Treating Greywater Cost Effectively While Protecting the Public’s Health

2. States that regulate greywater without a Tiered Approach (Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana, North Carolina, Montana, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming)

Regulating greywater reuse for toilet flushing is allowed in many of these states with a varying degree of water quality requirements. A majority of the states including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Utah, have adopted the requirements for toilet use directly from the state’s plumbing code. Wisconsin, Utah and Montana have imposed regulations treating the waste water and greywater the same way even though greywater and wastewater have very different characteristics. From a public health and environmental perspective, should greywater reuse require the same treatment as wastewater reuse? In states such as Arizona, New Mexico, and California, the consensus is that greywater reused for residential irrigation should not and does not require the same level of treatment as reclaimed water. Furthermore, use of greywater is often conducted at the single household scale and the end use has no contact with humans (i.e. drip irrigation). Whereas, reclaimed water is often distributed to multiple users and is applied through spray irrigation. That being the case, states with regulatory standards that treat the two as the same do not encourage users to pursue greywater reuse as vigorously compared to less stringent regulations.

South Dakota does not provide water quality requirements for greywater reused for either irrigation or toilet flushing. Texas’ regulation does not require a permit or water quality requirements for irrigation uses. The regulation is similar to the tiered approach to greywater with Best Management Practices for small systems except that it also applies to commercial, industrial, and institutional applications.