Stanford environmental engineers have developed a planning tool called AquaCharge that helps urban water utilities develop efficient, cost-effective systems to replenish aquifers.
The federal government reports that 40 states expect water shortages by 2024 and water worries already plague some cities across the United States. Underground aquifers that were over-tapped for years now cry out to be replenished. The problem is that the two main strategies for increasing water supplies – collecting stormwater runoff and recycling treated wastewater – are usually separate processes that can create costly and underused infrastructure.
Now two Stanford environmental engineers have developed a computational planning tool called AquaCharge that helps urban water utilities look at their local circumstances and understand how they could combine these two water supply strategies into an integrated, efficient and cost-effective system that replenishes aquifers.
Environmental engineer Jonathan Bradshaw is a 2013 David and Lucile Packard Foundation SGF.
