Sewage to sustenance: making reclaimed water ready for crops

A simple solution for cleaning out unhealthy chemicals

Plant materials that would otherwise become trash may be the key to solving two big problems: diminishing freshwater supplies for farms and diminishing effectiveness of antibiotics.

On average, agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater use. In California, which produces nearly half of all U.S.-grown fruits, nuts, and vegetables, that number rises to 80%.

The United Nations estimates food production will need to double by 2050. However, water supplies will not increase accordingly. Instead, due to climate change and drought, water resources are quickly shrinking.

One solution to the increasing need for farm water is to use treated municipal wastewater. There are roughly 16,000 wastewater treatment plants in the U.S., each of them capable of processing up to 10 million gallons every day.

“It’s a huge amount of processed water that’s mostly clean and can be used again, but there’s a problem,” said Ananda Bhattacharjee, assistant project scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Salinity Laboratory, based at UC Riverside.

“This water can contain chemicals of emerging concern, like antibiotics, that are difficult to detect and treat without advanced […]

Full article: news.ucr.edu