In the southeastern part of the state, homes and businesses are drawing water out faster than they can replenish it. Some places on the earth are sinking because of the situation.
The officials think they may have found a solution in the sewer. The region takes a million gallons of treated wastewater and pumps it back into the water supply. There is a plan to increase that to 100 million gallons.
Cities and towns are increasingly using treated wastewater to supplement their drinking water supplies. According to data collected by the National Alliance for Water Innovation, the number of drinking-water reuse projects has doubled over the last two decades.
Michael Kiparsky is the Director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.
In the case of coastal Virginia, stabilizing the water is the goal. The ground is sinking and collapsing because of the underground water shortage.
155 million gallons of water is drawn from the area every day. There are layers of impermeable clays and rocks that make it hard for rain to get back into the ground.
Mark Bennett is the director of the Virginia and West Virginia Water Science Center for the United States Geological Survey.
Without enough water, the ground can't support itself.
As more and more freshwater gets pumped out, the loss of pressure has left the aquifer vulnerable to saltwater contamination as denser seawater creeps underground.
The area is facing a shortage of water. The story of the Netherlands has been told all over its boggy landscape. The Dutch are trying to engineer once again their way to safety by figuring out how to hold onto water instead of throwing it out.
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Climate change makes it worse in low-lying coastal areas. Sea levels rise as ocean water expands in volume. The glaciers on land add even more water to the ocean.
Increased flood risk and saltwater intrusion into freshwater sources are caused by that.
The average sea level in Virginia Beach and Norfolk is less than 10 feet above the ground. In the past century, sea levels have risen nearly 18 inches in the region.
In response to the growing threats, the Sanitation District began taking a more direct approach to the replenishment of the water in the area.
Although other water authorities around the country, like the Orange County Water District in California, have injected treated wastewater into underground aquifers, the project was the first attempt to do so in Virginia.
There was no regulatory framework for the underground injection of water. Dr. Kiparsky said that it's rare for water districts to ask for more regulation.
Wastewater is captured and sent to treatment plants to be removed from the water.
Each day a million gallons of water goes through additional treatment to bring the water up to drinking quality. The water is appropriate for the aquifer because of the advanced treatment plant.
The district's director of water technology and research said it was a "tricked-out drinking water plant."
The treated water goes into a well 12 inches in diameter that releases water at different times of the day. The aquifer acts as an environmental buffer, providing another level of treatment as the water filters slowly through the soil, a process that can remove some pathogens and micropollutants.
By 2032, the district expects to treat and pump up to 100 million gallons of wastewater per day into the aquifer that would otherwise be released into the Elizabeth, James or York rivers. The project should eliminate about 90 percent of the district's wastewater discharge.
Wastewater can be turned into drinking water. The next full-scale SWIFT plant, which will treat up to 16 million gallons of wastewater a day, is expected to cost up to $650 million, funded in part by customer fees and loans from the EPA. Maintenance and day-to-day operations will cost $7.2 million a year.
Putting wastewater through more intense treatment will help the district get ahead of the rules that regulate pollution from the hundreds of treatment plants that discharge waste into the bay.
Jamie Mitchell said planners expect the rules to become more strict as time goes on. She said that it wouldn't be cost effective to upgrade every five or 10 years.
According to Dr. Kiparsky, the system appears to be a win-WIN-WIN situation because it addresses a number of issues.
Even though the project is still in the early stages, the researchers at the United States Geological Survey have already noticed some improvements.
It would have been dismissed as too expensive and unpleasant in the past. Efforts to develop water reuse in San Diego and Los Angeles were defeated by activists who objected to the idea of atoilet to tap system.
The growing acceptance of wastewater reuse projects reflects a dilemma that local governments have to consider as they confront pressures on water supply from climate change and population growth.
There are projects in California and other states that impose mandatory water restrictions on homes and businesses in order to cut down on water use. Some of them directly route treated wastewater for use as drinking water.
There is always a dependable supply of wastewater. It was an effective way of returning water to where it came from.
He said it was closing the loop on the water cycle.
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