Putting DPR Rules Into Context: Regulatory Developments Across the United States

The United States has a long history of successful water reclamation driven by a combination of effluent diversion and water supply scarcity. Both drivers have more recently resulted in a number of states working to develop regulations for direct potable reuse (DPR). Active regulatory processes include: (1) Texas, where DPR has been implemented in the absence of rules since 2013, and the 2021 state legislature passed a bill requiring its regulators to develop guidelines that will streamline DPR permitting; (2) California, which has just released its proposed DPR rules for public comment; (3) Florida, where the stakeholder-driven Potable Reuse Commission guidance is now helping shape a series of draft DPR regulations published by the FDEP, (4) Colorado, where state regulators are currently holding stakeholder workshops to help draft the language for future DPR rules, and (5) Arizona, where stakeholder-driven guidance and rulemaking recommendations were delivered to state regulators, who are now gearing up to draft regulations of their own. All of these efforts are also ongoing within the little-known context of DPR being allowed and regulated in two other US states: Ohio (since 2015) and North Carolina (since 2014).
Many stakeholders in these states and elsewhere will find themselves asking: What is the basis and rationale behind various parts of my state's approach to DPR? While the authors claim no prescience with regard to regulator intent in drafting their respective DPR rules, all regulatory progress is incremental and builds on prior work. Thus, the basis of much of the current draft rules can be found in various forms of prior guidance or regulations. This presentation will walk through guidance developed by Carollo and others through the progression of stakeholder processes in various US states that have gotten us to this point. We'll start with the 2015 National Water Research Foundation (NWRI) 'Framework for Direct Potable Reuse' and discuss how the major topics in that framework have evolved through various phases of regulatory development. Starting with the overarching public health and regulatory priorities that are consistent across all US-based guidance to-date, we'll define the key components of a sustainable DPR program, and how those have evolved since the 2015 NWRI Framework. We'll answer questions including: How do various jurisdictions define DPR? How have expectations changed around source control? Why are there different microbial log removal value (LRV) targets and what is their basis? What are the requirements around advanced treatment and how can we account for constituents of emerging concern (CECs)? How does monitoring differ in DPR compared to IPR and other reclaimed application? Attendees will leave the presentation understanding the background behind current regulatory trends for DPR and better prepared to discuss the merits of various regulatory approaches as DPR rules are finalized in various states.