In general, “the toolkit will be used in outreach to educate land developers and municipal stakeholders about on-site water reuse technologies, both building scale and individual residence scale, and the financial incentives to support their implementation,” a TWT spokesperson said via email.
TWT has created a real estate advisory group of developers, builders and other industry leaders to help develop toolkit content and connect the group with industry stakeholders.
According to the spokesperson, the group aims to complete the toolkit by January 2024.
The toolkit will showcase real-world examples of state buildings that harvest and use water typically treated as waste — like air conditioning condensate, stormwater and blackwater (water from kitchen sinks and toilets) for nonpotable purposes like outdoor irrigation and toilet flushing.
The platform will also give users hands-on tools to estimate how much water their conceptual developments can generate onsite, along with the costs and potential financial benefits of on-site water options and the permitting required for different types of water reuse.
As for how local governments come into play, the spokesperson said the group looks to focus its initial outreach efforts in Hays, Burnet and Travis counties.
“We’ve already been collaborating with some cities and counties in the Texas Triangle to learn more about the ways they’re thinking about development ordinances and incentives in light of water reuse,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll be harvesting some of the tools they’ve created and sharing with them resources they may not already know exist that could help them develop appropriate incentives to spur water reuse locally.”
Houston, in particular, is a region where TWT is seeing interest in water reuse and where they're engaging city decision-makers around the toolkit.
“Given the pace of growth and water stress throughout the Texas Triangle (DFW, Austin-San Antonio and Houston), we are interested in bringing this toolkit to any county or city that expresses interest,” the spokesperson said.
Moving forward, TWT looks to help project developers tackle existing hurdles in evaluating water reuse, including lack of familiarity with water reuse options and upfront costs to hire designers and engineers to develop bespoke plans.
Long term, the spokesperson said “we hope that this toolkit will spur more reuse projects to come online in the next five years, both by discovering champions from the development world who want to tap into the potential of water reuse and by enabling local governments to speed up the development of incentives and smooth permitting pathways to make these projects easier and more affordable to build.”
