Anne Arundel Department of Public Works, Maryland, USA – Exploring Groundwater Augmentation project

To improve long-term water supply resiliency and water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, the Anne Arundel County Department of Public Works, is evaluating multiple management approaches. One piece of this strategy is to evaluate the feasibility of performing indirect potable reuse by adding advanced water treatment processes to an existing County Water Reclamation Facility.  

The advanced water treatment processes will further treat wastewater effluent to national drinking water standards with the intent of performing managed aquifer recharge to supplement aquifer water supplies.  

Anne Arundel County obtains all of its drinking water from groundwater, and recent trends and projections related to aquifer levels, land subsidence, and sea level rise raise questions about long term sustainability of current approaches. In addition, managed aquifer recharge provides a unique co-benefit by redirecting flow from surface discharges back into the aquifer, thereby further reducing the discharge of nutrients to surface waters. This supports broader water quality goals related to reducing nutrient discharges to the Chesapeake Bay. 

The managed aquifer recharge initiative is the first of its kind in Maryland, and Anne Arundel County Department of Public Works is in the process of testing and developing a multi-step advanced treatment system and identifying critical control points for operation of the system. A small pilot scale treatment system has been installed at the Patuxent Water Reclamation Facility utilising a carbon-based treatment system with multiple treatment steps including coagulation/flocculation, ozone oxidation, biofiltration, activated carbon adsorption, and ultraviolet disinfection. This type of multi-barrier approach is used in other applications where safety is a paramount concern. 

Anne Arundel County Department of Public Works will be operating the pilot system to verify performance, determine operating characteristics, and help establish design parameters to support future efforts. The Department is also developing an outreach program to provide educational tours for conference attendees, public interest groups, and regulators. This information is supplemented by materials on a program website, ourwaater.org, that provides information on the managed aquifer recharge program and other initiatives the County is pursuing to improve water quality.  

The Anne Arundel Clean Water Program – Our wAAter