Total Water Management: A Research Project of the United States Environmental Protection Agency

Total Water Management (TWM) examines urban water systems in an interconnected manner. It encompasses reducing water demands, increasing water recycling and reuse, creating water supply assets from stormwater management, matching water quality to end-use needs, and achieving environmental goals through multi-purpose, multi-benefit infrastructure.This paper summarizes a United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) project and some older UEPA studies that lead to the decision to fund this project on TWM. This paper and the project it describes attempt to communicate the benefits of TWM to water management decision-makers and to aid in the development of management techniques that could be adopted in order to improve urban systems.Results of past USEPA projects related to TWM are discussed. This paper then summarizes results of the current case study and then addresses some of the water management drivers and challenges from the literature that municipalities may face in implementing a TWM strategy.