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Construction is underway for a project that will treat wastewater to refill a rapidly shrinking aquifer that provides water for hundreds of thousands of people in Hampton Roads.
Last week, the Hampton Roads Sanitation District celebrated the beginning of work on the first full-scale water treatment facility in Newport News for the Sustainable Water Infrastructure for Tomorrow program, known as SWIFT.
The James River SWIFT facility is expected to be operational in 2026 and will provide the Potomac aquifer with up to 16 million gallons of water per day. It’s part of a larger network of facilities that will be able to fill the aquifer with about 100 million gallons of drinking-quality water a day by 2032, according to a news release from HRSD.
The SWIFT facilities take treated wastewater that would have been discharged into the Elizabeth, James or York rivers and put it through additional rounds of treatment to match it to the existing groundwater chemistry. The treated water would be injected into the aquifer far from any drinking water wells.
The Potomac aquifer is the main source of groundwater throughout eastern Virginia, according to HRSD. Virginians currently use about 100 million gallons a day from the aquifer. Most of the drinking water in Hampton Roads comes from aboveground sources such as Lake Gaston and city reservoirs, but the aquifer provides about one-fifth of the region’s drinking water and serves as a backup.
The billion-dollar SWIFT project, paid for with a loan from the Environmental Protection Agency, is meant to prevent the aquifer from collapsing because it would take tens of thousands of years for the aquifer to replenish to its original state if all use was stopped today.
In addition, the work on the James River SWIFT facility includes plans for stabilizing the shoreline along the river and the creation of a network of walking trails. The two miles of trail will offer places to see the James River and connect Riverview Park, City Farm Park and the Menchville Marina.
The project will also include the creation of an administration building for HRSD near the treatment plant. The building will have public restrooms, parking and reservable community meeting spaces.
HRSD has been using the Nansemond Treatment Plant in Suffolk for more than four years as a research center to gather data about the treatment processes’ effects on water quality and geology.
The facility adds about one million gallons of water a day to the aquifer.
Jessica Nolte, 757-912-1675, jnolte@dailypress.com