With an estimated population of over 60,000 people in Queen Creek and growing, finding a way to reuse water safely and efficiently is important to support the town's effort to go green.
Paul Gardner, director of water resources for the town, explained that communities throughout the Valley use water from a treatment plant that goes to a community lake, for example, to water all the landscaping in their homeowners association communities. This water, he explained, is treated effluent and because the salt content is higher, signs must be posted that you can't swim or fish in places the water is used or come in contact with the lawns that are watered with it.
While this does help to cut down on the amount of water used, Gardner explained that the Town of Queen Creek has taken it one step further; they recharge the treated effluent and place it back in the ground where it is transported via the aquifer to a recovery well. That well then pumps the water to the parks in the town and people are then able to paddle board on the lakes, eat the fish they catch when fishing, or not have to worry about having to decontaminate themselves if they come into contact with the water.
In addition to pumping the treated water back to the parks, six subdivisions in Queen Creek, including Barney Farms and Legado, also use this same system to become self-sufficient and avoid having to use drinking water for their landscaping needs.
"We look at how many homes are in the subdivision, how much water is used per home through the toilets, showers, sinks, laundry and how much return flow we get per home," said Gardner. "That goes to the plant, we treat it, we then look at how much we lose through the treatment process, how much we lose when we recharge the water back into the aquifer, which we recover back out, and we say this is the water you get back to put back into the lake to water all your landscaping and now you become self-sufficient. If a community's landscaping needs 100,000 gallons a month, and they’re producing 200,000 gallons a month in treated effluent, that’s what makes this program work. They have produced effluent out of their subdivision, it gets treated and gets returned to them. So instead of using groundwater to water all their landscaping through our potable system, it’s now recovered treated effluent, goes into the lake, they own the lake and they water all their HOA landscaping with recovered effluent.
"It's about as green as you can get," added Gardner.
While the decision to add a lake to new subdivisions is ultimately up to the community's HOA, Gardner explained that builders don't include grass or front lawns in their package now as a result of the market and how expensive it is.
"The town doesn't even have to place restrictions now where we say no grass, no front lawns because the builders don't even offer it now," he said. "A two-acre lake – which is the typical size – will evaporate about as much water as if you put in two acres of grass and over-seeded it with winter grass. So what we are doing is a trade-off to say you have this amenity, you put the lake in with a clubhouse next to it, some ramadas, the kids come out and fish. They have weddings by it and family gatherings and community parties and it becomes a gathering place. But it really is a reservoir so that they can water all their landscaping; that's what it’s truly set up for."
In addition to using this system to become self-sufficient, another benefit is the savings for HOAs and not having to use potable water for landscaping, especially during the morning and evenings when residents have a high demand for it.
"Instead of us at 5 a.m. having to use our potable water that’s chlorinated to water all the turf and trees and bushes and shrubs at the same time people are trying to get to a shower and get their kids to school – the demand is super high – now we can bill smaller facilities to deliver water to their home because we aren’t watering all the HOA landscaping at the same time," said Gardner. "It’s a win-win for both sides; it’s a win-win for utilities, it’s a win-win for the town because we now have communities that are self-sufficient and green, and they make sure they are using turf that is usable or playable."
For communities already established, Gardner said it would probably be too difficult to replace the large green areas with a lake if it isn't planned from the beginning. He explained that in addition to needing to be close enough to a well that can pump directly to the lake, many of the older subdivisions were designed from one side to another and sometimes have over 20 or 30 landscape feeders. He said that even if they put a lake in, it would be too difficult to reroute about a square mile of landscaping to make it work.
For these older communities that can't put in a lake, Gardner said the town works with a company called Waterfluence to conserve as much water as possible. Waterfluence will map out every single square foot of grass and how many bushes, trees, shrubs, etc. they have and create the water duty, which is their goal to meet.
"What we find with a lot of their places, they think they are really efficient but by the time they map everything out and see this is what you really should be using, they are closer to 175, 200 percent of what their water duty should be," said Gardner. "We aren’t trying to get them down to 100 percent, but we are trying to get them down to about 120, 125 percent."
As for the future, Gardner is hopeful that HOAs will see how cost-efficient this system is and choose to work with the town when building new communities.
"We work with the HOAs, the landscapers, and sometimes early on, the developers," said Gardner. "I think it's a selling point for the developers. We offer it, we try to encourage them, we show them that it actually gets them water at a lower rate on the way in and there's no obligation to pay a replenishment tax on the back end."
To learn more about the ways in which Queen Creek is conserving water and going green, visit the water conservation section of the town's website here.
