperative. Our industry has to adopt the approaches and tools needed to make the decisions required. The TBL approach provides one framework to meet this end, with LCA an emerging tool to provide some of the information needed in a triple bottom line approach evaluation.

Dr. Dean Shiskowski is Associated Engineering's corporate Practice Leader, Wastewater Management. He is currently leading the Sustainability/TBL activity for the consultant team led by Associated Engineering that is studying water reclamation and industrial reuse scenarios for Edmonton's Alberta industrial Heartlands and Capital Region. This study is being conducted for Alberta Environment and associated municipal, industry and environmental stakeholder groups.

Graham Lang is a Senior Project Manager in the Water & Environmental Group in Associated Engineering's Calgary office. His project experience includes high-profile wastewater treatment facilities in the UK located in environmentally sensitive locations, which required managing diverse stakeholder groups to develop appropriate project implementation decisions. Several of Graham's recent projects in Alberta have included consideration of water reuse opportunities.

Regional water systems are part of "Water for Life:
Alberta's Strategy for Sustainability"

Water for Life: Alberta's Strategy for Sustainability, is a coordinated and effective approach to water management that outlines specific strategies and actions to address the province's water issues. The strategy is based on three key goals or outcomes:

1. safe, secure drinking water supply to all Albertans,
2. a healthy aquatic ecosystem, and
3. reliable, quality water supplies for a sustainable economy.

The strategy, implemented in 2003, encourages and provides significant capital funding for implementing regional water systems in Alberta. Regional water systems typically comprise a new or upgraded regional water treatment plant as hub, with regional water pipelines extended to the participating towns, villages, hamlets (municipal districts and counties), and First Nations communities. The projects require two or more municipalities to come together to participate in a regional water system and generally consist of a feasibility study followed by adoption of a regional water scheme

Associated Engineering's participation in these projects is typically from the initial feasibility stage through all engineering phases including construction/post construction services. Specifically, we are involved in raw water supply source, water treatment plant, transmission pipeline, pump stations, delivery points, and SCADA systems. Associated Engineering also plays a significant role in the governance (establishing a legal entity under which the participating municipalities will participate), financial administration side of the projects, as well as coordinating all regulatory approvals and land acquisition.

The projects typically fall under Alberta's "Regulated Pipelines" regulations requiring Conservation and Reclamation Plans. Regulatory approvals can include diversion licenses, standards and approvals notifications, code of practice compliances, navigable water and fisheries approvals, as well as license to operate. Land acquisition can include freehold and crown lands; rightof- ways; agreements/license of occupation or titled purchase. Alternative methods of construction and material alternatives must be considered for the transmission pipelines.

Challenges on regional water projects range from ‘political' to technical, including consensus building, financing, water rates, regulatory, water quality, land acquisition, and constructability. Once all these challenges are met and water is flowing, all stakeholders are invariably pleased with the outcome and recognize the value of regional co-operation. For more information on Associated Engineering's Regional Water Services contact Blair Birch at birchb@ae.ca.