Life cycle assessment (LCA) – a tool designed to quantify environmental impacts of a product or system over its lifetime – is often applied to urban water infrastructure to guide sustainability decision-making. Throughout the life cycle of drinking water and wastewater systems (including construction, operation and maintenance, and end of life), the operational phase has been shown to significantly contribute to global environmental impacts (e.g., climate change, ozone depletion) due to the large amount of energy required for treatment and transport. At the same time, for wastewater systems, local environmental impacts (e.g., eutrophication, ecotoxicity) are a consequence of direct emissions discharged through wastewater effluent. Given the frequent application of LCA to U.S. drinking water and wastewater systems, robust datasets for location-specific impacts of energy and direct emissions are warranted. 

To this end, this research seeks to quantify the environmental impacts associated with the operational phase of U.S. water and wastewater utilities. This objective is accomplished by integrating (1) a national database of utility-specific energy consumption across major cities in the United states, (2) national datasets for location-specific energy mixes, (3) publicly available datasets on wastewater discharges, and (4) a life cycle environmental impact assessment tool. This methodology and a subset of results for selected major cities in the U.S. will be presented. Ultimately, these findings can highlight opportunities for reducing environmental impacts of water and wastewater utility operation while also filling a major data gap to allow for more accurate and site-specific LCAs for urban water infrastructure in the future.

Operational Environmental Impacts of U.S. Water and Wastewater Utilities

Created in 1999, the Environmental & Water Resources Institute (EWRI) is the recognized leader within ASCE for the integration of technical expertise and public policy in the planning, design, construction, and operation of environmentally sound and sustainable infrastructure impacting air, land and water resources.

[Paper Proceedings](https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784483466)

Conference DOI: https://doi.org/10.26226/m.6329c39b68fb0e00131f77d2