The recently opened PUR Water facility in Oceanside turns blackwater into potable water, or toilet to tap as it was once called, by pumping it into the ground then filtering it through a warehouse full of white filtration tubes. The colored pipes represent the different types of water at different stages. his facility in Oceanside, California turns recycled water into potable water by running it through filtration tubes. TED WOOD
Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Matt Simon):
April 11, 2025
If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you — but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add back in. If it didn’t, that purified water would imperil you by sucking those minerals out of your body as it moves through your internal plumbing.
So if it’s perfectly safe to consume recycled toilet water, why aren’t Americans living in parched western states drinking more of it? A new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Natural Resources Defense Council finds that seven western states that rely on the Colorado River are on average recycling just a quarter of their water, even as they fight each other and Indigenous tribes for access to the river amid worsening droughts. Populations are also booming in the Southwest, meaning there’s less water for more people.
The report finds that states are recycling wildly different proportions of their water. On the high end, Nevada reuses 85 percent, followed by Arizona at 52 percent. But other states lag far behind, including California (22 percent) and New Mexico (18 percent), with Colorado and Wyoming at less than 4 percent and Utah recycling next to nothing.
“Overall, we are not doing nearly enough to develop wastewater recycling in the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Basin,” said Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA and co-author of the report. “We’re going to have a 2 million to 4 million acre-foot per year shortage in the amount of water that we’ve promised to be delivered from the Colorado River.” (An acre-foot is what it would take to cover an acre of land in a foot of water, equal to 326,000 gallons.)
The report found that if the states other than high-achieving Nevada and Arizona increased their wastewater reuse to 50 percent, they’d boost water availability by 1.3 million acre-feet every year. Experts think that it’s not a question of whether states need to reuse more toilet water but how quickly they can build the infrastructure as droughts worsen and populations swell.
At the same time, states need to redouble efforts to reduce their demand for water, experts say. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, for example, provides cash rebates for homeowners to replace their water-demanding lawns with natural landscaping, stocking them with native plants that flourish without sprinklers. Between conserving water and recycling more of it, western states have to renegotiate their relationship with the increasingly precious resource.
“It’s unbelievable to me that people don’t recognize that the answer is: You’re not going to get more water,” said John Helly, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who wasn’t involved in the report. “We’ve lulled ourselves into this sense of complacency about the criticality of water and it’s just starting to dawn on people that this is a serious problem.”
Yet the report notes that states vary significantly in their development and regulation of water recycling. For one, they treat wastewater to varying levels of purity. To get it ultra pure for drinking, human waste and other solids are removed before the water is treated with ozone to kill bacteria and viruses. Next the water is forced through fine membranes to catch other particles. A facility then hits the liquid with UV light, killing off any microbes that might remain, and adds back those missing minerals.
That process is expensive, however, as building a wastewater-treatment facility itself is costly, and it takes a lot of electricity to pump the water hard enough to get it through the filters. Alternatively, some water agencies will treat wastewater and pump the liquid underground into aquifers, where the earth filters it further. To use the water for golf courses and nonedible crops, they treat wastewater less extensively.
Absent guidance from the federal government, every state goes about this differently, with their own regulations for how clean water needs to be for potable or nonpotable use. Nevada, which receives an average of just 10 inches of rainfall a year, has an environmental division that issues permits for water reuse and oversees quality standards, along with a state fund that bankrolls projects. “It is a costly enterprise, and we really do need to see states and the federal government developing new funding streams or revenue streams in order to develop wastewater treatment,” Garrison said. “This is a readily available, permanent supply of water.”
Wastewater recycling can happen at a much smaller scale, too. A company called Epic Cleantec, based in San Francisco, makes a miniature treatment facility that fits inside high-rises. It pumps recycled water back into the units for non-potable use like filling toilets. While it takes many years to build a large treatment facility, these smaller systems come online in a matter of months and can reuse up to 95 percent of a building’s water.
Epic Cleantec says its systems and municipal plants can work in tandem as a sort of distributed network of wastewater recycling. “In the same way that we do with energy, where it’s not just on-site rooftop solar and large energy plants, it’s both of them together creating a more resilient system,” said Aaron Tartakovsky, Epic Cleantec’s CEO and co-founder. “To use a water pun, I think there’s a lot of untapped potential here.”
The Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 400 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 350 cfs for Friday, April 18th, at 4:00 AM. Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
Oak Flat, Arizona features groves of Emory oak trees, canyons, and springs. This is sacred land for the San Carlos Apache tribe. Resolution Copper (Rio Tinto subsidiary) lobbied politicians to deliver this National Forest land to the company with the intent to build a destructive copper mine. By SinaguaWiki – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98967960
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral.com website (Debra Utacia Krol). Here’s an excerpt:
April 17, 2025
Key Points
In a new court filing, the Trump administration says it will reissue an environmental impact statement that would allow the government to swap land with Resolution Copper at Oak Flat.
The land swap was put on hold during the Biden administration and the case has been working its way through the courts. The Supreme Court is still deliberating whether to hear the case.
Opponents say the court filing demonstrates that Trump doesn’t care about the land or the people who hold it sacred and only wants to hand Resolution Copper what it wants.
The Trump administration plans to reissue the final environmental impact statement for a long-delayed land swap that would hand over Oak Flat, a site considered sacred to Apache peoples and other Native peoples, to a copper mining company no earlier than June 17, according to a filing with the U.S. District Court of Arizona. The government issued the notice on April 17 even as the U.S. Supreme Court continues to deliberate over accepting a 4-year-old court case filed by grassroots group Apache Stronghold to prevent the 2,200-acre site from being obliterated by a copper mine. It’s the latest twist in a more than 20-year-old struggle over the fate of Oak Flat, between the Native communities who hold the site sacred and Resolution Copper, which wants access to one of the country’s remaining large copper deposits. For the leaders of the opposition, the court filing confirmed their worst fears.
“The U.S. government is rushing to give away our spiritual home before the courts can even rule — just like it’s rushed to erase Native people for generations,” said Apache Stronghold leader Wendsler Nosie. “This is the same violent pattern we have seen for centuries. We urge the Supreme Court to protect our spiritual lifeblood and give our sacred site the same protection given to the holiest churches, mosques, and synagogues throughout this country.”
[…]
Oak Flat, or Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, “the place where the Emory oak grows,” is at the heart of a dispute over what should happen to the land. In December 2014, Congress authorized the U.S. Forest Service to trade the 2,200-acre site, currently a campground about 60 miles east of Phoenix, for parcels of environmentally sensitive private land owned by Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of British-Australian mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP…To obtain the copper ore, Resolution would use a method known as block cave mining, in which tunnels are drilled beneath the ore body, and then collapsed, leaving the ore to be moved to a crushing facility. Eventually, the ground would subside, leaving behind a crater about 1,000 feet deep and nearly 2 miles across where Oak Flat and its religious and environmental significance stand.
In this detailed computer animation, we take a look into the future of Oak Flat, meticulously illustrating the development of subsidence as a result of the block cave mining process over an extensive period of 40 to 50 years. Crafted with transparency and precision, this video is grounded in the findings of multiple technical studies, aiming to provide as realistic a projection as possible of the landscape changes that Oak Flat will undergo. Block cave mining, a method known for its efficiency and low cost, has significant impacts on the terrain above the extraction zone. Through state-of-the-art animation, viewers will gain an understanding of how and why these changes occur, presenting a clear picture of the subsidence process from start to finish. Join us as we explore the intricacies of block cave mining and its effects on Oak Flat, guided by the latest in animation technology and scientific research. Whether you’re a student, a professional in the field, or simply interested in the future of our landscapes, this video is an invaluable resource for grasping the challenges and considerations of modern mining practices. By offering a visual journey through time, we aim to foster a comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved in mining operations and their environmental impacts. Learn more at http://www.resolutioncopper.com
The city of Denver along with Jefferson County, The Mile High Flood District and the city of Wheat Ridge presented options for potential upgrades to the Clear Creek Trail during an open house in early April at Centennial Elementary School.
A section of the trail near Inspiration Point may get an upgrade for people that bike and walk. Currently, trail-users headed west must cross over West 52nd Avenue and then travel down about 1,100 feet of Gray Street, a residential street, before reaching the trail again.
The new plans unveiled at the open house offered five different options for new routes to avoid going down Gray Street, and all of them included under passes or bridges so trail users won’t have to cross West 52nd Avenue at grade anymore.
All of the options presented include new bridges or underpasses and involve several different routes that meander between Marshall Street and West 53rd Avenue. All of the proposed routes are west of the residences on Gray Street and south of Interstate 76. A study of the trail is expected to be completed in the fall.
At the meeting, residents were given the option to rank the five options and pick their favorites and least favorites. To learn more and give input on the potential routes, people can visit https://bit.ly/ClearCreekTrail. A current survey is open until April 18. [ed. emphasis mine]
View of Denver and Rio Grande (Silverton Branch) Railroad tracks and the Animas River in San Juan County, Colorado; shows the Needle Mountains. Summer, 1911. Denver Public Library Special Collections
Water and environmental groups in southwestern Colorado have not heard a peep from the federal government since their $25.6 million grant got caught up in a widespread funding freeze, officials say.
Southwestern Water Conservation District pulled together a unique collection of partners in 2024 to tap into an immense stack of federal cash for environmental projects in the Colorado River Basin. The partners were “ecstatic” Jan. 17 when they found out their application to fund 17 projects was accepted, Steve Wolff, district manager, said.
Three days later, President Donald Trump paused spending, and the district’s partnership has been in limbo ever since. Other Colorado groups are in the same boat with millions of dollars of awarded grant funding on the line.
“Everybody had heard that they were going to be looking at the funding … so it was no big surprise,” Wolff said March 26. “The confusion was nobody knew what was in or out of all these freezes, or pulled back, at all. We still have not heard officially anything.”
The Bureau of Reclamation, which awarded the grant, declined to comment and referred questions to its parent agency, the Department of the Interior. Interior did not respond to questions from The Colorado Sun about the funding’s status.
“Under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, the Department is working to cut bureaucratic waste and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently,” an unnamed Interior spokesperson said in an emailed response from the Bureau of Reclamation. “Projects are being individually assessed by period of performance, criticality and other criteria.”
The uncertainty has impacted a slew of environmental projects across the Upper Colorado River Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Reclamation awarded $388.5 million for water and drought-related projects across the Upper Basin on Jan. 17. Of that, Coloradans secured $177 million.
Coloradans wanted to use that money to help fish find shelter when the state’s rivers are at their lowest. They wanted to help farmers and ranchers have a more reliable water supply by fixing decades-old irrigation ditches. Some projects planned to remove dams or turn wastewater lagoons into wetlands.
Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant back in the days before I-70 via Aspen Journalism
One award for $40 million to help a Western Slope water district buy an old and powerful Colorado River water right tied to the Shoshone Power Plant.
In southwestern Colorado, the organizations that were awarded funding were wondering if they should try to wait it out to see what happens or seek funding elsewhere.
“It’s incredibly stressful,” said Danyelle Leentjes with the Upper San Juan Watershed Enhancement Partnership. “It’s really hard to move forward in this landscape. It’s super, super hard.”
A new collaboration
Southwestern Water Conservation District started pulling together partners in 2023. Staff knew a load of federal funding was coming down the pike, and they wanted to build collaborations so local groups could access it, Wolff said.
“I don’t think the district’s ever been involved in anything like this before,” he said.
Water districts, ditch companies, environmental organizations and others often have small staffs in the rural district, which spans nine counties. The groups have little extra time to take on the application or little experience with federal grants. They might not have extra funding to hire a grant writer. Some, like nonprofits, weren’t eligible to apply for the funding without a governmental agency — like Southwestern — to manage the money as a fiscal agency.
Southwestern Water Conservation District and its partners identified 17 projects in their federal funding application in fall 2024. The projects aimed to remove blockages from rivers and irrigation ditches to help fish and farmers; stabilize river banks; turn waste lagoons into wetlands and more. (Southwestern Water Conservation District, Contributed)
“We’d repeatedly seen places where individuals or small groups didn’t have the capacity to work on federal funding or even state funding,” Wolff said.
So the conservation district stepped in: It asked organizations to add ready-to-go water projects to a centralized list, dubbed the “pipeline.” About 30 entities joined the effort. The district got grants from the state of Colorado and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership to hire people to organize the process and write the grant application.
Without the grants, the application never would have gotten off the ground, Wolff said.
“There’s two of us here. Our plates are full,” he said, referring to the district’s full-time staff. “We could’ve never done it.”
And when the federal funding application finally opened in fall 2024, the partnership could whip together a successful 17-project application for $25.6 million in weeks.
Wolff didn’t think any of the partnering organizations had applied for a grant that size, he said.
“I was ecstatic we got the full award,” Wolff said. “It seemed like the previous 18 months of effort had just paid off.”
Funding uncertainty
The uncertainty for Southwestern, however, is tied to the funding source for their grant: the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act.
The law included $4 billion to mitigate drought and prioritized the Colorado River Basin, the water supply for 40 million people. Of that total, $500 million was for projects that would address drought impacts or cut water use in the Upper Basin.
One executive order, called Unleashing American Energy, paused spending to give federal agencies 90 days to review whether funded projects aligned with the administration’s energy policies.
Past regulations have been burdensome and impeded the development of the country’s energy resources, according to the executive order.
That 90-day period ends April 20, but it was unclear Friday whether that deadline is still in effect or applies to the funding awarded to Colorado. Interior and Reclamation did not respond to clarifying questions from The Colorado Sun.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Colorado Republican, has generally supported the efforts to cut spending at the federal level, according to news reports. He did not respond to a request for comment Friday, but he has called for freeing up funding to purchase the historic Shoshone water rights on the Colorado River.
U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, both Colorado Democrats, have advocated for federal funds meant for Colorado to be released.
“Sen. Bennet believes President Trump’s shortsighted cuts to commonsense Colorado projects jeopardize rural communities, agricultural producers, and businesses across the state,” Bennet’s staff said in a prepared statement. “Grantees should receive the resources that were appropriated by Congress and promised by the Administration to complete their work.”
In early March, Southwestern and its partners had an open conversation about what to do with the regional director of Bennet’s office, John Whitney.
The strategy at the time, given the bipartisan support for the funding, was to have quiet conversations with Reclamation and Interior, Whitney told the gathering at the Southwestern Water Conservation District’s office in Durango.
“There may come a time when we have to stand up and raise our hand to be the squeaky wheel, to demand the money be released,” he said. “We don’t think that’s where we stand right now. We think an approach of quiet advocacy and outreach is the best.”
Mancos and the Mesa Verde area from the La Plata Mountains.
Impacts in southwestern Colorado
Members of the Southwestern partnership have stuck to that strategy so far, but the uncertainty has been hard to bear.
The Bureau of Reclamation awarded $2.2 million to the Upper San Juan Watershed Enhancement Partnership for a project that would clear concrete slabs and steel out of an irrigation ditch to help the agricultural community; fix damage to the Upper San Juan River from a landslide; and plant willows and reshape the river channel to help aquatic ecosystems.
“You can’t really proceed on anything. You can just hope that it goes,” Leentjes said.
Leentjes is paid to keep these projects moving forward — and without funding to make that happen, she spent a month wondering if she needed to look for jobs.
San Juan River Basin. Graphic credit Wikipedia.
It is also one of the first big projects for the Upper San Juan partnership after months of working with community members to identify which priorities should come first.
Their reputation is on the line, she said.
The Webber Ditch Company asked for $2.1 million to finally repair a 113-year-old diversion that sends water from the Mancos River to about 75 farmers and ranchers. The ditch company has been doing quick fixes on the rickety headgate for decades, Mike Nolan, company vice president, said.
“It could fail us in a season. That’s always been our biggest fear. Say we get wild monsoon rains and the river picks up, we could potentially lose that structure,” Nolan said. “That could happen at a critical time for our water users. We could Band-Aid it, but that’s not something we want to happen.”
The Mancos Conservation District had several projects in mind. Staff wanted to cut back thirsty invasive plants, like Russian olive trees, and improve a river put-in next to a local school in Mancos. They had projects to help with fish passage when the river is low, district executive director Danny Margoles said.
“It’s been a complicated number of months for us,” he said. The district had to lay off an employee and halt work on a project after the Trump administration canceled a different federal grant that was already contracted, confirmed and paying out.
The organizations were concerned about rippling impacts to state grants. Local organizations often use federal grants to cover their funding “match” for state grants. Now those federal grants are uncertain, and they’re not sure what the impact will be.
Margoles said he can sense the feelings of stress and uncertainty among his staff.
“Everyone’s hanging in there,” Margoles said. “Everyone does believe in the work they’re doing, so that’s what is keeping everyone going right now too. But there’s a lot of uncertainty.”
