El Paso Water to bring Advanced Water Purification Facility online by 2027, addresses leaks

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- The water utility for the El Paso region is being recognized across the state for efforts in water conservation - and a project to bring more advanced water recycling to a tap near you in the next few years.

The August edition of Texas Monthly magazine is focused on water use, waste, and conservation efforts in the state. In particular, El Paso Water is featured for it's upcoming Advanced Water Purification Facility and other water use programs currently in place in our region.

El Paso Water President and CEO John Balliew spoke about the article 'Recycle Like El Paso' in the August board meeting. Copies of the magazine were also handed out to board members.

"El Paso is in there in a very positive light," Balliew said.

Titled 'Who's Wasting Our Water,' Texas Monthly's August issue addresses in part how maintenance issues and leaky pipes are costing water capacity across the state. Balliew discussed the local water utility's efforts to limit leaks and waste in the distribution system.

"We (El Paso Water) have been very diligent for decades on our water loss. That's the difference between the water that we put into the system and the water we deliver to the customers," Balliew said. "It's always been about 8 or 9%, but about three years ago it started creeping up. And so we started investigating and doing what we could."

El Paso Water has a number of efforts in place to reduce leaks, including monitoring systems and satelite scanning.

"We have 12,000 monitors in the system monitoring for leaks," Balliew said. "We have our pipeline replacement, we do reservoir rehabilitation. All these things are designed to control the possibility that water is actually pouring out of the system.

Gilbert Trejo, vice president for engineering, operations and technical services with El Paso Water says that for the article on El Paso, Texas Monthly was most interested in what programs are coming up for the region.

"So a couple months ago, we had the writer reach out to us, just informing us that Texas Monthly was going to do a feature on just water related topics across the state," Trejo said. "She had heard that El Paso was on the cutting edge of some of the technologies that that are in place to employ recycled water projects."

The Advanced Water Purification Facility has been in the works for years. It's a continuation of a number of various efforts to diversify and secure El Paso's water supply, including aquifer storage of purified water in natural underground reservoirs and the world's largest inland desalinization plant.

"The eyes of the country are on us, especially here in the state as well," Trejo said. "Because we feel that this is the future of several communities, as they deal with their own water issues."

The pilot program for advanced purification has been going on since 2016 at the Bustamante Wastewater Treatment Plant near the Rio Grande in the Lower Valley. That plant is now undergoing renovation and expansion, and the Advanced Water Purification Facility is being built out next door. The plant will take municipal wastewater and treat it to a standard beyond EPA requirements for drinking water. It's expected to come online by 2027.

Renderings from El Paso Water show the new plant that will have four layers of purification -  membrane technology, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet disinfection and granular activated carbon filtration.

"You would just need one of them to create drinking water," Trejo said. "And we're going to string these back to back to back, to provide multiple barriers of treatment to ensure that we remove contaminant and pathogens out of the water.

Once fully up and running, the advanced facility is expected to put out 10 million gallons of water a day. At a current per-capita use of 131 gallons per day in our region, that would be enough for more than 75,000 people. That would be equivalent to about 6% of the total water supply from El Paso Water for now.

"I call it the ultimate water, and safest water that can be produced, given the level of treatment that we're going to be employing," Trejo said.