Today I need some help.
We are polishing the International Water Reuse Programme that I want to launch during 2027, and I would rather build it with you than for you.
I have no hesitation about this: water reuse is going up over the next decades.
Not as a trend, but as a structural shift in how we manage water.
Regulation is pushing it, droughts are pushing it, corporates are pushing it, private capital and PPP’s pushing it, and the numbers increasingly make sense.
Today’s edition is sponsored by The Water MBA: Our Academy is taking shape!
Since opening our Academy just two months ago, the response has been very positive. We’re seeing a growing interest from water professionals around the world, and we’re using that feedback to shape what comes next.
Our goal is simple: offer highly curated content that responds to what our community actually needs and, above all, what the water business demands in real life. Practical knowledge, relevant skills and direct business applications.
My recommendation? Make 2027 the year you invest in your professional development. Explore some of our courses, and don’t hesitate to ask your company to include them in its annual training plan.
There are some very interesting early-bird discounts available, as you’ll see. Some places are even 100% free!
So beyond our AI in Water course led by Sandro, the Desalination course led by myself, the Digital Presence for Water Professionals course I’ve also started, the next step for The Water MBA is clear: Reuse.
Have a look at what’s coming. We’d love to have you on board!
So why not shape the content all together?
I am taking the opportunity to share here my conversation with Veronika, founder of Waterloop Solutions and one of the people I have asked to be one of the instructors in this programme.
Her profile is especially interesting because of her cross-field understanding: she started in advanced wastewater treatment research, did her PhD on water reuse, ran national and EU pilot projects at an applied research institute, and then founded a company whose entire purpose is to be the bridge between research results and real projects on the ground.
Technology, regulation, permitting, risk, public acceptance — she sits in the middle of all of it. In the middle of the storm, as I told her before we started recording.
The programme modules
Here are the modules I have been thinking of. They are still being polished, and this is exactly where I want your input.
Block A: Context and rules
Why reuse, why now: drivers, markets and reuse configurations.
Regulation and standards.
Understanding the drivers, the market and the regulatory environment.
We start here because water reuse is not simply a technical decision. It is driven by water scarcity, industrial demand, water security, regulation and business opportunities.
Before designing a solution, professionals need to understand why reuse is needed, which configurations are available, who the stakeholders are and what regulatory framework applies.
We also believe regulators should be involved from day one, not just invited at the end to approve a project. Early engagement helps establish realistic requirements, demonstrate feasibility and avoid costly surprises later.
Block B: Engineering
Fit-for-purpose quality and risk management.
Fit for purpose: the quality has to match the intended use. It’s not “as clean as possible”.
Risk management plan, a living document, step by step (this is key in our opinion): hazards, exposure routes, barriers, critical control points, monitoring and corrective actions, reviewed regularly so it covers emerging contaminants as knowledge changes.
Treatment trains and how to choose one.
Storage, conveyance and distribution: often the biggest cost.
Moving from water quality requirements to a technically and economically viable solution.
This is where engineering decisions make the difference. We want participants to understand how to define fit-for-purpose water quality, assess risks, select treatment trains and design the infrastructure needed to deliver reclaimed water.
A particular emphasis is placed on risk management as a continuous process, rather than a document prepared once and forgotten.
We also want to go beyond the treatment plant itself. Storage, conveyance and distribution infrastructure can represent a substantial part of project costs and often determine whether a reuse project is viable.
Block C: Applications
Agricultural reuse
Urban and environmental reuse
Industrial reuse. Most of it is on-site recycling, growing number of industrial–municipal partnerships and offtake agreements, and how this links to corporate water strategy.
Decentralised reuse. Greywater and rainwater reuse in buildings, neighbourhoods and areas without central infrastructure. Covers who runs and monitors these systems, and how the rules handle small systems.
Potable reuse: indirect and direct.
Understanding where reclaimed water actually creates value.
Water reuse looks very different depending on the end user. Agricultural, urban, environmental, industrial, decentralised and potable reuse each have different water quality requirements, operational challenges, business models and regulatory considerations.
We include these applications because professionals need to understand the demand side, not just the supply side.
In particular, industrial reuse deserves attention: much of it happens through internal recycling, while industrial–municipal partnerships and long-term offtake agreements are creating new opportunities. Understanding the user’s actual water strategy is essential.
Block D: Delivery
Economics, financing and contracts.
Governance, acceptance and operations.
Turning an engineering concept into a sustainable, operating business.
A technically feasible project does not automatically become a successful project.
Financing, economics, contractual structures, risk allocation, governance, public acceptance and operational capabilities are all essential to moving from feasibility to implementation.
We include this block because the real challenge is not just building a reuse facility. It is making sure someone is willing to invest in it, someone is willing to buy the water, responsibilities are clearly allocated and the system continues to perform over the long term.
Tell me what is missing, what you would remove, …
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What I took from the conversation with Veronika
We recorded this a while ago, but it has aged well.
Rereading it now with the programme in mind, these are the lessons that stayed with me.
1. The pieces of the puzzle already exist — the missing piece is the bridge
The technologies are there, and the authorities who decide yes or no are there.
We can still optimise treatment for specific micropollutants, but the core toolbox exists.
What is missing is someone who connects research results to implementation — making sure pilots are accepted, operated properly, monitored so safe quality is always reached at the end of the treatment train, and accepted not only by authorities but also by the public.
That is a knowledge gap. And it is precisely why a programme like this one makes sense.
2. “Germany has plenty of water” is a dangerous myth
A friend outside the sector asked me why Germany would ever need reuse.
Veronika’s answer: water scarcity is regional and seasonal, and climate change is making it more unstable — even in Germany, Denmark or Sweden.
The dry years of 2018, 2019 and 2022 hit agriculture hard and pushed the Rhine, a transport artery for enormous volumes of goods, to critical levels.
This year, a family member had to cancel a trip because the river cruise couldn't sail along the Rhine. The alternative was travelling by bus… haha. Not quite the same experience!
Projects are already running in Bavaria, Braunschweig and Lower Saxony.
Rainy countries are just later to the conversation, but not exempt.
3. We already do reuse. We just don’t call it that.
The most common municipal question in Germany is about groundwater: if we irrigate a park or a field with reclaimed water, what reaches the aquifer that supplies our drinking water?
But behind that question sits a lack of understanding of de facto reuse.
We already discharge treated effluent into rivers, and downstream a drinking water plant takes that water, directly or via bank filtration.
It is a water cycle, especially in urban areas. “We have always done it this way and everything has been fine” holds until an external pressure — falling groundwater, two dry years in a row — becomes strong enough to change the status quo.
4. The EU Regulation is a floor, not a ceiling
The EU Water Reuse Regulation is a regulation, not a directive, and some countries — much of Eastern Europe — opted out.
Those that opted in are mostly the ones already doing reuse: Spain with 30+ years of experience, Italy, France, Malta, Cyprus.
For Germany, where reuse was not forbidden but not specifically regulated either, it was an opportunity to build on the minimum requirements.
A national reuse law is expected to go further, covering urban uses and specifying quality classes and validation.
This connected with something friends in Spanish agriculture told me: the produce exported to Germany already met stricter quality requirements than the regulation’s minimums.
Veronika agreed — the point of the minimums was to secure a common baseline across the European trading zone.
The countries with experience were already above it.
The real challenge in places like Spain is not the quality bar; it is the infrastructure needed to extend reuse to areas that did not need it before.
5. Feasibility first: not every place should do reuse
A good feasibility study puts all the questions on the table: what water quality am I starting with, what quality does my end use require, and what steps connect the two?
Which of those questions can existing data answer, and which need further monitoring (microbial pathogens, for instance, are not always monitored stringently in some industries)?
Her honesty here: water reuse does not make sense everywhere, and not everywhere does it make economic sense. Sometimes the right outcome of a study is “this is not the best location.”
6. Who pays? The pipe often costs more than the plant
There is no easy answer, because wastewater charging differs by country and even by region. But some pieces are moving.
Under the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, extended producer responsibility means the producers of micropollutants should pay for the additional removal step at large plants.
After that, the questions become: who owns the advanced treated water, how far does it travel, and how?
A farm two kilometres away is a different case from one ten kilometres away.
Pipes are extremely expensive and infrastructure timelines can equal or exceed treatment timelines.
Veronika sees room for creative solutions — for example, end users with similar quality needs forming consortia and sharing costs with the municipality.
7. Risk management has a recipe — but someone has to translate it
The regulation already embeds a risk management plan with around eleven key elements: monitoring, soil assessment, continuous and transparent communication with the public, standard operating procedures for off-spec influent, wet days, dry periods.
The guidance is long, and newcomers get overwhelmed quickly.
Much of Veronika’s work is distilling decades of scientific evidence into a one- or two-pager that a permitting officer can actually use.
Permitting remains “the elephant in the room.”
Her observation: smaller authorities, once convinced it is safe, are often more willing to try something new than large city administrations.
8. DPR may be safer than what we drink today
Direct potable reuse is not science fiction. California has adopted a very strict framework with demanding log-removal requirements, and large projects like the one in Los Angeles are on the way.
Texas has been doing DPR for over a decade, Namibia since the 1960s, and Veronika had just seen a first municipal DPR case in Belgium.
Her view: in a fully engineered, multibarrier system you can monitor almost minute by minute, shut down, divert and fall back on backup plans.
In her opinion, DPR produces higher-quality, more consistent drinking water than conventional treatment.
I personally think DPR should be a lower priority at this stage. Considering how much work we still have to do globally, even in basic wastewater treatment, I believe other water reuse approaches should come first. That said, I expect DPR to become increasingly relevant, and we'll probably see more of it in the coming years. But I am not spending much time to get into the details of DPR scheme.
9. PFAS: solve it at the source, not in the municipal plant
Municipal plants sometimes see higher PFAS concentrations in the effluent than in the influent, as precursors break down.
New groundwater and surface water quality standards are adding more PFAS compounds, and ultra-short-chain TFA is under consideration.
Ozone does little for PFAS; GAC captures some but saturates quickly and drives up costs; membranes and selective ion exchange help, especially for short chains.
Her core message: industry banned PFOS and PFOA, then moved to shorter, more mobile chains.
The problem belongs at the source — the industrial users and dischargers — not diluted in a municipal treatment plant that did not create it.
10. The next frontier is decentralised
When I asked where we need more conversation, Veronika did not hesitate: decentralised and on-site reuse.
We have plenty of guidance for centralised systems, but very little for small plants, greywater, blackwater, stormwater or on-site industrial systems — especially for long-term safe operation.
That field needs standardised, science-based approaches that can be replicated quickly.
It is already on our tracking list, and it may well deserve its own module.
Why this matters for the programme
Veronika’s career is treatment technology, then reuse science, then pilots, then regulation, risk, permitting, public acceptance, financing and business case.
That is exactly the cross-field view I want our participants to leave with.
Reuse is not a treatment train. It is a system of people, permits, pipes and trust.
Her closing message: reuse can look broad and daunting, but we have been doing safe reuse for a very long time, and there is plenty of evidence and expertise to guide you through it.
It is not as scary as you think.
So help me shape it. What would you want in an International Water Reuse Programme?
Key quotes
On the missing piece
“All the pieces of the puzzle are already there. So all the technologies pretty much exist.”
“Bridging the research capabilities and the research results that we get from projects with implementing these projects in real life was the missing piece.”
On entrepreneurship
“I never thought I would be a business owner or that we would be around for already a year.”
“I wasn’t really prepared for the ups and downs.”
On water stress in “wet” countries
“It’s a regional problem as it is in many other countries, but we see more increasingly with climate change that Germany, even more northern countries like Denmark, Sweden, et cetera, are having seasonal problems with water.”
On municipalities rethinking water
“Why are we using drinking water quality to clean our streets?”
On de facto reuse
“There’s this really lack of understanding that it’s a water cycle and a water circle, especially in our urban areas.”
On resistance to change
“We’ve done it this way forever and everything’s been fine. We protect public health. Why should we change it?”
On regulation as a baseline
“The countries that were already doing a lot of reuse for agricultural irrigation had more stringent requirements.”
On corporates
“Corporates have a really big role to play because they can free up financing, I would say faster than municipalities sometimes.”
On feasibility
“Not everywhere does water reuse make sense and not everywhere does it make economic sense.”
On financing
“It’s a really tricky, difficult question with no easy answer.”
“Laying down pipes is crazy expensive.”
On risk management
“There’s kind of a recipe, more or less, that you can follow when you’re talking about risk management.”
On permitting
“Permitting is an elephant in the room always.”
On direct potable reuse
“DPR, in my opinion, produces higher quality and more consistently produces higher quality drinking water than what we have going on conventionally for drinking water treatment.”
On PFAS
“We outlawed PFOS and PFOA in the last 25 plus years. But the industry just made shorter chain compounds that are even more mobile and even more difficult to remove.”
“There’s a lot of ways to remove them from the liquid stream, but it should be done at the source, really.”
On the utility of the future
“You’ve got a whole bunch of issues that you somehow need to prioritize, but also simultaneously address all at once.”
On learning from other sectors
“How did the energy industry adapt their grids? What do they use? What can we learn from them?”
On the next frontier
“This is still a field where even more creative solutions are found.”
On crossing the street
“I think water is starting to be not only water, but I think we need to cross the street and talk to our neighbors about everything.” — Ramón
On getting started
“We’ve been doing safe water reuse since literally the dawn of time.”
“It’s not as scary as you think it is, that’s for sure.”
