Establishing pathogen log reduction value targets for direct potable reuse in the United States

Communities are now turning to potable reuse to augment their water supply portfolios in response to increasing demand and climate uncertainty. One barrier to broader implementation is a lack of regulations for direct potable reuse (DPR) in some locations. An incomplete understanding of the foundation of existing DPR frameworks may be contributing to this barrier. The objective of this study was to use a publicly available quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) tool—DPRisk—to explain the basis behind California's existing indirect potable reuse regulations, California's draft DPR regulations, and an Expert Panel's response to those draft regulations. Then, leveraging a robust raw wastewater pathogen dataset from the literature, DPRisk was used to justify two alternatives: one based on maximum simulated pathogen concentrations and the other based on 97.4th percentile concentrations. The latter represents an effort to seek equivalency between “raw wastewater” (i.e., California) and “treated effluent” (i.e., Texas) approaches. Using justified QMRA assumptions, the baseline log reduction value (LRV) targets were determined to be 15/11/11 (maximum) or 13/10/10 (97.4th percentile) for viruses, Giardia, and Cryptosporidium. Additionally, instead of augmenting the baseline LRVs to account for undetected treatment process failures, tolerances for off-specification conditions (e.g., up to 3 logs for 3–12 days per year) were characterized. With this foundational knowledge, stakeholders can better understand and adopt these frameworks or use DPRisk to establish a new framework that better addresses their unique constraints, including considerations for preferred treatment paradigms and capital and operational costs.