In Virginia, there's Something in the Water. Wait Before You Say "Yuck."

Authorities are pouring treated sewage in to fill a critically depleted aquifer. As water resources are stressed by high demand and climate change, this tactic is becoming more and more popular.

Despite not experiencing a megadrought like other regions of the country, Virginia nonetheless faces water shortages: Groundwater is being drained from homes and businesses in the Hampton Roads area, in the southeast of the state, more quickly than it can be refilled. Because of how awful things have become, parts of the world are already sinking.

But officials believe they may have found a solution in the sewers. A million gallons of treated wastewater are pumped back into the Potomac Aquifer, a significant source of drinking water for the area, each day by the region's sanitation system. Additionally, there are plans to raise that amount in the upcoming years to 100 million gallons.

Cities and municipalities around the nation are increasingly using treated wastewater to supplement their supply of potable water. Data gathered by the National Alliance for Water Innovation, a research initiative financed by the United States Department of Energy, shows that the number of drinking-water reuse projects has doubled over the previous 20 years.

According to Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, "it is now imperative for us to contemplate solutions that would, in earlier generations, be deemed unimaginable."

In the instance of coastal Virginia, stabilizing groundwater is the main objective to solve two pressing issues. First, the ground has started to gently sink and collapse in certain spots due to subsurface water depletion.

Around 155 million gallons of groundwater are drawn daily from the area's homes and businesses. With layers of impermeable clays and rocks beneath the surface making it difficult for precipitation to flow back into the earth, natural replenishment is significantly slower in constrained aquifers like the Potomac.

According to Mark Bennett, manager of the United States Geological Survey's Virginia and West Virginia Water Science Center, even if humans stopped using groundwater tomorrow, it may take thousands of years for the aquifer to re-fill.

Meanwhile, without sufficient water to sustain the earth, the surface collapses as underlying sediments fold in on themselves.

The aquifer has become prone to saltwater pollution as denser seawater seeps below as more freshwater is pumped out, which is the second major issue.

The issue is made worse in low-lying coastal regions like Hampton Roads by climate change. That's because sea levels increase as a result of ocean water's volume expansion in response to rising temperatures. Additionally, land-based glaciers melt more quickly, delivering more water to the oceans.

All of this increases the danger of flooding and facilitates saltwater intrusion into freshwater sources.

The average elevation of several communities in the Hampton Roads area, including Virginia Beach and Norfolk, is less than 10 feet above sea level. According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sea levels have already increased roughly 18 inches in the area during the last century.

The Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow, or SWIFT, initiative was launched by the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which oversees wastewater management in the area, in 2018 in response to the mounting risks.

The initiative was the first attempt to do so in Virginia, despite other water authorities around the nation, such as the Orange County Water District in California, injecting cleansed wastewater into subterranean aquifers to act as barriers against seawater intrusion.

In actuality, there was no regulatory structure in place in the state to control the injection of water underground. As a result, the sanitation district had to advocate for legislation to establish supervision, which, according to Dr. Kiparsky, is unusual because water districts seldom call for greater control.

To remove nutrients and germs, the district's sewage systems now collect wastewater and channel it via wastewater treatment facilities.

A million gallons of the water are then subjected to extra treatment every day at the SWIFT research facility in Suffolk, Virginia, which disinfects, removes dangerous toxins and pathogens, and raises the water's quality to that suitable for human consumption. The sophisticated treatment facility also modifies water characteristics like acidity and dissolved oxygen levels to make it suitable for the aquifer.

According to Charles Bott, head of water technology and research for the district, it is effectively a "tricked-out drinking water plant."

The cleaned water is released intermittently between 500 and 1,400 feet below the surface into the Potomac Aquifer via a recharge well with a diameter of 12 inches. As the water slowly filters through the soils, removing certain pathogens and micropollutants, the aquifer serves as an environmental buffer, basically adding another level of treatment.

The district anticipates that by 2032 it will be able to treat and pump into the aquifer up to 100 million gallons of wastewater per day that would otherwise be discharged into the Elizabeth, James, or York rivers. When fully completed, the project should shore up the aquifer and stop nearly 90% of the wastewater outflow from the area.

It costs money to convert wastewater into potable water. A full-scale SWIFT facility that would treat up to 16 million gallons of wastewater per day is projected to cost over $650 million, with some of the money coming from user fees and loans from the EPA. That does not account for upkeep and ongoing operations, which are anticipated to cost $7.2 million year.

However, the sanitation district has determined that subjecting wastewater to more thorough treatment will enable it to reduce the costs associated with adhering to ever-tougher regulations governing pollution from the hundreds of treatment plants that routinely discharge wastewater into the Chesapeake Bay.

According to Jamie Mitchell, chief of technical services for the Hampton Roads district, planners anticipate that the regulations, which are mostly focused on excess nutrients that can harm marine life, will get stricter over time. Making little improvements "every five or 10 years to accommodate new requirements" wouldn't be financially viable, she claimed.

Since it solves a number of concerns, including land subsidence and saltwater intrusion, nutrient contamination in the Chesapeake Bay, and rising expenses for the district, the system so far seems to be "a win-win-win situation," according to Dr. Kiparsky.

Despite the fact that the initiative is still in its early phases, USGS researchers have already noticed some aquifer improvement.

Such a concept would likely have been disregarded in the past as being too costly and uncomfortable. For example, in the 1990s, campaigners who opposed what they dubbed a "toilet to tap" system resisted efforts to create water reuse in San Diego and Los Angeles.

Even in areas that don't experience severe drought, local governments must now weigh the strains on water supplies brought on by climate change and population expansion. This is reflected in the increased adoption of wastewater reuse programs.

Similar initiatives exist in Texas and other drought-stricken areas like California, where families and businesses may occasionally be subject to forced water restrictions in order to reduce usage. Some of them even bypass an environmental barrier like an aquifer and send cleaned effluent directly to be used as drinking water.

Dr. Kiparsky pointed out that wastewater has the major benefit of having a consistent supply. He said that utilizing it to replenish aquifers was a challenging but efficient approach to achieve a fundamental objective: restoring water to its source.

He said that it "closes the loop on the urban water cycle."