By

H. W. Hoffman P.E.

Texas Water Development Board

December, 1998

Texas is at an historical crossroads. The era of plentiful water, when needs could be readily met with new water supply development, is coming to a close. Texas currently has approximately 16 million acre-feet per year or 14.5 billion gallons of water a day, of dependable* conventional freshwater supplies from its surface and groundwater sources such as manmade reservoirs and groundwater aquifers. Even if all economically feasible reservoirs are developed and groundwater produced at its average rate of recharge, only another three to five billion gallons a day of dependable supply could be developed.

The ultimate source of all fresh water is precipitation, but when it does not rain, many perspectives can change. In the mid 1990's, two events occurred in Texas, one planned and one not, which resulted in a much increased focus on water issues in Texas. The first was the update of the Texas Water Plan through a consensus process involving the State's planning, environmental, regulatory, and wildlife agencies. The second was a drought of short duration in 1996; a drought that saw more than 340 communities ration water, severe crop loss, and widespread wildfires. These two events helped focus Texas' citizens, agencies, and legislators alike on the need for revisions to the way Texas looks at water supply, drought management, and the need for water conservation, reuse, and other innovative technologies such as desalting, rainwater harvesting, brush control, and aquifer storage and recovery.

The result was a set of legislative, policy, and regulatory actions that have had and will continue to have dramatic impact on water conservation, drought management, and water reuse practices in Texas. Reuse of treated effluent continues to grow and much of the new legislative and regulatory activity involves water reuse. The purpose of this paper is to (1) look at the current status of reuse in Texas, (2) examine the potential of reuse in the future, and (3) briefly describe some of the legislative and regulatory activities that will impact reuse.

The reuse of treated wastewater has a long history in Texas. The first recorded reuse occurred below San Antonio, Texas in the 1890's. The oldest continuing reuse project in Texas is the Lubbock, Texas reuse project that began providing effluent to the Frank Gray farm in 1925.

In examining reuse, it is necessary to distinguish between disposal of effluent by irrigation or similar practices just to eliminate the effluent and beneficial reuse as a water supply for a specific use. Also, any user that is down stream of a discharger will reuse some of that discharger's effluent. For this definition, reuse is defined as the intentional and direct use of one's own or someone else's effluent for a beneficial purpose. Currently, Texas has 190 utilities in 115 counties reporting that they practice some form of reuse by the above definition. Together, they provided 159 million gallons a day for reuse in 1997. Figure 1 shows that irrigation and industrial use account for most of the water reused in Texas. Of the 190 municipal projects in Texas, most are small by volume of use. In fact, as shown in Figure 2, just 2.1 percent of the projects account for over half of the volume of effluent reused in Texas.

In addition to utilities that report beneficial reuse, there are over 640 zero discharge permits in Texas. Most of these are for agricultural operations or for small truck stops and the like, but in 1998, 116 utilities in 81 counties report having zero discharge permits for part or all of their wastewater. The permitted volume for these 116 zero discharge facilities is 24.8 MGD, but the actual volumes discharged in this manner is probably under 10.0 MGD. On-site reuse, where the wastewater generated at that location is reused or recycled at that location is also widely practiced in Texas. Some of this is reflected in the 159 MGD of effluent reused in 1997, as reported above, for in-plant use at wastewater treatment plants for chemical feed and plant washdown and other uses.

The largest number of on-site reuse applications is for the reuse of effluent from septic tanks. In fact, Texas ranks second only to Florida in the total number of septic tanks in use. Approximately one quarter of Texan's rely on septic systems for their residential wastewater disposal. Under the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRC) Rule 31 TAC 285, domestic effluent from sites which produce under 5,000 gallons a day may dispose of their effluent by conventional means such as septic tanks or through irrigation following specific levels of treatment. Thousands of such sites have been constructed across Texas in the last decade and on-site irrigation of landscape with treated effluent is becoming common. The exact volume of effluent beneficially reused in this manner is hard to determine, but it is most likely under one MGD. In a like manner, many industries also reuse their own effluent within their facilities. In 1997, industries in 67 of the State's 254 counties reported reusing their own effluent. The total volume of reported on-site industrial reuse and recycle was 23.6 MGD in 1997.

Nation-wide, over one billion gallons a day are reused. As Figure 3 shows, Florida reuses 271 MGD, California 216 MGD, Arizona 209 MGD and Texas 159 MGD if industrial on-site reuse is not counted. These four states account for 82 percent of all reuse in the United States of America.

Texas currently reuses approximately 159 MGD or about 9.5 percent of the wastewater generated in the state. For comparison, Israel reuses approximately 60% of the wastewater generated in that nation. However, such a comparison is misleading since Texas is much larger and less densely populated. Analysis of the potential for both municipal wastewater reuse and on-site water reuse requires that economic, environmental, and social factors be balanced as well as the availability of effluent for reuse. It also depends on the development of new technologies. For example, the 159-MGD of reuse currently occurring in Texas is for conventional purposes such as crop and landscape irrigation, industrial uses, and other non-potable applications. However, gray water reuse and espanded indirect potable reuse would greatly alter this analysis as explained below.

Current Projects: Since the revision of the Texas reuse rules in 1997, over 20 entities have applied to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission for a new reuse project. San Antonio has the largest project in Texas. The City currently supplies approximately 30 MGD of treated effluent to two power plants in the area, but in 1998, San Antonio began construction of a 35 MGD distribution system to serve many industrial, commercial, and landscape sites in the City. Austin has a 10 MGD facility planned and San Angelo, Harlingen, and El Paso are enlarging their efforts. Many other utilities are investigating the possibility of reuse in their communities. With power production deregulation, several power companies from outside of Texas are looking to locate generating capacity here. In the Lower Rio Grande Valley, three such firms have contacted Edinburg and McAllen concerning use of their effluent for power plant operations. In Houston, as part of a Board funded project, the possibility of providing as much as 100 MGD of very highly treated effluent for industrial use is also being explored. These activities are projected to increase in the future as development of conventional supplies becomes more expensive or not possible at all.

Conventional Reuse Potential: For municipal reuse, availability of supplies (treated effluent) and potential demand in a given area must be balanced. Based on return flow projections from the 1997 Texas Water Plan, the volume of wastewater discharge in Texas will increase from approximately 1.75 billion gallons a day in 1997 to over 2.8 billion gallons a day in 2050. When these volumes of effluent (potential resource) are compared to conventional

types of reuse demand on a county by county basis, the result is that approximately 40 percent to 45 percent of effluent generated could potentially be reused. This would equal 1.25 billion gallons a day of potential reuse in the year 2050. Figure 4 illustrates this analysis.

The 1997 Texas Water Plan, Water for Texas, projects water demands and potential supplies through the year 2050. As Figure 5 illustrates, total demand in the year 2050, regardless of the ability of adequate water supplies to meet this demand, will be 20.95 million acre-feet a year if we continue to use water at the same levels of water use efficiency as we have done in the past. With water conservation accounting for a 12 percent reduction in water use per activity, demand is reduced by some 2.6 million acre-feet a year to 18.35 million acre-feet per year. The 1997 Texas Water Plan also projects that eight new reservoirs will be built. This illustrates the constraints of a limited number of available sites left in Texas. Even with reservoir development and the expansion of new groundwater supplies where possible, there will be unmet demand in some areas such at the Southern High Plains because economically feasible water supplies in these areas will be exhausted as the groundwater is mined. According to these projections, conventional municipal reuse will equal new conventional sources as a new supply.

Non-Conventional Reuse Potential: Three reuse areas that could directly impact the volumes of possible reuse in the future are (1) gray water reuse, (2) total reuse for toilet and urinal flushing and (3) potable reuse. Gray water reuse involves reusing water from showers, clothes washers, and hand-washing lavatories. Potable reuse involves treating the effluent to such high quality that part of it can be blended with conventional water supplies and reused as feed for the municipal water utility.

Gray Water Reuse: Gray water reuse has been occurring for years. Running the washing machine water on the lawn was a common practice at one time, but since the 1950's, most plumbing codes have required all wastewater sources to be sewered because of the potential to cause nuisance problems such as stagnant water and sites for mosquito breeding. Gray water can also carry pathogens. Examples include washing of diapers in washing machines and shower water from bathers with skin diseases. Most experts agree that if this water were to be filtered and disinfected, it could generally be used for on-site landscape irrigation and for toilet and urinal flushing. The potential is significant since gray water is produced in great quantity. Graph 6 shows that gray water volumes generated in Texas are projected to increase from slightly over half a billion gallons a day currently to over 1.3 billion gallons a day in 2050. When combined with rainwater harvesting and good conservation practices, many homesteads in Texas have applied these technologies to develop an independent source of water for their homes. Texas has yet to develop statewide rules for gray water reuse as will be described in the next section of this paper, but many local health departments across the State are allowing such reuse.

Other On-Site Reuse Technologies: Several commercial buildings and schools in Texas have installed special equipment that is capable of taking all wastewater generated on site and treating it for recycle as toilet and urinal flushing water. These devices provide both aerobic and anaerobic treatment as well as ultra-filtration of the water that is reused for toilet and urinal flushing. With such devices, water purchases are often reduced by up to 85 percent, and waste disposal volumes are significantly reduced also.

Potable Reuse: Conventional reuse for irrigation and industrial purposes is limited by the number of applications. However, if a city were to be able to reuse this water for all purposes, the volume of effluent produced only limits the potential volume that could be reused. Several cities across the United States treat their wastewater to very high standards and return into the body of water they normally derive their drinking water source from. In Texas, this form of indirect reuse is best illustrated by the City of El Paso which can treat up to 10.0 MGD and re-inject this into their drinking water aquifer, and the North Texas Municipal Water District project where very well treated municipal effluent is discharged in to Lake Lavon and becomes part of the water resource for that utility. The cities of McAllen and Edinburg have studied the possibility of treating their wastewater with reverse osmosis to produce a very high quality product which will be blended with the water from the Rio Grande in their holding basins and then reprocessed through their water treatment plants for potable supply. The important point is that if direct reuse of all of the effluent produced by a city were possible, the resource it would provide would be even greater. As Figure 4 shows, the resource potential is over 2.8 billion gallons a day.

The Unique Advantages of Reuse: The need for Texan’s to use all available, economically viable sources is obvious. Reuse, desalting, and water conservation will all need to be employed. Water reuse offers a unique opportunity because of some interesting advantages it has, including:

• Effluent from municipal wastewater plants is a drought-proof water source;

• Treated effluent is the ONLY source of water that automatically increases as economic and population growth, occurs in the community; and

• The source of treated effluent is usually located near the intended use, not at some yet-to-be developed, distant reservoir or well field.

Any discussion must be prefaced with a brief discussion of the overall thrust and reason for the landmark changes initiated by Senate Bill 1. To start, the Bill was a direct outgrowth of increased awareness of the vulnerability of Texas to drought and to the limits of existing water supplies. The focus of the bill is perhaps best understood by looking at the first words of the Bill which are:

Both the order and choice of these words have specific meaning as the following discussion will show.

Major conservation related components of Senate Bill 1 include:

• Defining "conserved water," to mean water that is not used because of increased water use efficiency, etc., as a beneficial use. In Water Rights jargon, this means the "Use-it, or Lose-it" clause no longer applies.

• Requiring all municipal and industrial water rights permit holders of 1,000 acre-feet per year or more, and irrigation permits of 10,000 or more to develop and implement a water conservation plan which includes reuse as one of the options.

• Implementation of major municipal and industrial water conservation education efforts by the Texas Agricultural Extension Service which has more than 200 county agent offices throughout Texas including information on reuse.

• Modifying the Texas Water Bank statutes to make temporary time limited sales of a portion of ones water right. This applies to conserved water, water not used because of REUSE or conservation practices. This means that if a city, industry, or irrigator reduces demand enough through conservation and reuse, and that entity determines that they will not need that water for a period of years, they can market that water through a time limited contract.

Other water conservation related activities not related to SB1 include the passage of Senate Bill 1591 which allows regulatory flexibility in industrial operations as long as the resulting pollution control is at least as protective and allows for certain industrial conservation practices. This can help promote internal reuse within industry.

The focus of Senate Bill 1 for reuse is in the planning areas and in the need to examine Water Rights issues. In Texas, many river basins are fully or even over appropriated. This means that the effluent from an upstream user can be critical to a down stream water rights holder. SB1 requires that watershed models for each basin be developed to determine how much effluent is available for reuse. The Bill also requires all future water right permits to state the percent of return flow they will provide to the stream along with other water rights provisions concerning bed-and-banks transfer of effluent for reuse. This could be summarized as "whose resource (sewage) is it and who can have it." This issue will, no doubt, be a topic of legal interest and action in the future. The fact that ownership of effluent is an issue of some concern, further illustrates that Texas has arrived at a critical point where the old ways of developing new water resources are changing, as conventional resources become more limited.

The TNRCC has developed new water rights related rules under 30 TAC 295 and 297 that also impact reuse. In brief, these rules state that:

• A utility or water user can use and reuse water so long as that water is not discharged to a watercourse. This means that as long as a city delivers treated effluent for reuse in a pipeline, they can reuse the effluent as they please, but once discharged, that water becomes available for appropriation.
• If the effluent has been discharged to a stream is to be reused downstream, permits for both its reuse and for the use of the bed and banks to transfer it are needed.
• All existing downstream water rights must be protected.
• Environmental factors and down stream water environmental needs must be considered.

Other recent reuse regulations include the following:

• Revision of TNRCC reuse rules under Chapter 30 TAC 210 to allow utilities and industries to provide water for reuse without having to amend their wastewater discharge permits.

• Development of (TNRCC) on-site waste disposal rules for systems producing less than 5,000 gallons of effluent daily that allows for on-site reuse under 30 TAC 285.

• Proposed changes to the 30 TAC 217 (TNRCC Wastewater Plant Design Rules) which makes reuse of effluent at wastewater treatment plants for in-plant use the norm for design.

• Renewed interest in HB 346 of the 73rd Texas Legislature in 1993 that requires the TNRCC and the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners to develop gray water reuse rules that are still to be developed.

Senate Bill 1 was born out of the drought of 1996, but also from the shadows of the droughts of 1980, 1984, 1989, etc. The point is that drought is a natural part of the hydrological cycle, and in a State where demand often approaches supply, one must be ready. State level water planning efforts grew out the seven-year drought of the 1950's. Therefore, both the current and past Texas Water Plans are based on an analysis of both supply and demand for the drought of record as well as normal conditions.

Long range planning for drought has been a standard feature of water resource planning in Texas for four decades. However, drought planning at the local level was left to the individual utilities, river authorities, and municipalities. The same was true in monitoring for drought. The ability of the State to respond to drought and to enforce emergency measures was also limited. Senate Bill 1 has dramatically changed this process. The Bill sets a number of planning activities into motion including the requirement that all 4,600 wholesale and retail water purveyors in Texas are now required to develop complete drought contingency plans. These plans must be coordinated with any regional plan. Reuse is a specific alternate water supply in the analysis of possible emergency measures under drought plans. Again, reuse offers a drought proof source of water.

Economic incentives can come in a number of forms. They can include negative incentives, such as the administrative penalties (fines) described in the section on drought management, but they most often take the form of financial relief or assistance. Senate Bill 1 provides for both tax breaks and low interest financing mechanisms.

In Texas, which does not have a state income tax, the two major taxes are property and sales tax. Senate Bill 1 exempts equipment purchased by industry for conservation and reuse from sales tax and allows local taxing authorities to exempt part or all of the property of any person or entity (residential, commercial, agricultural, or industrial) from property taxes if the local taxing body so chooses. This means that if an industry or homeowner installs equipment to reduce water use or to reuse water, the local taxing authority could exempt part or all of the total value of the property from any state and local property tax. For Sales Tax exemption information call the Comptroller of Public Accounts in Austin. The SB 1 property tax exemption is a local initiative through your local tax office.

Under a constitutional amendment passed in 1995, the property value of pollution control equipment installed by manufacturers is exempt from property tax. This exemption has been modified to include water conservation and in-plant reuse practices since these also reduce the volume of wastewater generated. The TNRCC rules for this are 30 TAC 277.

With respect to low interest loans, the Board has made such loans for years, but now with SB1 flexibility has been given to both the Board and the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) to make low interest loans to farmers. With the Board, the loans must be for water conservation. In addition, the Board has made many hundreds of millions of dollars in loans for water reuse projects. For example, in May of 1998, the Board committed to begin financing of what will eventually be slightly more than $93 million of reuse projects in San Antonio, Austin, and the Corpus Christi area, and has projects in progress in El Paso, San Angelo, and other places.

The first, and most significant, action of SB1 was to require that the planning function be changed from "top-down" to "bottom-up." This means that instead of having a State level plan developed through a consensus effort by the Texas Water Development Board, Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department the effort would be turned around to the grass-roots level. The State has been divided into sixteen regional water resource planning areas. Each area, with financial and technical assistance and funding from the Board, will develop local plans which, after approval and dispute resolution by the Board, will be incorporated into a statewide plan.

The plans are to be fully integrated water resource plans that examine all reasonable options. The emphasis placed on development of water resources in a State with real limits to this supply can best be seen by examining the first two items listed in the fifteen items listed for "water management strategies" to be evaluated. These are:

• Water conservation, drought response and water demand management.

• Reuse of wastewater.

The inclusion of conservation, reuse, and drought management is also seen by the requirement that the local conservation and drought management plans described above must be coordinated with the regional plans and that the regional water resource planning groups use the 1997 Texas Water Plan as the basis for their work, including the water use and water conservation projections. All regional plans are to be completed by September 2000, and the statewide plan is to be completed by September 2001. The plans will be updated every five years thereafter.

Texas has embarked on an extensive new effort to bring drought management, water conservation and comprehensive water resource planning from a statewide resource perspective to the grass-roots level. This will set the stage for increased water reuse efforts in the future.