 Hello. Thank you for attending this IWA webinar entitled Water Reuse in the United States, A Trend on the Ride. My name is Melissa Meeker, and I am the CEO of the Water Tower, a non-profit water innovation center located outside of Atlanta, Georgia. My roles at IWA include being on the management committee for the Water Reuse Specialist Group, a new member of the Strategic Council, and an active participant in the planning and scientific committees for our specialist group conferences. I'm so excited to be moderating this incredible panel of Water Reuse experts for you today. Next slide. This webinar is being hosted by the Water Reuse Specialist Group and is the first of a four or five part series titled, The Road to Chennai 2023. Like many, our World Congress has been postponed a few times, but we're gearing up to be in India in January of 2023. Save the date of April 26 for a webinar focused on industrial reuse. We also encourage you to join the Water Reuse Specialist Group on IWA Connect if you haven't already. Next slide, please. A little housekeeping. This webinar is being recorded and will be available on demand. You'll get an email after the presentation with all of the presentations and a link to the recording. Everyone is muted and the raise hand function will not be used today. We do encourage you to use the chat box if you have a general quest or issue. And importantly, please use the Q&A box to send us your questions. We'll try and respond either in our discussions at the end and Q&A or directly to you via the Q&A box. A transcript of these conversations will also be shared. Next slide, please. I mentioned we had an excellent panel set up today. We will start with an overview and then drill down into specifics followed by a panel discussion, hopefully fueled by your questions. Next slide, please. The panel includes Yorg-Drevet, Chief of Urban Water Systems Engineering at the Technical University of Munich. Yorg has been a leader in water reuse and is regularly tapped to provide expert assistance on innovative water reuse projects around the world. He also spent some time at Colorado School of Mines in the US and as a past chair of the Water Reuse Specialty Group. The following three women are incredible water leaders who have dedicated their career to furthering the viability of water reuse to augment water supplies from research to policy to application. I'm proud to have the opportunity to work side by side with each of them. Julie Minton is a research unit leader at the Water Research Foundation and has been responsible for managing an incredible body of research focused on water reuse, which she will be sharing with us today. Jennifer West is the Director of Water Reuse California, which is the state section of the Water Reuse Association. Water Reuse membership is utility based and Jennifer's focus has really been on securing state regulatory support and funding for water reuse projects. She will share some of this journey with us. Eva Steinling Darling is the Water Reuse Practice Lead for Corollo Engineers. Eva is a highly technical engineer who can explain things in a way that will allow all of us to get it. She's going to get into how other parts of the US are handling reuse and the latest on treatment trains, including alternatives to membranes for direct potable reuse. Next slide please. Our learning objectives, although they come out in reverse order, they're still very relevant. We're going to look at objectives around emerging practices around designing water reuse treatment schemes, the latest developments in regulation of reuse schemes, ongoing research projects and focus areas. And several of our speakers will provide examples of different full scale reuse projects. Before we turn it over to Yorg, I'd like to move to our poll. You will see us launch a poll. These are single choice or multiple choice questions. There's actually three or four of them. And you'll have until the Q&A session to respond to the poll. We'd really like this information as we go into our panel discussion now. So please take a couple seconds and complete the poll if you will. And with that, I'll turn it over to Yorg. Yeah, thank you, Melissa. And welcome also from my side. Next slide please. So I just want to give you a couple of introductory remarks and want to say that water reuse in the United States has a long tradition. It all started with the first reuse project in 1912 to irrigate Colton State Park in San Francisco. And when you look at this long list, we can definitely identify some key landmark projects both on the non-portable reuse site as well as on the portable reuse site and what we'll learn about some of them today and this where we know. These span a wide range of agriculture irrigation to landscape irrigation, other urban uses, including groundwater recharge. And in particular, we will hear today about a new trend that relates to portable reuse while there is a long experience in indirect portable use in the United States. Now there is a clear trend to also think and establish direct portable reuse. Next slide please. So the drivers in the United States for water reuse have been a lack of freshwater resources, urbanization, population growth, and more lately climate change as we also observe this in other regions. And almost all states in the United States are practicing reuse. So it's not limited to arid or semi-arid regions. It's even happening in states that might experience some seasonal and regional shortages of water, which I think is an important lesson to learn for other regions. So it's not limited to waterscares area year-round. And what you see here, some examples from Florida and California, the water reuse practices are quite diverse. So it's not just one type of a culture used, it spans to urban use, groundwater recharge, portable reuse and industrial reuse. And the chart on the right hand side illustrates the substantial growth that is occurring and we will hear more numbers here from the other panelists. You see this as a projection, which is actually on the plant side much steeper than what is actually mandated in the state of California as one example. And these are substantial reuse activities. In total volume, the state of California is reusing more water than the European Union combined. So it's certainly a leader for a long time. And I like to highlight some of the landmark projects in the United States to just give you a sense on the innovation that originated from these projects. Next slide, please. I want to start with a project that started back in 1962, using nature-based treatment, solar aquifer treatment as we call it, to recharge the local groundwater, because there was a declining groundwater tables in Southern California in the LA region. This project is still ongoing with a lot of modifications and improvements, but it's still essentially relying on nature-based treatment processes. Next slide, please. A clear leader in the industry is the Orange County Water District in Southern California. And this district established really a landmark project in the mid-70s. And for the first time employed very advanced technologies nobody else actually has used in this context at that time, including activated carbon and reverses Moses membranes. And because of these advanced technologies, they call this project Water Factory 21 with credit given to the technologies of the 21st century. Next slide. I just want to highlight some historic achievements of this particular project and others have picked on. It really has set the standard for the industry. This facility was the first to use versus Moses membranes as early as 1975, just for the record versus Moses membranes were invented 1968. So very, very early adoption of a new process in the water field, which is now commonly used actually. This project also was the first to use GCMS analysis for water reuse purposes to identify trace against the chemicals with the assistance from Stanford University in the early 80s. And it was also the first to use full scale micro filtration membranes as well as integrated membrane systems to combine MFO. And more lately, it has expanded to use a full scale UV AOP processes for advanced chemical removal. So these many of these technologies are standard today, which is really amazing that this all originated from this particular facility. Next slide please. Today it really emerged or since 2005 in what is called the ground water replenishment system using very advanced technologies and we will learn more about these from the other panelists. It's the largest indirect portable use facility with a capacity of 378,000 cubic meter per day and is currently to be expanded to even reach then by next year 492,000 cubic meter per day. Next slide. Another very important landmark project is the upper one water district in Virginia, which has for the first time used activated carbon for advanced treatment also for surface water augmentation to augment drinking water supplies. Next slide. And then finally, I also like to emphasize the diversity in processes and here you see an example from Colorado for the purée waters project Aurora water since 2010 established at full scale and here, a combination of nature based treatment processes, followed by UV AOP and activated carbon is generating a water quality that is then fed into the drinking water system in this city in Colorado. Next slide is one thing United States is not any is not adopting anytime soon. And these are metric units so in the following talks he will be exposed to units you might not be familiar with MGD, which stands for million gallons per day and just to give a sense and sense for the volume hundred MGD facility is actually treating 378,000 cubic meter per day. And you will hear about speakers talk about acre foot per year and acre foot is about 1200 cubic meter so 240,000 acre foot per year equals 790,000 cubic meter per day. And with that, I hand it back to Melissa. Thank you. Thank you, York. Our next presenter is Julie Mitten. Hello, everybody. So glad that you are joining us today. It's been so fascinating to see the chat of the worldwide participants so very happy to be here joining you from Alexandria Virginia right outside of Washington DC in the US. Next slide. I will be talking today. I'm from the water research foundation so I'm going to be giving a quick overview of the foundation. I'm going to be talking a bit about our water reuse research, mainly our portable reuse research. I'm going to introduce the environmental protection agencies, water reuse action plant something they released a couple years ago, and has been a great drive for the sector to move water use forward in the United States. And then I'm going to talk about a couple specific actions that the water use research foundation is leading. Next slide. This is a overview of our foundation. We are a subscriber based research foundation covering all topics water. We merged a couple years ago there was a merger of the wastewater recycled water and drinking water communities and so now we are one foundation the one in the United States very happy to be leading almost 300 active research projects, including federal grants and contracts from DOE, EPA, etc. a large state grant from the from California State Water Board will tell reflect on today, and many active partners. So we have a lot of research going on valued at over 82 million currently underway. So we have about 2100 subscribers, mainly utilities we are mostly United States however we are certainly worldwide and we have subscribers in Europe, Australia, all over. And so, please look up our website we have a lot of great resources. I'm going to talk a bit about our research programs. So you all can get more involved. Next slide. This gives an overview of our research programs. The blue is the research programs that the Water Research Foundation funds. We have a budget this year of $6.3 million and so you'll see a good amount of RFPs come out this year. And additionally, some other programs highlighted in in green and yellow, where we also support our subscribers, and also the Paula Bush Award is an exciting opportunity to fund young professors, which often gets their career jump started. Next slide. This reflects on our core program or research priority program. It's our flagship program 60% of our research budget goes towards it, and we are taking a new approach this year. We are organizing our research into research themes. And in about two months we will have an expert summit where experts all over the world will gather virtually and kick off. Discuss these themes, discuss subtopics under these themes, what utilities are really grappling with these days, and put forward project concepts that will eventually turn into RFPs. So again, keep an eye out for requests for proposals this summer, and we definitely welcome worldwide participation, love to see utility participation from overseas and overseas researchers. Next slide. I wanted to highlight another two two programs are tailored collaboration program of 2022 is exciting, the up to the budget to $150,000. And it's about a $1.5 million budget this year. And so you'll see the announcement for the program has gone out and pre proposals on whatever concept project concept that you would like are due in June. This does require this is a subscriber program so does require subscribers to participate and it also requires a one to one match so if you're asking for $150,000 you do need to put in $150,000 of cash, and they're on the right or just some examples of successful projects of last year. Next slide. Our unsolicited research program is another one that funds innovative concepts that come from the outside. And so it is not just for subscribers. This is this has a lot of academics. And it really is to propose on this program, and it really is to propose transformative research concepts. And so there's about $1 million of budget this year and again, the program has launched and pre proposals are due the end of next month. Next slide. Now I want to dive in a little bit to our research program. Next. Again, similar to what your was talking about, we're all about fit for purpose research. And so here you'll see the research that we cover everything from non potable to potable. As you as you see, you know within increased treatment and monitoring you can have a higher end use that requires a higher quality water. And interestingly, we kind of progressed in this order throughout the decades. You know, back in the 90s, it was it was mostly non potable reuse research, a bit of indirect for reuse. And now in the last five, seven years, it's really been pushing direct potable reuse forward so it's been a really exciting advancement that that you know we've seen for decades. And over the last several decades, what a research foundation that's funded over a million dollars in reuse specific research so some great wealth of immigration on her website. Next slide. This again shows the potable reuse continuous continuum so just indicating with with advanced with more treatment adding on. We're moving to a higher degree of treated water and, and a different degree of use and so moving from groundwater recharge to surface water augmentation both examples of direct indirect for use to raw water augmentation and drinking water augmentation. That is something that I'll have so is exploring now. And those two are direct potable reuse applications. Next slide. So we've been very happy about our partnership with the California State Water Board. They've really come a long way in advancing potable reuse and specifically direct potable reuse. We've had a long start long standing partnership with which really allowed us to join with them in a partnership and and receive a grant in 2018. And it was all in a result of legislation in California that Jennifer West is going to talk more about, but it essentially established a deadline to develop direct potable reuse research regulations by the end of next year. And so they funded us Water Research Foundation to gather expert teams to take on these five research topics concerning barriers to potable or direct potable reuse concerning pathogens and chemicals. And so we, it's about $2 million worth of research that is allowing California and the expert panel assembled there to understand what kind of regulations they should establish to regulate direct potable reuse. Next slide. So those those projects I should say are complete and all available on our website. And so please do take a look there. It's a it's a great wealth of information. We also have a second second grant which is still underway. We have 20 projects currently underway with the State Water Board valued at over $3 million. And this is really to advance both potable and non potable research you see on the left the potable reuse research, it's one project on source control three on implementation, seven on monitoring and treatment. And so collectively they're awesome projects to again pave the way for California and the rest of the country and world to understand obstacles to potable reuse and really overcome those barriers. And then additionally there's non potable reuse research going on in the agriculture reuse and industrial reuse topic as well as understanding potential water quantity in California specifically. Next slide. But be quick on these two slides we we also water research foundation is is funding a couple projects on on monitoring specifically to really understand water quality monitoring tools that are available out there today, and needs and gaps to really be able to advance the reuse water field. And this is a project underway right now we had a survey released a couple months ago. And this one is underway and led by Bill Becker of Hazen and University Colorado Boulder. Next slide. Another field that's underway that I believe Eva will talk more about is optimizing treatment that is not necessarily dependent on reverse osmosis. So optimizing carbon based advanced treatment for potable reuse. And so, there's project that is soon to launch in the next couple months, really trying to develop alternative cheaper and non run brine generating processes so folks don't need an ocean up all of the, you know, inland communities can practice potable reuse. Next slide. So lastly I want to hit on the environmental protection agencies great work and our involvement in that. Next slide. This is a general scheme on what the national water reuse action plan is. It's basically a beautiful gathering of a whole lot of wonderful partners who are coming together to advance reuse. There really is a huge community I think there are over 100 partners involved. There's a great website that they have with an online platform that really monitors each and every one of the, I think almost 50 actions at this point, and they really are to advance whatever from agricultural to understanding financial barriers, institutional capacities, advancing communication tools, and really, you know, really gathers practitioners, academics, foundations, associations to help overcome some some challenges, and to really prove and and support water reuse as being a resilient, sustainable supply for for us in the United States and across the world. Next slide. These are the two actions that water research Foundation are taking on one on developing a coordinated national research strategy, and another to identify and advance monitoring practices. These are our partners that are helping us do so. Next slide. This is the monitoring one. We have several projects underway they're going to help feed into this goal and this action that we have with with EPA. I think that that project that I mentioned that bill thicker becker is is leading, and it is underway probably going to be another year, year and a half before that is is released. But the inner project survey and interviews are underway. And again, that's going to be a really great project to really understand where we are with monitoring tools and where we need to go. We have a partnership with the State Water Board and squirt, the Southern Coastal County, Southern California coastal water research project that I got that right. That is a research group in Southern California. And that is that it has laboratories on on board and they are partnered with us in bioanalytical tools, and really understanding how to advance and in vitro bioanalytical tools and so we have work underway with that and partnership with that with them, and that will be another couple of years till that's released as well. Lastly, we are developing a coordinated national research strategy for water reuse. As everyone knows whatever use is a big is a big topic and there are multiple source waters and end use applications and a research strategy is often really dependent on on those topics and so we're trying to we're scoping out this work and gathering experts we've done a bit of work we've an expert committee that has helped us scope this out. And next slide, we'll show you that we are currently actually planning a research needs workshop at the water reuse symposium on March 6 and San Antonio, and that is really going to be essential to feed into our research planning process. We're holding a half day summit where experts in the fields including Eva are going to speak on several topics, advancing potable reuse, and then we're going to break out sessions in a World Cafe setting to develop project concepts and understand kind of research roadmap to help pave the way to further implementation in the United States and beyond. And next slide. I think that's it. So that's it for me. Thank you again for the opportunity. Thank you Julie and I did put the link to the EPA action plan in the chat function in case anyone wants to look that up. Jennifer, it's all you. So thank you thank you very much for having me here today it's truly an honor to be able to talk to you about advancing recycled water in California and some of the progress we've made and where we're going to be going in the future, really truly in the 21st century water infrastructure for the state. A next slide please. So water use California is a state section of the National Water Reuse Association. Our goal is to promote all forms of responsible reuse in the state, maximizing the safe practical use of recycled water for agricultural production energy production landscape and for all the different types of uses, including for drinking water purposes potable reuse, which we'll be talking about in some detail today. Next slide please. So, for this is again an honor to be talking to an international group here today. So those of you who don't know one of the drivers the main primary driver in California and why we've made this much progress is because truly we reuse is been driven by water scarcity. So here we are a snapshot from our from our US drought monitor as we look at California today in, in January, and with most of the state is in the state of a moderate drought. And this is, and this is after a huge storm that occurred in the early in the winter, and now we are. It's been bone dry. And now we are here and the significance in California again is we have a very short rainy season we have most of our rain occurs from December to March, and after that it does hardly rains at all. So if we don't get rain in January, we are in serious problems because we need the rain and the snow in the mountains is our primary water supply. Next slide please. So this is not uncommon. So what you're seeing here is what the Western United States and California has looked like over the past 20 years that read is exceptional drought. And you can see it in 2021 this summer, we were in exceptional drought before that giant storm came through. And as we look at this there's been only three or four years in the last 20, going back to 22,000, where there has not been in some type of a major drought. Some people have characterized this as a mega drought event. I don't, I don't know if it rises to that but the bottom line is that drought and climate change, and water scarcity have been driving a need for the development of a resistant sustainable and local supply of water throughout California and that's really what I'm here to talk about today so next slide please. So this is where we are in terms of our uses in California. We're sorry I'm going to use that the old terminology we're at basically a 1 million acre feed with two with about 725,000 acre feet for title 22 purposes that's a California regulatory term that means it's used for agri use irrigation energy production, about a quarter is used to enhance stream flow and for environmental purposes. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as you heard in the introduction we have major projects underway that will. We expect to more than double this amount in the next 10 years. Please advance the slides thank you. All right. So as I said, I'm very pleased to be able to kind of highlight some of the major projects that were expected in the next in the next five or 10 years. Next slide please. So one of them that is very exciting is the city of San Diego's pure water project. They are expecting when this is in full build out to provide almost half the water supply from potable reuse for the city of San Diego. And this is going to be a multi face project. It's been actually in the planning stages for more than a decade. And again we see the drivers for this has been to reduce the reliance on for water scarcity overall, but also where San Diego is to reduce the reliance on imported water supplies. They are have been have had severe reductions when there's been states of drought in the California, and, and they are very interested in developing a local source that is secure. They also are looking and want to reduce ocean discharges of wastewater out to the ocean. And that's the low hanging fruit in terms of availability of supply those wastewater discharges that goes to the ocean. They're looking at a process that would use reservoir augmentation with purified recycled water, the city of San Diego doesn't have a lot of groundwater basins. So this is a type of potable reuse putting it into a reservoir that is is most useful for them. Next slide please. Another major Southern California planned project is the Southern California recycled water project. It's a partnership with Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and LA County sanitation districts. Right now they have a demonstration facility the advanced purification center. And it's been operating for 20 since 2019. This is, they're still getting information and their plan is at full scale that that this would provide enough potable reuse water to serve more than 500,000 homes. They're looking at a variety of different types of plans but at this point it is using potable reuse for via groundwater replenishment and potentially also for raw water augmentation which is a form of direct potable reuse. So this is a very exciting partnership. This is a major, a major plan project. We're all excited about for Southern California. Next slide please. Another Southern California project in the works is operation next, and this one is really focused on the city of Los Angeles and this is maximizing the recycled water that is currently being discharged from the Hyperion water plant which is one of the biggest water reclamation plants in, in the Los Angeles area and the United States. Again, they're looking at potentially developing enough enough supply to, to, to supply close to half of the current demand for, for the city. And this is in to improve sustainability, reliability and to develop that local supply. They're looking through and utilize the indirect potable reuse and direct potable reuse for groundwater and raw water augmentation. And this has really been driven by the mayor of Los Angeles and Los Angeles leaders, again, during these drought periods saying how do we create that sustainable supply that's, that's really drought resilient. So there's been a lot of leadership and push to get us to this stage. Next, next slide please. In the northern part of the state in the Silicon Valley region. Then an agency Valley water is working on a project that would replenish groundwater with purified water. They're utilizing and want to utilize a P three model. And it's expected that this will provide at least 10% of the water demand for the Santa Clara County. And the hope is that this would, you know, be going in 2025. So this is a very exciting project in northern California. And one of the major potable reuse projects that is planned for Northern California. Next slide please. We're not all about potable reuse we support all the different types of reuse. One of a major agricultural reuse project in California is called harvest water. This is where near where I'm located in Sacramento. It's an exciting project that the idea is to allow to to provide farmers in the south part of the county. So this is a project that will help the farmers to recycle water that they could use in lieu of groundwater pumping, and this will alleviate the, it will really help the, the, the ecosystem and provide ecosystem improvements. If you're not over pumping groundwater, it will help the streams and the delta and some of the repairing and habitats in that is in southern part of the Sacramento County. This is one of the largest agri-use projects in the state. They're expecting to develop to start building in 2023 and having delivery and the water in full scale by 2025. It's, it's 50,000 acre foot project. That's a lot of water. So that's a very exciting project. Next slide please. So going back a little bit to where we have been and how we are advancing potable reuse in California. As Julie mentioned, a lot has been driven. First we had the Orange County Water District. We had an innovator and really a pioneer in this area, being the largest potable reuse agency in the world and advancing the, advancing this concept. But from an industry perspective, it was important that we develop a regulatory framework so other agencies could more easily follow. One of the things we did is we approached the legislature in 2010 and did a bill with Senator Pavley, who was the author and it was passed into law. SB 918 and it said, it required the water board to come up with a feasibility, do a feasibility report. Is it feasible to develop statewide regulations for direct potable reuse. That's one of the things that had in that legislation and, and also it required them to adopt surface water augmentation now known as reservoir augmentation. So it really was this was the first legislation in this area was 2010 to advance potable reuse and that allowed the water board to get the funding it needed to pull an expert panel together to develop a feasibility report and and basically they came back in 2016 saying, this is feasible, but yes we have a number of questions and research issues that need to be answered before we can move on with the development of regulations. So therefore we had the important work of the research arm, moving forward with with the Julie talked about some of that critical research that occurred. So then we had the report, we had the research moving forward in 2017 water reuse sponsored AB 574 which was another piece of legislation saying, when the research is done, we want you water board to go forward and move forward with the regulations. So that was another kind of push in critical movement towards potable reuse in the state. That bill also requires them the water board while they're doing this to take the advice of an expert panel to ensure that the regulations that are developed for potable reuse are safe. So we are well underway now that they by statute they should be done with this by 2023 and they are well underway. Next slide please. So the good news about the DPR regulations which are underway is they are now based on a number of reports and frameworks that have come up leading to this point. So when they were first released last spring. There's questions and we're, and we're, we're working with the expert panel to understand all the components, but a lot of the major provisions were understandable because they were laid out in previous frameworks. Next slide please. So, as I mentioned there's an expert panel with some of the leaders in the world on direct potable reuse and potable reuse, looking at and looking at the regulations that the water board put out this spring, and asking questions and, and ultimately their charge to do before the water board can finalize to make a finding that whatever that these regulations are protective of public health and that is required of them and it's required of the water board that that must be that must be done. Next slide please. You can see here this is log removal reduction requirements for for the proposal for direct potable reuse you see for groundwater for virus giardia and crypto prospiridium it's 12 1010 for surface water. It's 12 to 14 10 to 12 10 to 12. When you get to direct potable reuse the proposal and the draft at this point is removal at 2014 and 15. So, we are much higher, but again, and there have been questions about, you know, let's justify this in the water board and the expert panel have asked questions about, you know the justification but we knew going into the DPR regulation process based on the frameworks and that that it would be a much more stringent removal process and schemes would be needed because the book that with DPR you don't have that larger environmental, you don't have a large environmental buffer like a groundwater basin or reservoir augmentation so because of that there's much more has to be done in the treatment screen scheme process. Next slide please. So this is the, the working draft. This is what the expert panel is recommending at this point, based on their last meeting which was a month ago that in this order that they're that it would different differentiating from groundwater surface water augmentation that there be a new treatment process ozone BAC, then reverse osmosis, then AOP, which would be the reverse osmosis and the OP are required for groundwater and surface water augmentation in California. So these are this is the treatment trace training in this in this in this order. So, you know there's been questions about what about advanced technology and how, how about new processes and how do we respond to new technologies as they come about because once you put something in regulation. It's very hard to get things changed. Next slide please. There is a clause, which has been in the other pot over years regulations that's also proposed to be in this which is called the alternatives clause. And this would allow other technologies to be used and, and to to potentially come. A new treatment process came to allow this, this alternatives clause to come into play, an applicant would have to demonstrate with a new expert panel, demonstrate that the, that the process was protective of public health you would have to hold public meetings you would ultimately need to get the regulatory agency, in this case the water board to sign off that it was as protective. It's it's a safety valve for future innovation to allow for other alternatives. So, that's that's a good part of a good section in the draft regulations. And I'm pleased that it's contained. Again, we're not done with the regulations, the water board is and the expert panel have a meeting later this month. I do expect they are on schedule to be complete by 2023. But they're, they're still in the process of taking comments and, and engaging. So, if you have interest in this process or interested in the, in the discussions during the public part of the, of the DPR expert panel. I'd be happy or maybe this group we could share links so if there was questions and interest there we could share that. So with that, I am concluding the next slide be happy to answer questions at the, at the end of this. Thank you. Thank you Jennifer. Yeah, I'll ask you my follow up question at the end. Yeah, Eva, it's your turn. Thank you Melissa. So I have the, I have the honor and privilege of talking about the rest of the US which is a lot to cover in 15 minutes. So I'll start by saying that reuse in the US is regulated and often funded at the individual state level would you please go back a slide Isabella to the fact that we have so many climatic zones and population density differences it's not surprising that we have a wide wide range of progress on water reuse across the country. Some states are driving change, while many others are still catching up, hence the title of this part of the presentation. You just heard about California which is known for driving change in reuse over many decades not just in the US, but internationally in my California based colleagues at Corolla are working on many of the projects Jennifer mentioned. The presentation is focused on the work in other US states that is driving water reuse forward in various ways. So I'll start with a more general overview of drivers and implementation of water reuse around us. Next slide please. We've heard a lot about water stress and the impacts of climate change making that worse, but across the US that's not the only major driver for reuse implementation. So water stress is a historical driver for use in the US you see, you know everybody's got a different heat map it's always got these red and orange colors in it meaning yes we have we have water scarcity we have drought. You see Southern California is is lighting up dark dark red there. So that is a huge driver and many of our geographies, including California. In the meantime, we see we're seeing a lot of projects coming up now and in Florida this has been going on for a while, where reuse is driven more by discharge limitations of wastewater so especially related to nutrients. And so these discharge limitations whether they're increasingly stringent nutrient limits numerical limits or full on restrictions on discharge at all. They're quite effluent somewhere and why not put it to good use. And so that's become a major driver in across the eastern seaboard and I'll talk about that a little bit as well as starting to emerge in the Pacific Northwest, which people generally think is an extremely water rich part of the country so I wanted to make sure that I highlighted that's a it's a second important driver and the most critical and important projects coming up in the in the future may be driven by both. supply side shortage and discharge limit. So you just it pushes that water in a circle right. Next slide please. This is a graphic that is one of the many valuable tools produced by the Water Reuse Association. It's mostly US focused advocacy group focused on water reuse and desalination Jennifer West you just heard is the managing director of the California section, the biggest section by far as you might imagine. And this graphic highlights various types of reuse implemented all around the US note there's a very faint map in the background that provides the geography so it is it is geographically indexed. It also shows some of the major economic benefits derived from or associated with these reuse projects. And so I've underlined in the kind of a red pen. The various uses from agriculture in the Pacific Northwest to storm water reuse to using it in stadiums in the, in some of our biggest sports venues. Jennifer just talked about potable reuse in California. We're using that water and recycled water at a large scale for industrial uses, including data center cooling. Loud and water is a great example in Loudon County. Two thirds of the world's internet traffic goes through date this data center alley that's being supplied by recycled water for cooling. We're using it for ski slope. Snow making, in other words, in Arizona where you might argue, you know, snow is not something you would think but part of northern Arizona we do have snow and it is supplemented by snow made from recycled water. Another example is wetlands reuse which I thought about including but didn't in the main presentation so I'm glad it's here where basically large men made wetlands are used to polish west wastewater effluent before being used as a drinking water source. And, and you see golf course irrigation classic us application for recycled water. You know cooling for power plants so you think about co location in terms of seawater desalination perhaps where you would always want to put your plant seawater plant next to a thermal power plant to derive the benefits. But you can also think about co location between wastewater treatment plant and PowerPoint PowerPoint power plant construction because now we have a large scale user of cooling water that can is produced reliably at that plant. So all of these uses and these examples are water reuse occurring around the United States today. Next slide please. One area in which the US has been leading for a long time is portable use which Jennifer already introduced. And that includes direct portable use. The most famous direct portable reuse and I've defined it at the bottom of the screen here is is is water reuse in a fully engineered loop that bypasses the natural environment so you're really sending it around in a circle from wastewater to advanced treatment back into the drinking water system. And while the most famous DPR plan in the world is probably the one in wind up Namibia which has been operating for decades. One of you may be surprised to hear that the raw water production facility in Big Spring, Texas has also been operating and producing water for DPR since 2013, which is now almost a decade. I had the privilege of confirming the high quality water produced at that plant through a detailed study and some personal experience you can see on the left from 2013 to 2015 and was invited back a couple months ago with the team of process experts to help make some key updates to the facility. So this is still the only operating municipal direct portable reuse facility in the country. But a little further west in El Paso El Paso water is commissioned the design of a 10 mgd or almost 40 mega liter per day and I'm not going to divide that by 1000 to get you cubic meters per day, because I can't do math on the fly. And that will send purified water directly back into the distribution system without any prior blending, which is would be another first in the US. So the design of this facility is nearly complete. The permitting as you might imagine is ongoing in Texas that's done on a case by case basis in alignment with drinking water risk standards. And so the construction is expected to begin within the next couple years on this facility. Next slide please. The dates are following suit, looking towards implementing DPR on their own they're not quite as comfortable as Texas is saying we can adapt our existing regulations to provide a case by case evaluation of direct portable reuse so they have really undergone a number of stakeholder driven guidance development processes and I saw there was a question in the q amp a earlier about how long it might take to create a framework document like this and it really depends I mean if you are going through a really legitimate stakeholder process with your utilities your, your engineers your regulators, your some environmental stakeholders all at the table it can take a few years to develop a framework that that works for your particular jurisdiction. So as the US is regulated reassures regulated the state level each state has been pursuing its own own approach that said there's a lot in these framework documents that can be could be taken forward into a future framework somewhere else. So three of these have kind of been working on their framework documents starting in 2013 that was Arizona the rest of them really started 2017-2018 and completed their their documents by the end of 2020 and so there is now draft regulation for direct portable reuse in development. Starting last last year and ongoing. We have draft regulation in Florida and in Colorado and the Arizona regulators are holding workshops right now looking forward to developing, developing regulations sometime next year so those are all templates if you will that that one could look at to say well will will this implementation work for me. So working backwards a little bit now from the you know DPR is the exciting topic but, as you're mentioned in his introduction we've also have a long history of indirect portable reuse in the country so I wanted to walk through a couple of the projects and and there's a point to this going backwards you'll see why in a minute so we actually you're going to introduce this project in USA that's the offer upper aquacorn services authority. That's why I didn't spell it out I can hardly say it. And this is a surface water reservoir augmentation project that's been operating since 1978 it's now 210 mega liters per day or 0.210 I said I wouldn't do it cubic million cubic meters per day so 200,000 or so. And you can see, I put the entire conceptual process flow diagram on this slide I will not go through it with you today, you have it for future reference as well as the source link to it. The things that I wanted to highlight in these or these yellow boxes are some of the process key processes that are beyond the conventional wastewater treatment process so unique to USA is a high line process where they raise the pH and and get some pathogen kill through that process as well as particle removal. They have media filters so traditional tertiary deep bed filters, as well as carbon contactors. And actually the media and the media filters is also carbon I should have made that clear to parallel train so that they are really highly. They're very dependent in this process on their their carbon contactors for polishing. And they have plans to add ozone in the future to help address some of the organics in the water. Next slide please. On our slide very similar location I promise you a changed. We're talking about a different surface water reservoir augmentation project in Georgia this is when that county home of the water tower room Melissa is sitting right now. That is there they're sponsoring utility. And I've, I've put a partial process flow diagram here all the way through to the discharge to the lake there's an additional very interesting part of the process flow diagram I admitted for simplicity you can find it at the link below showing what happens after after that from Lake linear to the water treatment plant. But this facility has been operating since the year 2000 is now at about 230 mega liters per day capacity. And again you can see there, you know here they have a parallel trains with media filters and ultra filters but again they have ozone and BAC is really their, their key key polishing process at the end and in fact they have post ozone also for disinfection. Next slide please. This is a different project, looking at groundwater augmentation and now Paso Texas now this is different from the direct portable use project that I've been talking about they have been doing this at a separate wastewater treatment plant since 1985 at about 45 mega liters per day so a pretty substantial facility and they're augmenting groundwater through injection wells historically through injection wells that now actually at this point they are percolating that water and getting additional benefit through through soil aquifer treatment. But again, you can, they have a very different process they're using the pack T process in their secondary system so with the addition of carbon powdered activated carbon begin the reliance on this carbon absorption step. They also have media filters they actually also feed lime and the end of the process this polishing step is again ozone and biologically activated carbon carbon again. Before final chlorination for disinfection which is typically a requirement in the US unlike maybe some international locations. So we're starting to see some patterns emerge here of what the indirect code will reuse treatment approaches for some of these historical projects across the US. Next slide please. Hey Eva, we only have a few more minutes, can you they'll get. We'll do very much. Okay, so I won't spend a whole lot of time here the switch project I wanted to point it out because it's new and exciting. They somehow because they wanted to the process flow goes from right, right to left in this case again, highlighting BAC ozone carbon to UV disinfection which is that they only have a four mega liter per day demo, demo facility been operating since 2018 but the plan is to ultimately have a number of plants that sum together at 450 mega liters per day. So the takeaway here is all of this is happening without our own membranes without kind of the key process that we've been talking about all along in some of these other portable reuse projects both the Texas DPR projects as well as the projects that that Jennifer was talking about so next slide please. So, we have other states now leading the charge on this alternative treatment approach for DPR and I'm going to there are no full scale facilities like I mentioned. So DPR is currently the only full scale direct portable reuse facility in the US so all of these are our demo facilities trying to really demonstrate and work out some of the detailed nuances of how do we do direct portable reuse without desalination membrane and so an example here is Florida's pure altar demo that's been operating since 2017 I wanted to mention that one because it actually won an IWA innovation, a silver innovation or a couple of years ago and you can see those similar processes in BAC, the ultrafilter just for another pathogen barrier GAC is an absorptive barrier and then UV with AOP for additional disinfection next slide please. We have another demo project which is interesting because it's in a in a large horse trailer effectively it's very pretty you can see the outside of it in this this image but again you can see the process here and there's no in there it's highly dependent on the ozone and the activated carbon in the UV next slide please. Finally, this is just showing some of the, you know, variety across the country this is actually in Utah. So you would think this is much further west but they're also inland and have issues with with brine disposal so here's a separate demonstration project we're just getting started with that on the biofilter started in December 2021 the remaining processes haven't been delivered yet because of global supply chain chain issues. So the kind of process list is shown here next slide please. And so I'll leave you with this idea that really what we're trying to achieve here with carbon based advanced treatment or what we're calling CBAC because engineers like acronyms for everything is maturing the field right we started not too long ago and in fact the first one was that it was 2015. We're now 2021 I talked about those demonstration level projects and really moving forward with the South Jordan project as well as a few other ones moving forward, we're looking to a true optimization of those processes because we're going to be feeding distribution systems so we care about things like disinfection byproducts with or organics. And so we're trying to get a better idea of that. Yes, they're important for IPR, but they get a whole new meaning and importance when you're looking at direct global leaves. So next slide please that was the end of my presentation. Great. Thank you Eva. If all the panelists can come back on camera. We did get some excellent questions. And I am going to do my best to facilitate facilitate a conversation. I'm going to start with a group. And a lot of the questions are similar in scope. So forgive me as I take the moderator right to sort of merge and combine some of the questions. And if there are specifics that we can add to the specific questions and writing we may do it we will we will follow up with that data. The rest of the questions were really around the purpose or the drivers for specific projects, and I'll explain why I think that summarizes that in a second treatment. A lot of questions about CECs. The most difficult to treat the best ways to treat those kinds of things costs of different types of projects so Eva will will depend on you for some of those cost comparisons, if you will. And maybe there's a resource that we can point them to that would talk about, you know, agricultural, you know the different types of reuse and generally what the treatment trains costs and then public perception so no, no reuse panel would be a reuse panel without a discussion about public perception. So, let's start with the treatment discussion. And, you know, Julie you presented a number of research projects around CECs. A nice link to that is sort of that online real time monitoring piece that fits into that and why that's important. So let's, let's talk about, you know, the, the, the importance of, or the uniqueness of potable reuse treatment to address things like CECs. And all of you can reply to this one because it crosses everybody's expertise for sure. Let's start and Eva you had such great treatment schemes outlined and, you know, really the fact that you can get there through various means you don't necessarily need, you know, a specific treatment train or even a specific unit process you can kind of pick and tailor, depending on your, your needs and where you are, and if you're next to a notion or not or. We have so much research on treatment and again as, as I said before it's interesting how the progress progression of our research has been really upping where we go in the world of treatment and monitoring just as we, you know, have been approaching and pushing for ultimately drinking water augmentation you know true pipe to pipe direct potable reuse. And so, yeah, they're different options out there. You know, again, we've been funded a lot by the state of California and they, they do have a requirement for reverse osmosis. And I think that is really to reach a TOC level of 0.5 and it's not health based criteria but it's it's something that is in their populations and and something that you know California is doing, but other states have recognized okay that's not a health based target let's let's get to, you know, the same outcome the same water quality. However, not necessarily employ reverse osmosis and so their different ways to get there often involving ozone and BAC and you know, UV or AOP activated carbon, some situation I'm going to Ava your, you guys are the experts will have you speak to that. So let him go first. Yeah, maybe just to add so obviously when you think of three second water, we're dealing with a whole universe of chemicals that can potentially be present and there's no way that we can identify all of them. So what we really need is some understanding on the associate risk and how we can best manage them and the basic design principles and portable use is to establish multiple barriers. And you want to have some diversity in your treatment process that can go after different types of classes of compounds, not necessarily knowing them all by name, but at least regarding their behavior in these treatment systems. And that's also how some of the regulations are essentially set up using indicator chemicals representing certain structures certain reactivities in the processes. And you demonstrate that these processes can reliable remove these chemicals and that provides some assurance that the overall treatment process can indeed deliver a safe supply. And that's one approach in offices needs a constant updating so because we have new chemicals coming down the pipe, which we might not know the behavior about. And that's why, for instance, the state of California has picked the risk based selection framework that can be constantly updated to add new chemicals, which helps the regulators and also the operators to know whether the treatment is still up to date. Thank you. I'm not sure how much there's left to say after those great answers. I guess I'll come back to breaking it down to think about the kind of the major treatment approaches that have been researched in a lot of detail. You know, you look at the the Water Research Foundation portfolio and some of the expert panel reports that your co authored and, and you look at the RO based process and it's clearly it's it's kind of the gold standard right that's that's what everybody's benchmarking off of as far as treatment performance. And it lets through some selected chemicals and this is why, you know, the, the state of California has additional treatment barriers requirements they don't just say build arrow right there's there's other things that that are built around it. And in, in parallel to that, we have what we call the carbon based advanced treatment approach which is not a formulaic single process driven approach but it's really more a core set of processes which I would describe as ozone biologically activated carbon and then GAC, not that it's a biotic but it's a separate process where you where you're really dependent on the absorptive capacity rather than being just a media for a biofilm and that absorptive capacity gets exhausted so you exchange that media in that third process, as opposed to in a biofilm says biofilter so there's really three processes that form the core of that treatment approach. And then depending on the application in direct portable reuse direct portable reuse, how good, good water quality, you know, you have MBR filtrate coming at you it's already gone through a membrane depends on what additional disinfection processes you add you the chlorine to that core to give you the treatment that you need. And I saw there was one since this is treatment unless I'm just going to talk about PFAS for a second. There was that that one question that asked about you know where, where do we get PFAS out because everybody wants to know about that and I there was actually a couple of papers about that looking at you know our own membranes are great barriers you never say 100% because I'm an engineering we don't do that but there it's about as close to 100% removal capacities you can get for PFAS compounds so there it's really a question of what do you do with PFAS and your RO concentrate right within the carbon based advanced treatment approach it's really dependent on the GAC component the absorptive polishing filter to address your PFAS in that treatment approach and it is it is effective for that. So Jennifer I'm going to take same question but bump it up a notch your mentioned multi barrier piece and you know how you stack up to make sure that there's reliability in the system that was a key part of the states California state red process can you talk just a second about that. Because I, as I mentioned, currently the regulations are out for public comment and and there's an expert panel process going through and there is a in California there have been the regulations we've had for groundwater and surface water augmentation and we have statewide regulations require a certain treatment train. We have the notable reuse regulations. The latest meeting we have the expert panel they they want to specify that ozone, ozone BAC go before the RO process. And you know that that may be inconvenient but at this point, you know we're looking at that does that make does that make sense. And as the expert panel this point is saying is is most protective of public health. So, you know we have to walk that line in terms of the flexibility that agencies and project proponents would like and you know protection of public health. As I said we are lucky that we have kind of a safety valve with the alternative clause in the proposed regulations so new treatment processes can come through. And that's that. So it's, it's, it's an ongoing discussion right now. And so I'll just leave it at that. Okay, great. Eva there's one more that was just added that I think bounces back to you and that's one for dioxane and india may are required to be removed in California, DWR. How do other processes your alternative processes addresses. So that's, that's a really good question and I'll answer it in two parts the first part being, you know, the, the intent behind having an india may and one for dioxane removal requirement in the California regulations isn't necessarily specifically to remove and DMA and one for dioxane Well, they, those were compounds that cause problems for certain facilities in Southern California, they're really seen more as, as kind of process benchmarks so you need to have an advanced oxidation process that has the capacity to destroy compounds like one for dioxane to have a level of a half log one for dioxane. And so, there are a lot of facilities in the, you know that don't have one for dioxane at all in there in their source water in California you still have to be able to, you know, then you have to feed it and show that you're actually getting that removal. So we have processes to do that and the AOP process can be done. You know, that's not an RO based process that's part of the UV advanced oxidation process typically that combination. And DMA also is addressed through UV photolysis so a high dose UV system will address and DMA if indeed it is present and so in California, those requirements are there to have those processes in place. So historically, and DMA now is just a numerical limit to so I'll walk that back a little and Jennifer can clarify if that makes sense. I realized that we started our discussion without seeing the responses to the polls and that's because we had so many great questions but I wouldn't mind seeing the poll answers if someone can put those up so we can just take a quick look. I have a few questions about, you know, how do you, how do you promote or how do you go forward with the project like the agricultural ones. Jennifer that you mentioned when you look at the cost benefit, right. So to me reuse projects, obviously reuse water supplies very local issue. And in some areas, like the agricultural projects you're really creating a water supply to get them off traditional water sources. So I think that's a, that's an important part of the discussion and Eva, you deal with us when you, you know, go to look at opportunities for new projects, you know what what is the end use what what are you really looking for. And so maybe if anyone has any thoughts on, you know, it's not a straight cost issue it's a resource issue and how projects sort of approach that. That was one of our questions. Again, one of the biggest drivers. Most people think it's drought climate change. And then is is reuse an alternative. And then what people are really concerned about costs and public perception again no, no, no surprise there. Any thoughts on either the purpose of a project and what sort of defines that. As we go forward. So, so you're right Melissa there's many different multiple reasons to do projects and most of them have multi benefits there's not just a straight equation of water. There's usually, you know, water scarcity is usually one component in California but as I said sometimes there's ecosystem restoration there's sometimes a variety of different means you know reducing ocean discharge wastewater discharges. So, in terms of, I'll just take, I'll just take a, there've been some questions about funding and how, how do these get funded in California we've had some bond initiatives general obligation bond initiatives that have specifically made available for recycled water, those passed and went through in 2015 those were hugely instrumental in getting some of the big recycled water projects moving forward. There's also the clean water SRF where low interest loans are made available, and then our national organization the water resource association and other partners were very successful in getting some federal infrastructure funding for recycled water in the federal infrastructure that went forward. So those will be all of these projects need funding, low interest loans or grants. They need that kind of boost to get off the ground as I said they have many benefits, much more than just most of them have multiple benefits so that's another major aspect of the regulation I would say it's the regulation to prevent the public perception issues but also developing the funding for these project is it they just don't move forward without that. Exactly right. So when you look around, not just in the US but around the world, do you see other governments funding projects or is it generally the user group or the utilities that fund some of these more innovative reuse projects. I think on the international scale we are at very different phases of development. There's some areas in the world when you think of Australia or Singapore where there's a lot of government support already to establish this as an alternative resource and to diversify local resource portfolios. This is for drought protection and this is well recognized and therefore there's public funding. In Europe, I would say it's still at a learning curve steep learning curve to also identify the needs identify treatment options. It's more really happening on the non portable reuse site. This is also very specific what type of use you're favoring whether it's urban or whether it's like a culture with you so you definitely need to engage with the stakeholders and the users to also think and design a proper financial scheme or financing scheme to make it happen. So I think it's pretty diverse but I think it's important also to learn how other countries in particular the US or states have actually financed these projects. And I think the US is lucky because there's now good federal support to kick off some major projects and not worry about maybe technology development because you can adopt this as a standard and that's easier to transfer. And that's not necessarily the case in many countries so they're lacking these demo or land landmark projects that can use that can serve as a reference. Excellent point. We have about six minutes left so I want to hit on public perception. There have been research projects on public perception. There's been a long history in California with public perception, ruining really good projects and then helping really good projects exceed so I think we've seen the full gamut. Each of you give me an example of what you have seen utilities do to engage the public and address public perception issues. Jennifer go. Okay. Well it has really changed. When I started working in the legislature in the early 2000s, people were still, you know legislators were concerned about ways, you know recycled water on for irrigation purposes now. Now we have really from a public policy perspective from at the policy level really embrace this notion of poverty is unfortunately I think California was very that coin the term toilet to tap. It seems like we'll never going to get past that, even when I've read the best stories about a project, they seem to have the deadline toilet to tap so it's, it's catchy unfortunately and I think we may be stuck with it. But, but really seriously that the projects like the Orange County Water District and the outreach and I think just in California, the people value and understand the value of water has really risen to the point where people are now upset if you're wasting water, why isn't that recycled water. So it's really changed the perception has really changed, I think just as a society from California because of those mega drought issues that I described. Yeah, I would say the drought propelled public perception in California for sure, and then spreading along the south of the sun belt and into other areas but it's that when you put in really stringent water use requirements and standards and then, you know, it helps people embrace that value of water concept which is, which is awesome. Yeah, please. I may just building on that what I've seen, and this is true across the, this is true across the board whether the projects are driven by drought and water scarcity or by other factors. The most important thing in the success of a project is to be clear about why it's needed. Because if you have people that inevitably people are going to ask questions about the project unlike some other supply projects and you, you have to have a story and you have to have your story straight across all of your stakeholders of why this project is needed. And if that is a good story, then you can build on that you can build a public outreach program around that you can build on all of those other factors to make a successful project at your public on board but if you don't have a good story of why why you need the project. A good luck. Exactly right. And real real quick Melissa. Yeah just speaking from the East Coast perspective because we are pretty water rich. We have different drivers here. Many of them I think Eva mentioned is it's nutrient drivers I'm on the Chesapeake Bay and you know they're stringent regulations to discharge in the that the bag which is propelling utilities around here to say we are we are treating to this level why don't we take advantage of this and recycle the water so that that's a great driver but real quick so in this area where people have tons of rainfall and surface water and you know a lot of water around. And still, you know I get into focus group locally where people don't get recycled water at first. Oh my gosh, why would you want to drink wastewater and how is that and then you do a little bit of education, and talk about the water cycle and talk about how we're all downstream. And then a little bit of education goes a far way. So I think utilities now understand we're not, we don't need to just invest in the technologies and the operations and all that. We need to invest also in education outreach, building that beautiful visitor center behind you, Melissa, all that it's an important part of the whole story. We will take a look at these questions and try and type in some answers to the specific ones that we didn't get to. I greatly appreciate everyone turning in to this great webinar. Two quick things if I can get slide the slide up. Next slide please. On March, we hope that you'll turn in for this empowering women and water perspective from Latin America and the Caribbean. This is going to be a great webinar and it's going to be live in have a live transit translation as well in Spanish. But if you aren't a member of IWA, you should be. And if you use this code, you can get 20% off discount. We strongly encourage you to join us and join the conversation. Next slide please. And again, we are so thankful that you were able to join us today and we look forward to seeing you on the next webinar. Thank you so much.