City of Québec, Québec, Canada: Exploring water reuse around the world
The City of Quebec aims to establish a multi-discipline centre dedicated to research, education, innovation and valorisation of Québec’s water resources. The project’s first and main objective is to meet the needs of nearby large industrial water users, to gather and support specialist water start-ups in the same place and to provide infrastructure dedicated to research and development, along with test benches for cutting edge technologies. Lastly, the project aspires to raise community awareness about responsible water use and sustainable water management and options in use in other parts of the world such as potable reuse. This water recycling initiative is the first of its kind in the Québec province.
The project will make use of used water coming from the future site in the east of the City of Québec, which will be directly connected to a water treatment system. This ‘water factory’ is currently under construction, but will be able to provide water to large industrial customers in future. The system is expected to begin providing water in the next five years.
Part of the programme is to create a visitor centre that the general public can come to. This will allow the community to discover and understand the way the water treatment process works, as well as the positive environmental impacts from recycling high quality water. Importantly, this visitor centre will focus specifically on water recycling.