Industry officials credit Ted Henifin, general manager of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, with conceptualizing an innovative initiative that addresses multiple issues under one program: meeting ever-toughening water-quality requirements, ensuring sufficient supplies of drinking water, and slowing and potentially even reversing dramatic land subsidence due to sea-level rise and groundwater over-pumping.
Called the Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow (SWIFT), the $1-billion program will purify to drinking-water quality, already highly treated water at seven of HRSD’s nine wastewater treatment plants. Then, the purified water will be treated to match existing groundwater chemistry and pumped into the Potomac Aquifer, the primary source of groundwater for eastern Virginia. While similar projects have been adopted in California, most notably the Orange Country Groundwater Replenishment program, SWIFT is one of the first to take a similar approach to the East Coast’s geography and geological challenges, including subsidence.