Increasing Water System Robustness in the Netherlands: Potential of Cross-Sectoral Water Reuse

Abstract

Water reuse has the potential to substantially reduce the demand on groundwater and surface water. This study presents a method to evaluate the potential of water reuse schemes in a regional context and demonstrates how water reuse propagates through the water system and potentially reduces pressure on groundwater resources. The use of Sankey diagram visualisation provides a valuable tool to explore and evaluate regional application of water reuse, its potential to reduce groundwater and surface water demand, and the possible synergies and trade-offs between sectors. The approach is demonstrated for the Dutch anthropogenic water system in the current situation and for a future scenario with increased water demand and reduced water availability due to climate change. Four types of water reuse are evaluated by theoretically upscaling local or regional water reuse schemes based on local reuse examples currently in operation in the Netherlands or Flanders: municipal and industrial wastewater effluent reuse for irrigation, effluent reuse for industrial applications, and reuse for groundwater replenishment. In all cases, water reuse has the potential to significantly reduce groundwater extraction volume, and thus to alleviate the pressure on the groundwater system. The water-quantity based analysis is placed in the context of water quality demands, health and safety aspects, technological requirements, regulations, public perception, and its net impact on the environment. This integrative context is essential for a successful implementation of water reuse in practice.

Investigating the micro-level dynamics of water reuse adoption by farmers and the impacts on local water resources using an agent-based model

“…This is in accordance with agricultural water reuse literature (Asano et al, 2007;Bixio et al, 2008;Jeong & Adamowski, 2016;Lazarova & Bahri, 2005;Asano et al, 2007;Miller-Robbie et al, 2017;Nazari et al, 2012). Furthermore, this result from our models aligns with another study conducted to evaluate how water reuse can increase the robustness of a water system in the Netherlands (Pronk et al, 2021). Like our study, this study demonstrated that implementing agricultural water reuse could successfully substitute the amount of water extracted from the groundwater sources for agriculture, increasing the water system's robustness to future stresses on groundwater sources.…”

Removal of persistent organic pollutants and disinfection of pathogens from secondary treated municipal wastewater using advanced oxidation processes

“…In recent years, water reuse is a feasible and effective way to solve the water crisis sustainably (Yang et al 2021). Globally, more than 14 billion m 3 y À1 of wastewater has been reused and utilized in various applications including crop irrigation (Leonel & Tonetti 2021) and aquifer recharge (Pronk et al 2021). A complex matrix of the wastewater restricts the efficiency of traditional wastewater treatment (Morris et al 2021).…”

Managed aquifer recharge with marginal water for irrigation and contaminant attenuation

“…The use of marginal water for irrigation is by itself not new; crops have been irrigated with marginal water through traditional surface irrigation methods, often improperly in hindsight with regards to health and environmental risks, by the ancient Greeks as early as the Bronze Age (Jaramillo and Restrepo, 2017). Treated domestic and industrial wastewater is a potentially abundant source of marginal water that may satisfy a significant proportion of agricultural water demand in certain regions (Narain-Ford et al, 2021;Pronk et al, 2021).…”

“…Here we provide only the details most pertinent to the construction of the two-dimensional numerical model, which will be described below. Further descriptions of the experimental implementation are available in , Bartholomeus et al (2017) and Stofberg et al (2021). The primary soil types in the root zone and phreatic zone are sandy soils with slight loam content.…”

“…Use of treated wastewater for irrigation may be an effective strategy to balance regional fresh water supply and agricultural water demand (Dingemans et al, 2021, Pronk et al, 2021, Narain-Ford et. al 2021.…”