Reclaimed Water
Reclaimed Water (RCW) is the clean water produced as a result of the advanced treatment of wastewater at our Mason Farm Wastewater Treatment Plant. Following the record drought of 2001/2002, OWASA and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (the University) partnered to develop the RCW system to provide the University RCW instead of drinking water to meet certain non-drinking water demands (chilled water, irrigation of landscaping and athletic fields, toilet flushing in new facilities) on campus.
The primary benefits of the RCW system are:
- Enables OWASA to meet non-drinking water needs in a cost-effective manner while freeing up the community's drinking water supply and treatment capacities to meet essential needs;
- Lowers the risk of a water shortage for all customers during future droughts; and
- Defers or eliminates the need for costly water supply and/or treatment facilities.
The RCW system began operation in April 2009. The University and UNC Hospitals now use RCW at all of their central campus chiller plant cooling towers instead of drinking water.
The University paid the entire cost to build the RCW system, excluding the $1.6 million in grant funds received from the North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund to pay for engineering design and permitting costs, and a $625,500 grant received from the Environmental Protection Agency which helped pay for construction of the system. To date, the total value of the system is about $14 million. The RCW capital improvements were dedicated to OWASA for operation and maintenance.
The RCW water system includes a storage tank and pumping station located at our Mason Farm Wastewater Treatment Plant. The RCW system also allows OWASA to further disinfect the already highly treated wastewater. RCW is pumped to the University through about three miles of RCW pipes.
The RCW system is currently configured to meet a total peak day demand of 3 million gallons per day (MGD). The system is constructed to allow cost-effective expansion to about 5 MGD. The RCW average daily demand forecast over the next year or so is about 0.83 MGD. It is anticipated that the system's current configuration will meet projected RCW demands for the foreseeable future.
The cost to operate and maintain the system is paid solely by OWASA's RCW customers (the University, which uses most of the RCW; and St. Thomas More School, which began using RCW to irrigate an athletic field in the spring of 2011).
Map of RCW System
