As cities across the West face megadroughts, warming climates and growing populations, reusing more of the water that goes down the drain starts to sound pretty good.
The technology to clean and recycle sewage is not new. Big cities such as Las Vegas and Phoenix have employed it for years. Now with historically dry weather and brewing water fights, even smaller communities are taking a closer look.
That includes southwest Utah's Cedar City, population 41,400.
"I would say we're behind the times," said Cedar Valley Water Conservancy District General Manager Paul Monroe. "This is being done in California. This is being done in Arizona. And luckily those folks have gone before us, and we've got a lot that we can learn from them."
The district is in the middle of a three-phase project to recycle Cedar City's wastewater for the first time, and completed phase one earlier this year. That featured a new treatment plant to capture water that goes down toilets, showers and sinks and clean it with filters and helpful bacteria until it's safe for human contact. Phase two will add infrastructure to deliver the recycled water to communities by 2028.
Cedar's reclaimed water will go to outdoor irrigation at parks, schools and other green spaces, so the drinking water that had been feeding that grass can be used by people instead. That'll free up about 3,500 acre-feet of water per year, Monroe said. One acre-foot covers an acre of ground a foot deep in water.
"That's about a third of the water that just Cedar City alone uses per year," Monroe said. "So, it's a huge savings."
This part of Utah faces a different flavor of water scarcity. Along the Wasatch Front, the big concern is leaving enough water in streams to feed the shrinking Great Salt Lake and avoid emptying reservoirs. St. George, which is also betting big on wastewater reuse, is in the Colorado River Basin and pulls its water from a small river that flows to Nevada's Lake Mead.
Cedar City's water supply, on the other hand, is underground. And its subterranean reserves are depleting.
Local aquifers have been in deficit for decades, Monroe said, and each year communities pump out around 7,000 acre-feet more than what gets put back in.
This area has lots of irrigated agriculture — farms use around two-thirds of local water, he said — and a growing population. In the next two decades, the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute forecasts Iron County will add around 30,000 more residents.
One benefit of wastewater reuse, Monroe said, is that it keeps providing even in parched years like this one.
"It's drought-resistant because we continue to flush the toilet," Monroe said. "So as we grow and as we use water, we're able to recycle this same water and reuse it to our benefit, rather than potentially losing it."
The district is currently working on the second phase of its reuse project, which includes a pump station and a pipeline. It will cost more than $11 million. Most of that money is coming from outside sources, Monroe said, including around $5 million from the federal government and $4 million appropriated from the state. The conservancy district, Cedar City and neighboring Enoch will chip in around $1 million.
Despite the steep price tag, the Cedar project is part of a growing trend toward reuse across the West, said Newsha Ajami, a hydrologist and water policy expert at Stanford University's Doerr School of Sustainability.
"This is showing, in some way, the tipping point for where we are," Ajami said. "For the longest time, people thought, 'Oh, business as usual is going to work. Everything's going to be OK. We'll wait another few years, and this rain and snow is going to come back.' … And what we see is that's not really playing out as it used to be."
That momentum creates a snowball effect, too. As wastewater recycling technology gets repeatedly proven, that helps more cities feel like it's doable for them. So while the costs remain high, the risks feel lower.
"When your major cities — like Las Vegas, like Los Angeles, like San Diego, and I can go down the list — already either have built one or are considering one," Ajami said, "then it's much easier for smaller cities to also follow that bandwagon."
Still, recycling sewage should not be the only water-stretching initiative a city pursues, Ajami said. It needs to be paired with other efforts, like increasing conservation, reducing leaks and adding smart meters.
Otherwise, adding reclaimed water to a city's supply is like adding highway lanes to reduce traffic. The initial relief may be short-lived, and a community could end up again feeling the strain just a few years down the road.
"It's a great idea to build more infrastructure — don't get me wrong," Ajami said. But "you need to reduce the baseline. I think that's the most important thing."
Reuse is not the only conservation measure the Cedar area is working on. The conservancy district also helps farmers get funding to upgrade their irrigation efficiency, offers incentives for residents to ditch their grass lawns and has tiered water rates that charge people more if they use over a certain amount.
The district also has projects aimed at putting more water into the ground. The area has several artificial recharge basins, where water is diverted into old gravel pits so it can filter down into the aquifer. Preserving that underground storage is vital, Monroe said. As aquifers empty, the soil surrounding them can collapse. That's why sinking ground has become a common problem around Cedar.
That matters for the future water supply, too. If a city relies on a reservoir, it can always hope that a great winter might fill it up someday, even if it goes dry. As aquifers get sucked dry and cave in, however, it means that section of groundwater may never be refilled.
"If they are to collapse, then you lose that storage — that ability to put water back in it," Monroe said. "So by implementing this reuse project, that helps us to extend our water supplies because no longer will we be using that same good drinking water on our green spaces."
The district is also looking at other options, including a controversial plan to build a 66-mile pipeline to bring in water from another part of western Utah.
Cedar's wastewater reuse project has room to grow, too. The next phase will be adding a reservoir to store reclaimed water from the winter and save it for the high-demand summer, although Monroe said that likely won't happen until the 2030s. The water reuse plant could also someday double its capacity and become an even bigger part of Cedar City's water future.
"This is the same water that has been on the Earth forever, and it's been recycled for millions of years," Monroe said. "We're now just doing that mechanically and treating it to a place where it's clean."
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