This is an event sponsored by BSA Allied Member, Built Environment Plus.

The New England Living Building Collaborative is presenting a series of webinars on how water management, water efficiency, and water and energy nexus concepts can be incorporated into project planning, design, construction and operation. This second webinar will focus on urban water reuse, which has recently become practical in Massachusetts Water Resource Authority (MWRA) sewer service communities, due to a 2019 housekeeping rule revision. To introduce how urban water reuse works, case studies from Battery Park City and other projects in New York City will be highlighted, as urban onsite water reuse has been in place in Manhattan since 2002. Onsite water ruse is currently embraced by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection as a means of water efficiency and conservation.

Why do we need a series of webinars on water and the built environment?

To help project owners, planners, designers, contractors, operators and regulators understand how the following issues have been addressed:

Water is an essential to life.
Fresh water is a finite resource.
Water infrastructure is expensive, with great variability in cost from community to community.
Water should not be treated as separate streams (drinking water, cooling water, stormwater, irrigation water, etc.) but as inter-related resources in a common water cycle
Energy is required to extract, treat, use, and recycle used water; and water can be an energy resource.
Net zero water is generally defined as balancing water consumption with the amount of water that is available onsite, from either rainfall, groundwater or surface water; and returning used water to the local water cycle.
Different “green” building, district, neighborhood, or community certification programs emphasize different aspects of minimizing water use, onsite treatment and reuse of water and balancing water use with water availability.