PHOENIX — Recycled water is already plentiful in the arid West: It sprays from sprinklers across golf courses and irrigates landscaping.
But now those flows — wastewater scrubbed clean of contaminants — could also come out of the kitchen tap.
As cities across the arid West look to increase the water supplies for their growing populations, some are turning to multimillion-dollar projects to turn wastewater into drinking water, with the goal of reusing millions of gallons of water a day.
Cities including Phoenix and El Paso, Texas, are building “advanced water purification” plants: industrial facilities that use methods including reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light to turn processed wastewater into potable water that could be used for drinking, cooking and bathing.
