Abstract
Abstract Water and resource recovery (WRR) involves the collection and treatment of rainwater, stormwater, and/or municipal wastewater to a fit-for-purpose standard. There is no national policy for WRR in Canada, and there are minimal WRR-specific provincial regulations; given this lack of regulation, current projects are highly specific to the local context and approved individually. We engaged people who work with water and wastewater services in the province of Alberta, Canada to discuss what WRR could look like in their context. During 3-h workshops, information on WRR was shared and participants engaged in discussions using a World Café process. Participants discussed the need for supportive regulations and government leadership, financial support, collaboration and knowledge sharing, education and communication, and accounting for risk and liability. Given that the participants are individuals who would be impacted by the development of regulations for WRR, we discuss concepts to provide the guidance needed for the successful implementation of WRR. This research connected experts in water and wastewater and gave space for developing ideas that make sense to those most closely involved in delivering WRR systems.
Highlights
The processes involved in collecting rainwater, stormwater and wastewater, treating the resources to a fitfor-purpose standard, and, subsequently, using those resources have been referred to as water reuse, water recycling, resource recovery, water reclamation, and more
World Café: using one question ‘What could water reuse look like in ...?’, participants divided into tables to discuss the question, rotating among the tables three times to build on conversations; and
The Western Canada Water 2019 (WCW19) workshop had many water and wastewater operators and the Southern-AB workshop primarily had participants who worked in planning and Canadian Water Resources Association Alberta Branch (CWRA-AB) workshop 30 participants Primarily regulators, nonprofit, researchers, water and wastewater operators
Summary
The processes involved in collecting rainwater, stormwater and wastewater, treating the resources to a fitfor-purpose standard, and, subsequently, using those resources have been referred to as water reuse, water recycling, resource recovery, water reclamation, and more. We use the acronym WRR, referring to water and resource recovery (WRR) from various community source waters. WRR includes both the recovery of water from rainwater, stormwater, blackwater (toilet flushwater), and gray water (all other household wastewater than blackwater), as well as the recovery of other resources found in those sources, such as fertilizer (nitrogen and phosphorous) and organics for energy recovery via biogas production. It is becoming increasingly accepted that wastewater is a resource (Exall et al, 2004; Šteflová et al, 2018; Upper York Sewage Solutions Stormwater Management Notice, 2020) for which the economics may only be apparent when the whole community water service is assessed (Wood et al, 2015; Romeiko, 2019). There are many other factors (e.g. social acceptance, governance arrangements/approvals, etc.) that come into play for a WRR project to be successful
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