El Paso Wastewater Purification Facility Breaks Ground

A new water purification facility in El Paso, Texas will clean and deliver 10 million gallons of water per day from the city’s wastewater system to its drinking water system. “El Paso’s Pure Water Center, which will go online by 2028, is the first direct-to-distribution reuse facility in the country,” writes Martha Pskowski in Governing.

As Pskowski explains, “The advanced purification process begins with treated wastewater from the Roberto Bustamante Wastewater Treatment Plant in El Paso. This source water then goes through a multiple barrier system, first going through reverse osmosis, in which a membrane separates water molecules from other substances. Then hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet light are used to kill bacteria in the water. Next, activated carbon absorbs chemicals or compounds in the water. Lastly, chlorine is added for disinfection.”

The project’s technology underwent testing before gaining approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). However, “Environmental advocates have raised concerns about contaminants of emerging concern in the purified water, like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which aren’t yet regulated in drinking water.”

This would be El Paso’s first direct-to-distribution system, but the city has been distributing treated wastewater for irrigation since the 1960s and pumping treated wastewater into local reservoirs since the 1980s. While El Paso is the first city to break ground on its project, Phoenix and Tucson are expected to start work on their own wastewater purification projects soon, and a similar project has been in the works in San Diego for years.