Global Water Resources is a Arizona water utility that operates 16 water and waste water facilities here in Arizona and are huge supporters of using water in a sustainable manner. Their LEED certified silver Global Water Center is just down the street from where I live and this past weekend I had the opportunity to tour it and their sewage treatment facility.

Like an idiot I forgot to take a picture of the outside of the building, so here’s the rendering of it found on Global Water’s website. The real building looks very nice.

LEED Certified Silver

The atrium is open to the public and filled with educational displays about saving water and using reclaimed water.

The Global Water Center uses 83% less Potable water than conventional buildings by using reclaimed water for flushing toilets, landscape watering, etc..

Reclaimed water is always in these purple painted pipes.

Garden grown with reclaimed water.

Reclaimed water is safe to use on plants you eat.

There are quotes about water all over the walls..

Currently the city of Maricopa’s water comes from groundwater and no recharging is going on. Global Water is putting water back into the ground in other parts of Arizona though. They are working on being able to do the same in Maricopa.

Global Water’s water meters are all wireless. The meters transmit usage back every four hours or so. They can use this data to monitor unusual spikes in people’s water use and notify them if they think they may have a broken pipe.

This water retention pond just out side of the Global Water Center is filled with reclaimed water. All the ponds in Maricopa are filled with reclaimed water. Most if not all of the green areas in developments are also watered with reclaimed water. Global Water says they have saved 1.3 billion gallons of drinking water by reusing it for these purposes. Ideally they’d like to see new developments put in dual pipes so residential customers can use reclaimed water for watering their yards and flushing their toilets.

They have some cool technology to monitor what is going on with the water system. This screen shows some information about water pressure, PH, amount of ground water being pumped, amount of potable water being used and stored in tanks. On Saturday morning everyone in the city of Maricopa were collectively using about 4000 gallons of water per minute.

They also have other systems to let customers see their water use and compare it how much their neighbors are using.

This is where all of Maricopa’s sewage flows to and is treated. There isn’t a whole lot to see because pretty much everything happens in sealed tanks underground. This is very close to residential houses and there is very little smell.

This is where the solid bits of sewer are disposed of. They said baby wipes wreak havoc on the machinery.

Water on its way to be treated.

Maricopa, here is your poop. They squeese all the water out of it, put it in giant trash bags and it currently is sent to the landfill.

This machine removes the water from the waste.

After all the sewage is cleaned up and filtered the final stage is disinfection with ultra violet light.

The reclaimed water is now clear and clean.

The reclaimed water is pumped out of the facility via those large orange pipes and heads off to fill the ponds and water the landscaping around Maricopa.

That’s it! If you are ever in Maricopa I’d recommend taking a trip out to the Global Water Center and learn a bit about sustainable use of water.