Water Reuse: Ensuring Wastewater Is Not Wasted Water

Virginia’s first industrial water reuse project was a public-private partnership between HRSD and Giant Industries, Inc.

HRSD’s York River Treatment Plant delivered 500,000 gallons a day of highly treated wastewater to Giant’s adjacent Yorktown Refinery from July 2002 until the refinery closed in 2011. Using this reclaimed water for cooling and other industrial purposes protected natural resources and conserved high-quality drinking water.

Why Water Reuse Is Water Wise

The benefits of this water reuse project were numerous.

• Giant Industries, Inc., realized reduced costs while obtaining a drought-proof water source.
• Newport News Waterworks helped conserve its potable water resources.
• HRSD realized its goal of reducing nutrients released to the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

Water reuse for nonpotable purposes is highly accepted and has proven successful in Florida, California, Arizona, and many other areas.

York River Project Overview

To provide reclaimed water to the refinery, HRSD designed special biological treatment, disk filtration, and disinfection facilities 

First-phase construction involved installing new filter equipment and additional tanks, pumps, and pipes at the plant site and building a pipeline to the refinery. Disk filtration, a cloth-membrane filter that provides enhanced solids removal, was used because it offers several advantages to conventional sand filtration. A special biological treatment system was installed during the second construction phase.

HRSD is selling reclaimed water to Giant at cost to cover only the additional investment. The initial capital costs for the York River project are financed through the Virginia Water Facilities Revolving Loan Fund. Giant pays a rate that is set to recover full capital and operating and maintenance costs over a 20-year period, which amounts to approximately half the cost of potable water.

Potential Water Reuse Projects

Rather than release effluent into waterways, HRSD continues to pursue markets for this resource. With minor additional treatment, reclaimed water can safely replace the high-quality drinking water now meeting the nonpotable demands for industry and irrigation.

Ideal potential customers include not only industries, but also municipalities, power plants, and others that consistently need large quantities of nonpotable water and are located near one of HRSD’s nine major treatment plants.

Reclaimed water can be a key siting factor in economic development involving large new demands for nonpotable water. For example, when power plant developers seek suitable sites, they look for those that are zoned properly, have available electrical transmission capacity, and have access to sufficient fuel supply (either coal or natural gas). However, the most limiting siting factor is usually cooling water, making water reuse very attractive for this application.

Environmental Regulations

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has regulatory authority over any water reuse project. In addition, the Virginia Department of Health fully supports nonpotable reuse of reclaimed wastewater. On the national level, the American Water Works Association and Water Environment Federation endorse water reuse.

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