Brazos Research Wetland

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Understanding and optimizing the use of constructed wetlands as an environmental buffer for the purposes of potable reuse was identified in the 2011 Texas Water Reuse Research Agenda as among the most pressing research needs for water reuse in Texas. A 2012 National Academy of Sciences report made a similar finding on a national scale. Concerns exist over the potential for endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) to adversely affect human health or ecosystems when treated wastewater is discharged into an environmental buffer and reused to help augment drinking water supplies. Recipient will utilize The Brazos Research Wetland to investigate whether an innovative constructed wetland design can attenuate or remove EDCs that may exist in treated wastewater effluent that will be recycled through an environmental buffer and used to augment drinking water supplies. The design of this wetland is innovative because of the unique combination and sequence of engineered surface and subsurface treatment zones, as well as passive aeration units that incorporate flowing cascades and turbulent stream channels. If successful, the Brazos Research Wetland could provide important design criteria for full-scale constructed wetlands and yield important data on how to build and integrate an engineered wetland into a utility’s water and wastewater treatment system. This could signify an important advancement in making potable water reuse a more viable strategy to increase our nation's usable water supplies, while also reducing the costly energy requirement and associated carbon footprint of using advanced water treatment technologies such as reverse osmosis.

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