Successful Case Studies of Onsite Wastewater Reuse – a Strategic Way to Solve Water Crisis

Water recycling and reuse has been on a growing trend in the regions where the limited fresh water resources could not sustain the increasing population and developments. Beneficially recover or reuse of the treated effluent can relieve the burden on the existing public water and sewer systems by offsetting potable water use and reducing wastewater discharge, which leads to avoid the costs to expand or upgrade the infrastructures. For some cases, on-site wastewater treatment and reuse become a must because the public sewer system is not available. Although there is still lack of water reuse regulation on a national level, reuse regulations have been implemented on a state or local level. When building a new system, feasibility of reuse needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis from the triple bottom line of social, economical, and environmental perspectives. In the presented paper, several successful water reuse projects were discussed to cover different reuse applications including residential building, office, school, shopping mall, and sports stadium. Drivers, benefits, opportunities and challenges for water reuse were also discussed for each case study.