The EPA highlights the plan to promote greater reuse of water by public services, the energy sector

“Water reuse has never been more important,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at the April 15 briefing in Washington, DC.

According to the Institute for Environmental and Energy Studies, large data centers have the capacity to use up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to meeting the drinking water needs of 10,000 to 50,000 people. With the explosion of data centers, this number will only increase.

Bruno Pigott, executive director of the WaterReuse Association, told ENR that his organization was involved in helping shape the action plan. “One of the axes of the Action Plan for the use of water 2.0 is to ensure that a wide variety of actors participate in the efforts for the reuse of water and to establish commitments of each of them.” These include not only drinking water and wastewater utilities, but also companies and organizations in the automotive industry, technology companies, steel mills, and the food and beverage industry.

In a statement, EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi said, “Thanks to collaborative partnerships between government and industry, we are developing innovative solutions and charting a course of transformative progress for American businesses, families and communities.”

One solution identified in the plan calls for the development of a GIS-based mapping and information tool to advance the planning of water reuse projects for the power sector and other end users.

Pigott noted that having organizations that are committed to developing water reuse “is one way of making sure that we bring attention to those companies that are doing it… [and] as companies make these pledges, other companies will follow suit.”