From solar panels that produce water to ‘self-filling’ coffee machines and water coolers, technology companies are putting a new spin on a centuries-old technique.
In the dry, desert air of Las Vegas, it seems strange to be talking about a plentiful source of water all around us.
Southern Nevada is in the grip of one of the worst droughts it has experienced in recorded history, leading to water shortages and restrictions on use. So, in water-stressed areas such as this, the prospect of wringing water from thin air is an appealing prospect. And it is exactly what Cody Friesen is trying to do.
Friesen, an associate professor of materials science at Arizona State University, has developed a solar-powered hydropanel that can absorb water vapour at high volumes when exposed to sunlight.
It is a modern-day twist on an approach been used for centuries to pull water from the atmosphere, such as using trees or nets to “catch” fog in Peru, a practice that dates back to the 1500s and is still being used today.
Amid the flashy transparent televisions and electric vehicles at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, there were a few start-ups claiming to have new ways of exploiting this ancient, and often overlooked source of clean drinking water. And with the help of artificial intelligence, they’re finding ways of pulling even more water out of the air.
Friesen founded his own company Zero Mass Water in 2014 following his research on solar-powered hydropanels. Today the company is called Source Global, operates in more than 50 countries and has a private valuation of more than $1bn (£800m).
The panels work by using sunlight to power fans that pull air into the device, which contains a desiccant material which absorbs and traps moisture. The water molecules accumulate and are emitted as water vapour as the solar energy raises the temperature of the panel to create a high-humidity gas. This then condenses into a liquid before minerals are added to make it drinkable.
“That’s how we’re able to create water in most places in the world, even when it’s very dry,” says Friesen. “We’re headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is sub-5% relative humidity in the summer and we’re still making water. It’s a uniquely efficient and low-cost approach that enables us to go places where nobody else can go.”
Friesen’s goal is to democratise access to water for people with few options, such as rural and tribal communities that don’t have electricity, and regions devastated by natural disasters. Among Source’s customers is a sub-Saharan school in Africa where girls once had to trek for hours a day to find fresh water, and now can spend their time learning instead.
A panel costs about $2,000 (£1,500) and lasts at least 15 years, according to Friesen. But advancements in artificial intelligence have taken yields to the next level with constant monitoring of data in terms of changing conditions, humidity, temperatures, sunlight and usage to extract the maximum amount of water, says Adam Sharkawry of Material Impact, a venture capital company that has invested in Source Global.
“These panels are constructed to create four to five litres of drink per panel per day,” he says. “But with AI and machine learning algorithms, these numbers can go much higher, maybe aspiring towards seven, eight, nine. That makes it even more effective and more cost efficient.” Yield however is highly-dependent on weather patterns and sun exposure, caveated Source.
Friesen believes his hydropanels could even make drinking water one day available on Mars where the atmosphere averages 1% water vapour. “You’d have to engineer it differently, but there is no reason why you couldn’t take that water vapor, absorb it into a material that would be appropriate for that atmosphere, and then use the power of the Sun to respire that water vapour and produce liquid water,” he says.
Coffee wizardry
There are some who are looking to use similar techniques to appeal to a very different market. Water dispenser company Kara Water made a splash at CES winning an innovation award last year with a $4,899 (£3,800) designer water cooler they say produces up to 10 litres of water a day by using desiccants to pull moisture from the air.
In 2024, the start-up introduced the Kara Pod, a coffee machine they claim can brew a bottomless cup by continuously refilling itself with water extracted from the air.
Source Global and Kara Water are not alone in their pursuit of air-to-water solutions. In other parts of the world, considerable competition is brewing. Canadian company Rainmaker is marketing products that can harvest up to 20,000 litres per unit per day. Austria’s Phantor–Imhotep Industries says it can get 10,000 litres a day. Atmospheric Water Solutions has an air-to-water dispenser that is also an air purifier and dehumidifier. Atmospark is even marketing a mobile device for water-on-the-go, while rivals Watergen have their own device coming soon.
It’s too early to say whether these devices will live up to their promise, but the prospect of a truly bottomless cup is hard not to find appealing.
In winter 2021, more than 150,000 people living in Jackson, Miss., were left without running water.
Faucets were dry or dribbling a muddy brown. For weeks, people across the city lost the water they normally relied on to drink, cook and bathe. With no way to flush their toilets, some parents sent their children into the woods to relieve themselves. Businesses closed. Mississippi’s capital effectively shut down.
The following year, at the height of Mississippi’s sweltering summer in August 2022, it would all happen again.
Each time Jackson faced a water crisis, local and state leaders cast blame in familiar directions. Lawmakers criticized city officials for ignoring leaky pipes and failing to collect payments from customers. City officials pointed to Jackson’s shrinking population and decades of economic decline. And they said state officials, mostly white and Republican, had starved the mostly Black, Democratic city of resources.
But the final blow was delivered by Siemens, a giant German corporation that had swept into town in 2010, boldly promising to install modern water meters that would boost revenues and return Jackson’s water system to a moneymaking enterprise that could afford to fix its crumbling infrastructure.
Siemens, better known for building power plants and high-speed trains, failed to deliver on its promises. Jackson found itself with many meters that didn’t work and wildly inaccurate water bills it couldn’t collect.
Siemens returned the $90 million it had been paid for the project. But the damage was done. Jackson was out more than $450 million in fees and lost revenue. It had no way to repair failing equipment and aging pipes that left city water unsafe to drink and ultimately led to a federal takeover of the water system in December 2022.
The outlines of Siemens’s role in Jackson’s water issues were laid out publicly in 2019, when the city sued the company. But Jackson was not the only Mississippi city that fell victim to the promise of easy money.
A yearlong New York Times investigation, drawing on thousands of pages of government records and interviews with city officials across the state, reveals how Siemens and other corporations went from one small, cash-strapped town to the next making grand promises to modernize water systems and boost revenues. It also sheds new light on the involvement of a state agency that was supposed to vet the deals.
In town after town, salesmen lured city officials who had little expertise in water meters with gee-whiz technology and complicated cost-saving algorithms. They said the meters could be installed at no cost to taxpayers and offered cash-back guarantees.
Even when meters started failing in large numbers and cities complained they were on the verge of financial disaster, the companies kept selling their services.
For nearly a decade, three companies — Siemens; the Mississippi-based McNeil Rhoads, started by a former Siemens salesman, Chris McNeil; and the North Carolina water meter manufacturer Mueller — crisscrossed the state signing multimillion-dollar deals in cities desperate for money.
Mr. McNeil pitched most of the deals, first for Siemens, then for his own company. He claimed that Mueller’s “smart” meters would be so accurate and efficient they would more than pay for themselves. In accordance with state policy at the time, every project was reviewed by the Mississippi Development Authority, an agency run by executives appointed by the governor.
From 2009 to 2017, at least 10 Mississippi cities signed contracts with the companies to install smart meters or other new technology. All but one have reported problems, and at least four have sued to recoup money they paid to Siemens, McNeil Rhoads or Mueller. Three of those suits are still pending.
Siemens and McNeil Rhoads, competitors that pitched the projects and acted as project managers, hired contractors who installed many meters improperly, according to officials in Jackson, McComb and Moss Point. In some cities, the two companies also struggled to link meters to the home office or to merge a new billing system with an old one.
Officials in at least eight Mississippi cities said they had problems with Mueller’s smart meters, which sometimes didn’t measure accurately because of faulty parts or batteries that died sooner than promised. Water departments in other states, including California and Missouri, have reported similar problems with Mueller meters over the past decade.
McComb, a city of 12,000 people south of Jackson, signed the first Siemens water meter contract in Mississippi. Mayor Quordiniah N. Lockley, city manager at the time, said McComb agreed to pay the company $10 million to install 6,000 smart Master Meters.
But contract workers hired by Siemensput them in backward and missed deadlines to install the antennas that the meters needed to communicate with a central office, Mr. Lockley said. Then some customers saw their water bills hit as much as $1,000 per month, with no obvious explanation.
Mr. Lockley said he called a friend, whom he declined to name, on the Jackson City Council and warned him not to go forward with the developing Siemens deal there.
He said he had one message: “Run.”
“Just because they come in a suit and tie doesn’t mean they’re not selling snake oil,” Mr. Lockley said in an interview.
Even as lawsuits and complaints from customers mounted, the companies continued making the same promises, and state and city officials continued approving contracts.
Jackson ultimately signed a deal with Siemens to install Mueller meters, the largest contract in the city’s history. Officials in Cleveland, a small city in the Mississippi Delta, inked a deal with Siemens for Mueller meters as well. Columbus, Meridian and Moss Point — all largely Black cities of fewer than 35,000 people — hired McNeil Rhoads to install Mueller meters.
Officials in some of the cities say they have been financially crippled.
In a letter to the development authority and the state attorney general, Jamie Lee, the city attorney for Cleveland, wrote that hundreds of meters were malfunctioning and the issue “could lead Cleveland into a major financial deficit if not addressed immediately.” She asked for “the assistance of your two offices in achieving a resolution with Siemens.”
Ms. Lee said she never received a response.
n a statement that did not address complaints by other Mississippi cities, a Siemens spokeswoman, Annie Satow, said the company had invested significant work in Jackson to “help navigate persistent challenges outside the company’s control,” including “substantial assistance beyond contractual requirements” with the billing system.
“Siemens acted in good faith, worked cooperatively with city personnel and was transparent and responsive to oversight by the city’s administration and Department of Public Works,” she wrote.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson said that while he couldn’t discuss the specifics of the deal, Siemens was not entirely to blame. Jackson, he said, willingly entered into a bad agreement. He declined to elaborate, and his office did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Since the federal takeover, which came with an infusion of $600 million and a third-party manager to run the water system, leaks are being repaired and citywide boil-water notices have drastically diminished.
Mr. McNeil did not return numerous calls seeking comment. A Mueller spokesman and other executives did not respond to repeated calls and emails.
Records show that Siemens and Mueller made attempts to replace or repair some meters in the cities where problems arose, but the cities still lost money and some, including Jackson, McComb and Moss Point, had to pay to replace meters or other technology on their own.
Reached by phone, Glenn McCullough, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority from 2015 to 2020, said he had not been aware of widespread problems with Siemens, McNeil Rhoads or Mueller. He referred questions to the agency’s spokeswoman, Tammy Craft, who declined to comment.
“We can’t speak on this any further, since no one involved in reviewing these contracts back-when is at M.D.A. anymore,” Ms. Craft wrote.
But she noted that in 2017, state lawmakers passed a bill ending M.D.A.’s oversight of such contracts.
A promising solution for an ailing system
At the time Jackson was considering a deal with Siemens, the water industry was in the midst of a major transition. New technologies had made it possible for sensors to more accurately measure water use. Smart meters could eliminate the need for meter readers to visit homes to calculate people’s water bills, a huge potential savings for utility departments.
Manufacturers, including Mueller, saw the technology as a critical part of their future. But only if they could convince municipal water departments it was worth spending millions of dollars to replace old equipment. In financial statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015, Mueller described water utilities as slow adopters of the technology because of installation costs.
The water industry found a solution in the growing effort to make public agencies and schools more energy-efficient.
As far back as the 1980s, the federal government had been supporting partnerships with private companies to retrofit buildings with more efficient equipment.
Under energy performance contracts, municipalities could borrow money and use it to hire private contractors to replace old light fixtures, air-conditioning units and other appliances. Savings from lower electric bills would then be used to pay off the debt, allowing cities to invest in improvements at no real cost to taxpayers.
The contracts had made Siemens tens of millions of dollars in Mississippi alone and allowed a financially struggling state to afford equipment upgrades that otherwise might have been out of reach.
Then, two years before Siemens pitched a plan to help Jackson fix its ailing water system, the Mississippi attorney general’s office issued an opinion that helped pave the way for even more ambitious projects.
In 2008, the office reviewed the state statute governing energy performance contracts and concluded that cities and school districts could use them to finance projects that conserved water, not just energy.
An opportunity ‘too good to pass up’
In 2009, a decade before Jackson officials sued Siemens over failed meters, the company signed its first water contract in the state in tiny McComb.
McComb had boomed as a railroad city in the 1870s, carved out of a dense pine forest about halfway between Jackson and New Orleans.
Today it resembles a lot of small Mississippi towns: Its shrinking population is almost 75 percent Black. One in three people live under the poverty line. A downtown resurgence has begun, but money for civic improvements is in short supply.
So when Siemens offered a way to fill city coffers through the water department, the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.
According to Mr. Lockley, Siemens told city officials they would be able to disconnect someone’s water with the touch of a button while sitting in their office. New smart meters would measure water use remotely and more accurately.
Siemens said the meters would boost revenues by more than $600,000 a year, sales materials show. And city officials believed McComb would be “one of the top water departments in the state,” Mr. Lockley recalled.
McComb paid Siemens to replace 6,000 water meters, but computer software glitches and delays in installing communication antennae left the city unable to monitor water usage remotely, Mr. Lockley said. Residents also began complaining of erroneous water bills.
When McComb tried to cancel the contract, Siemens sued and the case went to mediation. To get out of the contract, McComb agreed to pay for the meters already in the ground at a cost of $2 to $3 million, Mr. Lockley said. Then the city hired another company to install software that allowed the meters to function.
Mr. Lockley said he has never spoken publicly about the settlement before because he signed a nondisclosure agreement.
“They tie your hands, say you can’t talk about the situation, and it just keeps happening,” Mr. Lockley said.
Jackson’s crippling ‘sweetheart deal’
Even as problems arose in McComb, Mr. McNeil used the city as a selling point to win new business for Siemens.
He and a fellow salesman, Dusty Rhoads, the son of the mayor of nearby Flowood, traveled the state, pitching similar contracts to financially strapped towns. They eventually left Siemens and started their own company, McNeil Rhoads, signing smart meter contracts with at least six cities.
When pitching to Cleveland, Mr. McNeil, representing Siemens, noted the McComb contract in a sales presentation, city records show. Savings were “guaranteed,” his slide show said. If they fell short, “we will write you a check for the difference.” The statement was followed by eight exclamation points.
In September 2010, Mr. McNeil sent the first in a series of emails to the Public Works Department in Jackson. He had a plan to replace the city’s water meters and make critical repairs to its infrastructure. The project would create jobs, he promised, and the new meters would cover the cost of installation — or else the company would.
Mr. McNeil pursued Jackson officials for two years and backed up his cost-saving claims with a Siemens-funded study of the meters. All of this, he said, had already been done down the road in McComb.
By the end of 2012, Jackson was on the verge of signing a $90 million deal that the city would later estimate cost it $450 million in expenses and lost revenues.
Based on an email Mr. McNeil sent to Jackson’s public works director then, Dan Gaillet, at least one Jackson official was aware of the project in McComb. But Mr. Lockley said no one called him about it and his warning was ignored.
Problems emerged just weeks into the Jackson project. A politically connected subcontractor, hired by Siemens at the recommendation of city officials, had installed some meters improperly, and later, there were communication errors between the meters and receivers. Some meters showed customers not using any water, while others got huge bills that city officials said were implausible.
Unable to calculate realistic bills, Jackson officials stopped collecting from thousands of customers.
The loss of revenue exacerbated years of neglect and poor decision-making and left the water department in dire financial straits and residents facing a near continuous string of boil-water notices. City officials would later accuse subcontractors involved with the project of contributing to the problems, something they deny.
A former Jackson councilman, Melvin Priester, was elected after the city had signed the deal but before groundbreaking had begun. He voiced his objections but was in the minority.
Siemens got a “sweetheart deal,” Mr. Priester told The Times, but “when you are in bad straits like the City of Jackson is now and was in 2013, all of your options are bad deals.”
Calls for help went unanswered
The Mississippi Development Authority, which greenlit the project, was created in 2000 as an economic engine for the state. It directs tax credits to attract companies and gives out millions of dollars in grants to spur revitalization efforts.
As far back as 2010, it also played a role in reducing local energy and water use.
If a city wanted to borrow against future savings for a retrofit project, it had to submit a request to the development authority. State law required the authority to review and approve each contract to “assure that entities can rely upon projected and guaranteed energy savings,” according to policies that were in effect until 2017.
The reviews, conducted by licensed engineers outside the authority, were seen as a critical backstop by city officials, who often lacked the expertise or resources to verify companies’ promises.
“M.D.A. legitimized it,” said Amy St. Pe’, Moss Point’s city attorney, who is suing McNeil Rhoads and Mueller. “Any doubts that we had, when we saw that M.D.A. was backing the program, we felt that it had to be good for the city.”
During a sales pitch, Mr. McNeil cited the agency’s approval process to dispel naysayers in Harrison County, a Gulf Coast community that was considering a project with his company. At a September 2014 meeting, the board of supervisors worried that the county could be left millions in debt if the savings didn’t pan out, according to an article in The Biloxi Sun Herald. Mr. McNeil responded by saying the project was “100 percent regulated by the Mississippi Development Authority,” and the board voted unanimously in favor.
Records show the agency often engaged in back-and-forth with cities seeking approval of the contracts. No application prompted more scrutiny than Jackson’s.
When the development authority reviewed Siemens’s proposal, it raised more than 200 questions, asking how the work being described could possibly save the city money. Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. sent a 19-page reply that answered and largely dismissed those concerns. One week later, in March 2013, the agency signed off on the contract.
From 2009 to 2017, at least 12 cities pursued energy performance contracts that the agency reviewed, a number of them involving water projects.
Companies pitching the work came up with predicted cost savings using their own methods, records show. Siemens’s estimate, for example, depended largely on how much more accurate new meters would be than old meters. But nowhere in the state’s analysis did engineers ask Siemens or the other companies to prove their calculations.
In a review of hundreds of pages of correspondence between the agency and local officials, The Times did not find a single instance when state officials passed on information about problems cities were experiencing with Siemens, McNeil Rhoads or Mueller.
In fact, when cities directly reported problems and begged the agency for help, they found themselves on their own.
Ms. Lee, the Cleveland city attorney, said she, the mayor and at least two aldermen sought guidance from the agency to no avail.
Ms. Lee wrote her letter in May 2018. A year later, in August 2019, when the city was already embroiled in a lawsuit with Siemens and Mueller, Alderman Gary Gainspoletti sent another letter, pleading with officials as the city was trying to “stop the bleeding.”
An agency official acknowledged receipt, but help never came.
Mr. McCullough, the agency’s executive director at the time, said, “I don’t recall seeing any document regarding defective water meters coming to my desk.”
Warning signs emerge nationwide
For years as companies installed Mueller meters across Mississippi, the meter manufacturer was aware of problems with its products in other states, including California and Missouri.
In 2012, the same year Cleveland was putting faulty water meters in the ground and Jackson was signing its contract, Mueller alerted a water authority in Missouri that some meters had defective magnets that would break, preventing them from recording water consumption, according to a regulatory report. The water authority returned the meters to Mueller for repair.
Years later, a federal class action lawsuit filed in New York by a Mueller shareholder alleged that executives had “misled the investing public” by not being honest about the failure rate of smart meters. The suit was dismissed in 2020, but sworn statements by three confidential informants suggested that Mueller was struggling with high failure rates as early as 2013.
That is when San Diego officials realized that a connection problem was preventing many of the meters from recording data, according to one of the witnesses, described in the suit as a regional manager for Mueller. Residents complained for years of abnormally high bills. The same issues would arise in Jackson and other Mississippi cities.
The suit also pointed out problems that year in Missouri. Mueller replaced nearly 80 percent of water meters in Chillicothe after moisture was found in parts that were supposed to be dry. By 2019, because of battery issues, the replacement meters had a failure rate of 89 percent.
The largest investigation into Mueller by a public utility would unfold in the state. From 2012 to 2015, Missouri American Water installed thousands of Mueller meters. Regulators reported that the meters had “several different kinds of defects,” leading to inaccurate readings or none at all. In August 2015, the utility began a costly campaign to replace 24,000 of the nearly 100,000 that had been installed.
All the while, Mueller was touting its smart meters as a critical driver of growth and telling investors that municipal governments would increasingly seek out the new technology.
‘They preyed on disadvantaged cities’
Mr. McNeil continued to push Mueller meters. After winning Siemens the Jackson contract, he started his own company and used the meters in energy performance contracts he landed across Mississippi — in Columbus, Gautier, Grenada, Meridian, Moss Point and Tupelo.
Seven years after signing in 2014, Columbus Light and Water Department reported excessive failure rates and began pressing Mueller to make good on an extended warranty it had promised. Early on, the company was responsive, answering emails and sending a batch of parts, according to department records. But when complaints continued, Mueller employees stopped answering the department’s questions, said Mike Bernsen, the utility’s interim general manager in 2021.
“We played it through the channels as far as we could.” Mr. Bernsen said.
Frustrations with getting Mueller officials to respond continued into 2022, emails show. In a series of emails early that year, department officials asked Mueller for a meeting to discuss the increasing number of failing meters, but after weeks without an answer, they concluded the company was avoiding them.
Moss Point, signing with McNeil Rhoads in 2017, discovered problems almost immediately, according to Ms. St. Pe’, the city attorney. Residents’ bills were improbably high, and Mueller initially offered batches of replacement devices.
But then, once the city filed suit, the company claimed it was under no obligation to replace the meters because the city had bought them from McNeil Rhoads, not directly from Mueller. Mueller stopped responding and McNeil Rhoads went out of business, leaving Moss Point with little financial recourse, Ms. St. Pe’ said.
“McNeil Rhoades is who convinced us to purchase these water meters,” she said. “I feel like they preyed on disadvantaged cities, predominantly African American cities.”
Out of the six known cities that hired McNeil Rhoads, four are majority Black.
Mueller may have stopped replying to Columbus and Moss Point, but a sales representative, John Flynn, was still pushing updated meters in Tupelo last June.
In an email to Chris Lewis, the local utility’s superintendent, he asked if the city wanted to “try some of our new meters.” Mr. Lewis said he would take five. Mr. Flynn said they come eight to a box.
Water samples collected by Pittsboro officials Friday morning show that a slug of 1,4-dioxane is just beginning to reach the town’s drinking water intake on the Haw River. Officials detected 3.07 parts per billion of the toxic chemical in raw water collected from its intake, Pittsboro spokesman Colby Sawyer wrote in a press release. The chemical was not detected at five other sampling points throughout the town, including in its finished water. “The Town is cautiously optimistic about these results, as they indicate that the Town’s response plan to 1,4 dioxane events successfully maintained our water supply while limiting the uptake of the substance into our water distribution system,” Sawyer wrote.
The City of Burlington, upstream on the Haw from Pittsboro, reported Wednesday afternoon that it had discovered a spike of 1,4-dioxane in a wastewater sample taken early Tuesday. Burlington has since indicated that it believes Apollo Chemical, a local company whose wastewater goes to the South Burlington Wastewater Treatment Plant, could be the source of the chemical. The Environmental Protection Agency has called 1,4-dioxane a probable human carcinogen. The chemical is used as an industrial solvent and stabilizer. North Carolina has set a target level of 0.35 ppb in drinking water sources. The Burlington wastewater sample found 545 ppb. In an effort to avoid drawing 1,4-dioxane into the town’s water system, Pittsboro is urging its residents and water customers to avoid non-essential uses. That means avoid washing cars, watering lawns or running partial loads in dishwashers or washing machines until the chemical has entirely passed by the town. “The Town will not draw additional water until our water supply reaches its minimum limit, and only enough to maintain daily use will be pulled,” Sawyer wrote. Drinking water that has been treated via reverse osmosis and with ultraviolet filtration is available for free at Chatham Marketplace, 480 Hillsboro St., Pittsboro. Those interested are asked to bring their own jugs and bottles from home and can use code 64261 to fill containers for free. Pittsboro expects to receive additional test results Monday afternoon or Tuesday, Sawyer wrote. Those tests will provide information about whether the chemical made its way into Pittsboro’s system and whether concentrations are rising or falling.
Portugal’s caretaker government has ordered cuts to the amount of water used in farmland irrigation and in urban environments including hotels in the tourism-dependent southern region of Algarve, where a severe drought has nearly emptied reservoirs.
Across the Iberian peninsula, Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia is suffering its worst drought on record and authorities in the greater Barcelona area said on Thursday they would reduce water pressure in some towns’ supply systems.
Portugal’s Environment Minister Duarte Cordeiro said late on Wednesday agricultural irrigation in the region will have to drop by an average of 25% from last year’s levels, but the cuts could reach as much as 50% around certain dam reservoirs with less water.
Urban consumers, including golf courses and hotels, will face cuts of 15%.
“Algarve reservoirs are at their lowest levels ever. If nothing was done in relation to moderation on the consumption side, we would reach the end of 2024 without water for public supply,” he said.
Water reservoirs in mainland Portugal are 73% full on average, with some in the north at capacity as a result of heavy rains, while in the Algarve they are on average only 25% full, with some as low as 8%-15%, compared to 45% a year ago, he said.
A 2022 study showed that climate change had already left the Iberian peninsula at its driest in 1,200 years.
Meanwhile, Catalan authorities this week warned that new emergency restrictions, of up to 80% for agricultural water usage, would be imposed once the region’s overall reservoirs level reaches 16%. Reservoirs are now just 16.2% full.
Filling empty swimming pools will be banned, including for tourism facilities. For outdoor pools, clubs will be obliged to shut all their showers. Beach showers will also be shut.
Those breaching the restrictions will be fined up to 3,000 euros in the Barcelona area.
In the southern region of Andalusia, officials on Thursday said there would be water restrictions in big cities such as Seville, Cordoba or Malaga by the summer in the absence of substantial rain before then. Water pressure has already been reduced at night in some towns.
The Panama Canal’s toll revenues have dipped by about $100 million per month since last October, the canal’s administrator said on Wednesday, adding that if the trend continues reduced income from tolls could total some $700 million by around April.
The falling revenue stems from drought conditions that have forced the canal’s managers to impose shipping restrictions on the more than century-old waterway, a key global trade route linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
The canal’s fiscal year begins in October, and runs through September.
Canal Administrator Ricaurte Vasquez described the continued trend of falling toll revenue in coming months as “possible,” in comments to reporters at a press conference.
He added that the waterway expects to nonetheless meet targets set out in its budget for income for the fiscal year, in part due to a recent toll increase that have come into effect.
With more than 50% of the United States experiencing some level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor as of Jan. 17, 2024, it’s increasingly important that people think about how they use their water resources. Although homes aren’t the only source of water waste, they can be a pretty big one, and if you also live in a drought-prone area, the way you manage water in your home matters.
Do you know what to look for in a water-efficient home?
Where We Waste the Most Water
Going about your day, you probably don’t think twice about the water you use. Whether that’s flushing the toilet, running the dishwasher or watering the plants, every extra drop of water you use in your home is one that your area may need during a drought. With long-term droughts occurring across the nation, it matters when we waste. But where do we waste the most water?
“The bathroom tends to waste the most water since most daily routines start and end in that space, causing a significant amount of waste,” says Emily Martis, group product manager for Smart Kitchen and Bath at Moen in Berea, Ohio. “From taking long showers, the toilet running and being flushed consistently, faucets being left on for brushing your teeth, shaving and washing hands, the water usage for the household adds up very quickly.”
But water waste can be anywhere, and if you’re trying to make your home more efficient, it may pay to monitor your home’s water usage more closely. If you’re considering selling your home and you’re in a drought-prone area, this can help you make valuable upgrades before you put it on the market, and if not, you’ll see huge savings on your water bill.
“By monitoring water usage, homeowners can easily see where they are wasting water in the different areas of the home, so they can find ways to remedy their habits,” Martis says. “For example, if you’re overwatering the lawn, you can invest in upgrading to smart sprinkler controllers and add smart wireless soil sensors to get an accurate read on each zone for precise watering habits while automatically factoring in restrictions within drought-prone locations.”
What to Look for In Water-Efficient Homes
If you’re shopping for a home that’s water-efficient, you have to look at the whole package, not just the bathroom. There are so many ways that water can be wasted, especially in a drought-prone area, that it can be overwhelming.
“There are two areas that I would suggest buyers look for water efficiency: inside and outside,” says Neil Brooks, a real estate agent with My Home Group and an agent within the Veterans United Realty Network in Scottsdale, Arizona. Although that might not sound like sage advice at the outset, it highlights the many places that water efficiency can be improved.
Brooks recommends choosing homes with equipment like hot water recirculating systems or instant hot water pumps, newer water-saving appliances, dual flush toilets, drip irrigation systems and pools with covers. He advises buyers to steer clear of water softeners and reverse osmosis systems since they can use a lot of water that ends up going to waste.
This advice is useful for homebuyers and homeowners, since anyone can make adjustments to make homes more efficient in these areas. And, whether you’re buying or simply need help rooting out inefficiency, a home inspection can make a huge difference.
“The home inspection will uncover inefficient appliances, water leaks and more,” says Brooks. “As part of that inspection, the buyer should get a copy of the previous 12 months of utility bills, including the water bill, to get a clear picture of the water situation with the house. But home inspections are for more than just new homebuyers; sellers should also conduct one.”
What About Grass and Landscaping?
For many people, their first thought when it comes to water efficiency is to remove their grass, plants and other things that need regular watering. The problem is by removing the grass and plants in your yard, you’re removing protection from the sun, which can increase the heat in the yard and lead to more evaporation and higher air conditioning use, which isn’t a better deal for the environment overall.
“What people forget is that plants and grass are a cooling agent to the soils and the things around us,” says Kody Ketterling, founder and landscape expert at K-IT Products in Twin Falls, Idaho. “If you remove the grass around your house and just have a yard that’s rock or cement, it’s going to be anywhere from 15 to 30 degrees warmer all the time. Instead of doing that, you can be more efficient with your sprinkler usage. Having an irrigation expert look at your setup can reveal inefficiencies with the timer or sprinklers you’re using. Smart controllers can reduce your water usage significantly by watering based on your lawn’s needs and the weather conditions.”
Another tip Ketterling gives his clients is to mow their lawns higher than they might think is necessary. His company cuts grass at a 3-inch height in the summertime to reduce evaporation, which he says can reduce water use by as much as 20%. He also recommends adding pressure regulators to hose bibs, which can additionally reduce the water your hose uses from 30 to 40 gallons per minute to just 15 to 25, depending on the regulator you install. It will still provide the water you need without wasting the water that you don’t.
Is it Worth Investing In a Water-Efficient Home?
If you already live in a drought-prone area, a water-efficient home can more than pay for itself when it’s time to sell. Being on a municipal water source is also incredibly helpful.
“Water efficiency does impact the value of homes in my area, especially a home on a private or shared well,” says Brooks. “Homes on a well are more challenging to sell because of the uncertainty of the continued flow of water. We’ll go dry in Arizona, and you can’t guarantee that you’ll strike water by drilling a new well.”
In other parts of the country, a water-efficient home may be ahead of its time, but as droughts get longer and worse, you may find significant benefit in bad years from having a water-efficient home. Other tools, like leak detectors, serve double-duty, ensuring that leaks are caught quickly to save water and prevent serious damage inside walls.
Smart leak detectors, Martis explains, work in the background all the time, constantly checking the pressure of the water system to ensure all is as it’s expected to be. If the pressure drops unexpectedly, these devices can alert you to a problem immediately, so you can address the issue. Some types of water monitors even monitor your water usage and automatically shut off in case of an issue. It’s a lot of useful data for a homeowner who is looking to improve their water usage.
With all the talk of energy-efficiency in homes right now, we tend to forget about water. But water is vital to our survival as a species, and it’s getting harder and harder to find in some areas. The time to prepare for a drought is long before one hits.
Six consecutive years of drought have left Moroccan dams at critical levels, prompting a big drop in the area of land being irrigated, Morocco’s water and agriculture ministers said.
By mid-January, Morocco’s average dam filling rate had dropped to 23.2% from 31.5% a year earlier, water minister Nizar Baraka told a meeting on Tuesday, according to a royal palace statement.
Rainfall was 70% lower than in an average year, he said.
The country’s second biggest dam, Al Masira, which serves the economic hub of Casablanca, is almost empty.
The worst drought in more than two decades prompted authorities to ban the use of drinking water to clean streets or irrigate parks in cities and to stop dam water being used to irrigate some key farming areas.
The decision took many farmers by surprise in the area of Taroudant in the Souss region, the main source of Morocco’s fresh produce, which supplies supermarkets across Europe and is a major source of export revenue.
“Stopping dam irrigation has sapped my investments … this year’s production is in danger,” Mbark N’Ait Ali, a banana and vegetable farmer in Taroudant, said.
Wells have dried up in the area, with farmers having to dig down to 400 meters with no guarantee of finding enough water, he added.
This “violent drought” had forced a reduction in the dam-irrigated area to 400,000 hectares from 750,000 hectares before the dry spell, agriculture minister Sadiki said.
“Autumn crops are at a critical condition … we pray for rain,” he said.
The ploughed area with rain-fed cereals has dropped this year to 2.3 million hectares, from 3.65 million hectares last year, which was also a dry year, he said.
Morocco’s statistics agency expects the cereals harvest to be less than average this year, meaning more wheat imports,
As well as building waterways and new dams, Morocco plans eight new desalination plants powered by renewables.
It aims to produce 1.3 billion cubic metres of fresh water from desalination by 2035.
“We are afraid it will be too late when desalination will be ready to irrigate our farms,” said N’Ait Ali.
Hydrologists measure large amounts of water in acre-feet – an acre of water one-foot deep, or 326,000 gallons.
In an average year, 200 million acre-feet of water fall on California as rain or snow. The vast majority of it sinks into the ground or evaporates, but about a third of it finds its way into rivers. Half of that will eventually flow into the Pacific Ocean.
That leaves approximately 35-40 million acre-feet for human use, with three-quarters being applied to fields and orchards to support the state’s agricultural output, and the remaining quarter – 9-10 million acre-feet – being used for household, commercial and industrial purposes.
In other words, nearly 39 million Californians wind up using about 5% of the original precipitation to water their lawns, bathe themselves, operate toilets and cook their food.
That number is important because it is such a tiny amount, even though the state’s perennial household water conservation programs imply that taking fewer showers or reducing lawn watering will somehow solve the state’s water problems.
The ludicrous nature of those propagandistic appeals is quite evident in the state Water Resources Control Board’s new plan to force local water agencies into cutting household water use even more, no matter the multibillion-dollar cost, and with penalties if they fail to meet quotas.
The water board says the plan, which was authorized by the Legislature in 2018, would reduce household use by 440,000 acre-feet a year when fully implemented. That would be about 5% of current use, which is only about 5% of average precipitation – scarcely a drop in the bucket.
The plan is drawing some well-reasoned criticism from two independent observers, the Legislative Analyst Office, an arm of the Legislature, and the Public Policy Institute of California, the state’s premier think tank.
The LAO, in a report to the Legislature, said the plan “will create challenges for water suppliers in several key ways, in many cases without compelling justifications.”
In essence, the LAO said, local water agencies would have to jump through the state’s hoops by spending billions of dollars for a tiny reduction in overall water use that could have an adverse impact on low-income families.
The PPIC is similarly skeptical, summarizing the plan as “very high cost for little benefit.” PPIC fellows David Mitchell and Ellen Hanak also pointed out its effects on low-income communities and the difficulty it would impose on local governments’ programs to plant and maintain trees as a shield against hot summer weather.
California does indeed have a water supply problem, mostly because its political leaders for decades have failed to expand the state’s water infrastructure that had been built during the mid-20th century.
Household use is not the problem. It cannot be because it is such a tiny part of the overall water picture and actually has declined, in relative terms, as the state’s population reached 40 million, more than twice what it was when the last major water works were constructed.
The major mismatch of demand and supply occurs in the two largest categories of water use, agriculture and the environment. Agricultural water agencies and environmental groups have been jousting for decades in the Legislature, in Congress, in courts and in regulatory agencies such as the water board over how much water farmers can draw and how much should remain in rivers to protect habitat for fish and other wildlife.
That’s the issue that must be resolved by reallocating existing supplies, building new storage and/or creating new supplies, such as desalination of seawater. Spending billions of dollars to save a few gallons of household water is just an expensive exercise in virtue-signaling that accomplishes virtually nothing.
Two consecutivesummers of brutal heat and drought have left some parts of Texas with notably low water supplies going into 2024.
A wet year or a well-placed hurricane could quickly pull these regions back from the brink. But winter rains have disappointed so far. Last week’s downpours are the first in weeks for parts of the state and they won’t hit the watersheds that need them most.
Looking ahead, forecasters increasingly expect another scorching summer here this year.
That’s bad news for places like far-south Texas, where big reservoirs on the Lower Rio Grande fell from 33 percent to 23 percent full over the past 12 months. A repeat of similar conditions would leave the reservoirs far lower than they’ve ever been, triggering an emergency response and an international crisis.
“Pretty scary times,” said Jim Darling, president of the Rio Grande Regional Water Authority and former mayor of the city of McAllen. “We’ll see what happens.”
Worries stretch beyond the Rio Grande. In Corpus Christi, on the south Texas coast, authorities last month stopped releasing water aimed at maintaining minimum viable ecology in the coastal wetlands, even as oil refineries and chemical plants remain exempt from water use restrictions during drought.
Also last month, in the sprawling suburbs of Central Texas, between Austin and San Antonio, one groundwater district declared stage 4 drought for the first time in its 36-year history.
Texans don’t usually talk about drought in the winter. Damp soil and green grass may conceal the impending predicament today, but water planners in regions with low reserves nervously await what summer may bring.
“Signs are not favorable,” said Greg Waller, a coordinating hydrologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Fort Worth. “Expect warmer and drier, again.”
Winter and spring rains offer the best hope for relief, he said, but weather patterns so far haven’t produced the sustained downpours needed to refill reservoirs.
Drought conditions in 2022 and 2023 struck with markedly acute severity. Last year was the hottest on record for Texas—and the Earth, according to NOAA—after a global heat wave shattered temperature records around the world.
These patterns, Waller said, are consistent with scientific understanding of climate change caused by carbon emissions.
“Climate change means the extremes are going to get more extreme,” he said. “The heat waves are going to get more heat. The droughts are going to get droughty-er and the floods are going to get floody-er.”
Texas rainfall typically peaks in May. If relief doesn’t come by then, some places will need to start bracing for impact.
Corpus Christi: Wetlands and Refineries
Corpus Christi, with 421,000 people in its two-county metro area, sits where the Gulf Coast marshes meet the semi-arid South Texas plains. The region’s combined reservoirs dropped from 53.7 percent full in 2022 to 43.6 percent in 2023 to 30.5 percent this month.
The city announced in December that it would no longer release water from its reservoir system to support basic ecology in coastal bays and estuaries.
“Due to the ongoing drought in our water supply,” wrote a city spokesperson in a statement. “NO water is being released from Lake Corpus Christi to the Bays and Estuaries.”
Wherever Texas rivers join the sea, these once-vast wetlands host critical reproductive cycles of many aquatic species, and they depend on freshwater inflows for their characteristically half-salty, nutrient-rich systems. When water supply gets tight, the bays and estuaries typically are first to see their allocations revoked while cities keep dam gates closed.
These ecosystems, which once benefited from all the water from the formerly undammed rivers of Texas, have adapted to natural droughts. Dry years severely decrease the amount of species reproduction, but when wet weather returns, the system can usually recover within a year, according to Paul Montagna, endowed chair of hydroecology at Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi.
“However, if a system is permanently impaired it is also possible that recovery will not reach former levels,” Montagna said.
Studies suggest that systems around Corpus Christi may already be “permanently impaired,” Montagna said, largely due to a sustained lack of fresh water.
Similar problems span the lower Texas coast. The Rio Grande hasn’t flowed consistently into the Gulf of Mexico since the early 2000s. On the Colorado River, which runs through Austin, authorities have kept water releases to the coastal wetlands at a bare minimum in recent years. Jennifer Walker, director of the National Wildlife Foundation’s Texas Coast and Water Program, called it “critical life support.”
“Water to meet environmental needs is frequently the first to be negotiated away,” Walker said. “Our bays and estuaries are a hugely important part of Texas and they’re not something that would be easy to go back and fix.”
In Corpus Christi, a major refining and export hub for Texas shale oil and gas, city authorities have imposed water use restrictions on residents, with more to come if reservoir levels fall below 30 percent. But the region’s largest industrial water consumers operate unabated, thanks to a purchasable exemption from drought restrictions for industrial users—$0.25 per 1,000 gallons—passed by the city council in 2018.
That includes users like ExxonMobil’s massive new plastics plant, which is authorized to use up to 25 million gallons of water per day—a quarter of the regional summertime water demand.
“Industry can continue full bore through all of these drought stages and the estuary gets cut off early,” said a water resource consultant from Corpus Christi who requested anonymity to preserve his business relationship with the city. “I think it’s a looming disaster. They are still trying to recruit all these water-intensive industries along the coast.”
Proceeds from the exemption program were supposed to fund development of seawater desalination plants that would expand the regional water supply and meet demands of a booming industrial buildout. The first plant was initially planned to begin operations early last year, but it remains mired in challenges and years away from breaking ground. Meanwhile, the industrial buildout continues.
Central Texas: People and Grass
Two hundred miles inland, the five-county region surrounding Austin, Texas’ high-tech capital city, has grown faster than any US metro area for 12 straight years. Its water supplies haven’t.
In 2022, less water flowed into City of Austin reservoirs than ever before, city staff said at a public water task force meeting on Tuesday. Last year was only slightly better. The largest reservoir serving Austin, Lake Travis, fell from about 80 percent full in January 2022 to 38 percent full at the start of this year.
Even in another extreme drought year, Austin can avoid heightened water use restrictions, which take effect when reservoirs fall below 30 percent full, until at least July, according to a water supply outlook presented at the meeting. But the outlook stopped short of August and September, the region’s hottest and (recently) driest months.
“It’s not looking good,” said Robert Mace, director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University and a member of the water task force.
Even if levels fall below 30 percent, water users in Austin will face only minor restrictions, focused mostly on car washing and lawn irrigation. During the summer in Texas, when water consumption can double or triple over wintertime use, major cities spray most of their treated drinking water onto grass.
The problem worsens as more land converts to suburban subdivisions amid a homebuilding boom, said Todd Votteler, a water dispute consultant and editor of the Texas Water Journal, a peer-reviewed journal focused on water management and research. Texas gained more residents and built more homes than any state in recent years.
“One of the challenges is the idea for home builders and the real estate industry that all these new houses need to have beautiful green lawns,” said Votteler, who has worked at groundwater and river authorities in Central Texas since 1994. “People moving here from some place else have not lived in a region with a limited water supply.”
Around the city of Austin, a patchwork of authorities manages various aquifers and reservoirs. Last month, the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Groundwater Conservation District declared stage four drought restrictions for the first time in its 36-year history. That required the oldest communities and major companies in the district to reduce water use by 40 percent, while 16 newer permit holders were cut off entirely.
The district’s customers include the small city of Kyle, the third-fastest growing US city in 2022, plus dozens of small water companies and utility districts.
“We’ve been concerned for years. We’ve been in one stage of drought or another for well over a year and a half now,” said Tim Loftus, general manager of the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Groundwater Conservation District. “We just really need rain.”
Loftus said his customers have “risen to the occasion” and complied with cuts. Another district hasn’t been as lucky.
The neighboring Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District has fought for two years with a local subsidiary of a national investor-owned water supply company over violations of permit pumping limits, even as severe drought conditions have continued to deepen.
The company, Aqua Texas, has taken almost twice its permitted allotment for two consecutive years and has declined to abide by drought restrictions, according to Charlie Flatten, general manager of the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District. This month, Aqua sued the conservation district in federal court. Its legal brief didn’t address whether Aqua had overpumped, but accused the groundwater district of violating due process and of “unequal application of its penalty policy.” It added that “Aqua Texas has voluntarily spent millions of dollars in water conservation.” The groundwater district, in legal documents, has denied Aqua’s allegations.
“We’re already seeing wells drying up, not just in specific sections but across the district,” Flatten said. “As we continue to use water and there continues to be no recharge, more and more wells will be affected.”
Another major nearby water source, the Canyon Lake reservoir, started last year 80 percent full, surpassed its record low of 68 percent in August, and is 60 percent full today.
The Lower Rio Grande: Texas and Mexico
The biggest water problems in Texas lie along its southern border, where some 6 million people in two countries depend on the dwindling Lower Rio Grande system.
At the river’s end, amid the irrigated fields of the fertile Rio Grande Valley, farmers have lost crops midseason in recent years due to water shortages. This year, many won’t plant at all, worried they will lose the investment to another summer drought, said Darling, the Rio Grande Regional Water Authority president.
That creates a spiraling conundrum for the flourishing cities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, home to more than a million people, he said. The once-prosperous agricultural sector historically accounts for more than 80 percent of water demand here. Without its vast volumes flowing for irrigation, the region’s network of canals would almost dry up. Cities would lose more than half their water supply to evaporation and soil absorption along its 70-mile journey from the nearest reservoir.
There are two possible temporary remedies to this problem, Darling said.
One is the weather. The only other time the Rio Grande reservoirs fell as low as they have today, around 2000, a hurricane soon hit and refilled them almost entirely. A Pacific storm could also bring relief to the bulk of the Rio Grande watershed, which covers the mountains of northwestern Mexico.
Another is international politics. Because most of the water used by Texas farmers on the Lower Rio Grande originates as rainfall in Northern Mexico, a binational treaty governs water sharing between the countries.
Northern Mexico has experienced its own water crises lately, including a deadly riot at a reservoir dam in 2020 and months of water rationing in 2022 in one of the country’s largest cities. So, it’s been reluctant to release water for Texas farmers, contributing to low levels in the downstream reservoirs.
Since 2020, Mexico has fallen sharply behind on its schedule of water releases to Texas under the treaty, which was ratified in 1944. It has until the end of 2025 before it faces delinquency. But the Rio Grande Valley of Texas might not have another two years to wait, Darling said.
The political situation is managed primarily by the International Boundary and Water Commission, a small agency operated by the US and Mexico.
“We are negotiating an agreement with Mexico intended to improve the predictability and reliability of Rio Grande water deliveries,” said an agency spokesperson, Frank Fisher. “We hope this agreement will provide tools that will help users affected by supply shortages.”
North of the border, Fisher said, water restrictions will be managed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
A TCEQ spokesperson, Victoria Cann, said the agency “has warned users about declining storage and encouraged users to plan for water shortages.”
“TCEQ continues to advocate for water users on the Rio Grande by communicating to IBWC the need for Mexico to deliver on their water obligations under the 1944 Water Treaty,” Cann said.
When a toilet is flushed in California, the water can end up in a lot of places: an ice-skating rink in Ontario, ski slopes around Lake Tahoe, farmland in the central valley.
And – coming soon – kitchen faucets.
California regulators on Tuesday approved rules to let water agencies recycle wastewater and put it into the pipes that carry drinking water to homes, schools and businesses.
It’s a big step for a state that has struggled for decades to secure reliable sources of drinking water for its more than 39 million residents, and it signals a shift in public opinion on a subject that as recently as two decades ago prompted backlash that scuttled similar projects.
Since then, California has been through multiple extreme droughts, including the most recent one, which scientists say was the driest three-year period on record and left the state’s reservoirs at dangerously low levels.
“Water is so precious in California. It is important that we use it more than once,” said Jennifer West, the managing director of WateReuse California, a group advocating for recycled water.
California has been using recycled wastewater for decades. The Ontario Reign minor league hockey team has used it to make ice for its rink in southern California. Soda Springs ski resort near Lake Tahoe has used it to make snow. And farmers in the central valley, where much of the nation’s vegetables, fruits and nuts are grown, use it to water their crops.
It hasn’t been used directly for drinking water. Orange county in southern California operates a large water-purification system that recycles wastewater and uses it to refill underground aquifers. The water mingles with the groundwater for months before being pumped up and used for drinking water again.
California’s new rules would let water agencies take wastewater, treat it, and put it into the drinking water system (although not require them to). California would be just the second state to allow this, following Colorado.
It’s taken regulators more than 10 years to develop these rules, a process that included multiple reviews by independent panels of scientists. A state law required the California water resources control board to approve these regulations by 31 December – a deadline met with just days to spare.
The vote was heralded by some of the state’s biggest water agencies, which all have plans to build huge water-recycling plants in the coming years. The metropolitan water district of southern California, which serves 19 million people, aims to produce up to 150m gallons (nearly 570m litres) per day of both direct and indirect recycled water. A project in San Diego is aiming to account for nearly half the city’s water by 2035.
Water agencies will need public support to complete these projects – which means convincing customers that not only is recycled water safe to drink, but it’s not icky.
California’s new rules require the wastewater be treated for all pathogens and viruses, even if the pathogens and viruses aren’t in the wastewater. That’s different from regular water-treatment rules, which require treatment only for known pathogens, said Darrin Polhemus, the deputy director of the division of drinking water for the California water resources control board.
In fact, the treatment is so stringent it removes all the minerals that make fresh drinking water taste good – meaning they have to be added back at the end of the process.
“It’s at the same drinking water quality, and probably better in many instances,” Polhemus said.
It’s expensive and time-consuming to build these treatment facilities, so, Polhemus said, it will only be an option for bigger, well-funded cities – at least initially.
In San José, local officials have opened the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center for public tours “so that people can see that this is a very hi-tech process that ensures the water is super clean”, said Kirsten Struve, the assistant officer for the water supply division at the Santa Clara valley water district.
Right now, the agency uses the water for things like irrigating parks and playing fields. But they plan to use it for drinking water in the future.
“We live in California, where the drought happens all the time. And with climate change, it will only get worse,” Struve said. “And this is a drought-resistant supply that we will need in the future to meet the demands of our communities.”
Joaquin Esquivel, the chair of the state water resources control board, which approved the new rules on Tuesday, noted that most people are already drinking recycled water: most wastewater treatment plants put their treated water back into rivers and streams, which then flow down to the next town so they can drink it.
“Anyone out there taking drinking water downstream from a wastewater treatment plant discharge – which, I promise you, you’re all doing – is already drinking toilet-to-tap,” Esquivel said. “All water is recycled. What we have here are standards, science and – importantly – monitoring that allow us to have the faith that it is pure water.”
