Cities Turning the Tap on Wastewater Reuse

April 30, 2025

Phoenix is building an advanced water purification plant to convert wastewater into drinking water, joining a number of western cities looking to prepare for a drier future. While “potable reuse depends on proven technologies,” Christy Spackman maintains in Issues, a key challenge will be overcoming the public’s “yuck” response. One approach showing promise is providing people with tempting opportunities to sample recycled water personally—by, for example, offering free beer made with it. “With each sip,” Spackman writes, people are “tasting a speculative future,” making them more likely “to accept—and possibly even embrace—purified recycled water.”