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Section 5 Addressing the Water Supply Gap Technical Roundtable ~ Protect public health and environment. ~ Prioritize authorization of those uses that are most likely to be widely implemented. ~ Establish sensible, clear, and consistent requirements for authorized uses. ~ Establish and maintain confidence in reuse. ~ Keep reuse viable and attractive to both treaters and users. The initial Colorado regulation was limited to landscape irrigation applications, since most reuse projects in the state fell within this category at the time the regulation was developed. Drought conditions that brought about unprecedented water use restrictions along the Colorado Front Range in 2002 spurred significant interest in using reclaimed water for a plethora of new, creative, but unauthorized, applications. Through implementation of the baseline landscape irrigation regulations and assessment of additional uses for potential regulatory authorization in 2004, members of the Colorado reuse community worked cooperatively with the State to develop regulations that address public health and environmental protection needs while encouraging continued and expanded reuse in this semi-arid state. Status of Reuse tertiary treatment. Water produced at the Sand Creek Water Reuse Facility is distributed through 20 miles of pipeline and used for landscape irrigation at several of the city's parks, golf courses, street medians, municipal center, and other locations throughout the city. Colorado Springs Utilities first provided reclaimed water to acity-owned golf course for landscape irrigation during the drought of 1964. Today, through some 20 miles of distribution pipeline, Colorado Springs Utilities provides tertiary-treated reclaimed water to sites for landscape irrigation, including several golf courses, municipal parks, and schools, and also utilizes it at its own Las Vegas Wastewater Treatment Facility for in-plant processes. Newer reuse programs span a wide range of conditions. The Town of Kremmling, Colorado is planning a reuse system to help optimize its water resources portfolio. And in 2003, Denver Water completed construction of its Recycling Plant and a major reclaimed water distribution system through heavily urbanized areas to serve certain industrial and municipal irrigation demands. Denver's system has a current treatment capacity of 30 mgd; a future second phase is envisioned to increase that capacity to 45 mgd. Reuse has rapidly expanded in recent years throughout Colorado's Front Range, in terms of: ~ Number of reuse "treaters" and "users." ~ Volume of reclaimed water put to beneficial use ~ Increased diversity of applications. It is expected that these trends will continue for the foreseeable future, within the limits of water rights and other constraints on reuse. While reuse has rapidly expanded in recent years, several utilities have had reuse systems in place for decades. For example, the City of Aurora has produced reclaimed water for irrigation since 1968 and currently operates a 5-million-gallons-per-day (mgd) base loaded wastewater treatment plant with The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) administers the state's reuse program, implementing the Water Quality Control Commission's Regulation No. 84, which specifies design and operational requirements for authorized reuse programs. The state does not maintain a database of reuse programs. Future efforts may include development of aColorado-specific reuse database, or participation in national efforts such as a nationwide database being developed under a WateReuse Foundation research project. Colorado utilities with authorized reuse programs (as of January 2007) are listed in Table 5-4. FINAL DRAFT 5-17