How It Works

Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) is a proven groundwater augmentation strategy that involves supplementing underground aquifer water supplies. Anne Arundel County is considering an approach that involves injecting recycled water that has been treated to drinking water standards into groundwater aquifers. The goal of this is to improve groundwater resiliency while reducing risks associated with aquifer depletion such as sinking ground and saltwater intrusion. Click the image below to learn more about the advanced water treatment process.

Water Conservation

As part of our long-term strategy to ensure a reliable water supply, the Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) program helps secure dependable quality water for the future. We withdraw nearly 40 million gallons of water daily from aquifers, making water conservation efforts more important than ever.

Whether you're curious about how much water our county uses, looking for water-saving tips from the EPA, or want to learn more about groundwater in the United States, this page is a great place to start.

Protecting Our Water Supply

Each year, the County's water treatment facilities provide about 12.6 billion gallons of clean drinking water. Protecting our water supply is a shared responsibility. You can do your part by understanding that tiny leaks can lead to large impacts on our water supply.

• Irrigation system leaks: A hole as small as 1/32 of an inch — about the thickness of a dime — can waste over 6,000 gallons of water per month. Check your system each spring for damage from freezing weather.
• Dripping showerheads: Just 10 drips per minute adds up to 500+ gallons a year — enough to run 60 dishwasher loads.
• Leaky toilets: A single toilet can leak more than 200 gallons a day without you even noticing.
• Dripping faucets: One drip per second wastes 3,000+ gallons annually — the same as taking over 180 showers.

• Typical water usage information from the EPA
• Learn more about EPA's Water Sense
• Learn more about groundwater in the United States
• Water Conservation Fact Sheet
• Saving Water in Maryland
• Conserve Water In Your Landscape
• Learn more about saving water and money on your water bill.

Independent Scientific Advisory Panel

Anne Arundel County has hired the National Water Research Institute (NWRI) to facilitate an Independent Scientific Advisory Panel. The panel comprises scientific and technical experts who will review and provide comments on the County's approach to Managed Aquifer Recharge Concept Validation.

Read the 2022 Report Read the 2023 Report

The panel will provide credible, independent, scientific, technical, and policy advice for MAR and related advanced water purification, public health, and water quality issues. The panel will also offer recommendations on issues identified by the County, the Maryland Department of the Environment, and other invited key stakeholders.

NWRI is a 501c3 non-profit that collaborates with water utilities, regulators, and researchers in innovative ways and helps evaluate new sources of water by assembling teams of scientific and technical experts that provide credible, independent review of water projects. These experts develop recommendations that support investment in water infrastructure and public health, and enable water resources management decisions to be grounded in science and best practices.

Panel members include:

• Dr. Diana Aga (Professor, SUNY-Buffalo Department of Chemistry)

  Diana Aga leads a research team that studies how various contaminants affect the environment and human health. Her lab investigates techniques for removing antibiotics from wastewater, how plants—especially food crops—take up pharmaceuticals and engineered nanomaterials, and how levels of veterinary antibiotics in manure decrease over time through long-term storage or waste-management processes like composting and anaerobic digestion. Aga also has extensive experience analyzing persistent organic pollutants (such as PBDEs, PCBs, and PFAS) and how these compounds accumulate in the human body, Great Lakes fish, and the environment. Her insights have been published in periodicals ranging from regional (Business First in Upstate New York) to international (Scientific American, The Economist, EcoWatch). Aga’s recent work has focused on the development and application of non-target analysis to discover emerging contaminants that have not been previously reported, including transformation products of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals. She received her BS from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, and her PhD from the University of Kansas.

• Dr. Charles Bott (Director of Water Technology and Research, HRSD)

  Charles B. Bott joined Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) in 2009. He manages technology innovation and research and development for HRSD’s 18 wastewater treatment plants and interceptor system. He is a fellow of the Water Environment Federation (WEF) and a former member of the Science and Technology Advisory Committee to the Chesapeake Bay Program Executive Council. Bott is a licensed Professional Engineer in Virginia, a Board-Certified Environmental Engineer, and a licensed Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator—Virginia Class I. He twice won the WEF Harrison Prescott Eddy Medal for outstanding contribution to wastewater research, he was a previous member of the WEF Board of Trustees, and he chaired The Water Research Foundation and WEF Leaders Innovation Forum for Technology (LIFT) program. His technical interests include municipal and industrial wastewater treatment and renewable energy generation. Bott has specific expertise in chemical and biological phosphorus removal, denitrification with alternative carbon sources, nitrification kinetics, nutrient recovery, deammonification/anammox, biological treatment process modeling and design, and biogas conditioning. He received a BS from the Virginia Military Institute, an MS from the Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD from Virginia Tech.

• Dr. Scott Fendorf (Professor, Stanford University Department of Earth System Science)

  Scott Fendorf is soil scientist and biogeochemist conducting research focused on the chemical and biological processes involving contaminants and nutrients. His work on the fundamental biogeochemistry of arsenic coupled with field work in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Vietnam, and California has led to an understanding of how arsenic and other contaminants enter groundwater, a process that affects aquifers across the globe. He is the founding chair of the Earth System Science Department and the Senior Associate Dean in the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Science at Stanford, and a Senior Fellow in Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. Fendorf holds a BS from California Polytechnic State University, an MS from University of California, Davis, and a PhD from University of Delaware.

• Dr. Tom Missimer (Professor, Florida Gulf Coast University College of Engineering, Panel Chair)

  Tom Missimer, PhD, teaches groundwater hydrology and contamination transport and research methods at Florida Gulf Coast University. His research focuses on groundwater quality, membrane biofouling prevention, brackish-water desalination, evaluating artificial recharge systems, and coastal geology. Before his academic career, Dr. Missimer founded three consulting companies that specialized in groundwater development, water management, and groundwater remediation. He was a visiting professor at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia before joining FGCU. He became an eminent scholar in hydrology at FGCU in 2017 and director of the Emergent Technologies Institute in 2019. Missimer has a BA in geology from Franklin & Marshall College, an MS in coastal geology from Florida State University, and a PhD in marine geology and geophysics from the University of Miami.

• Mehul Patel (Executive Director of Operations, Orange County Water District)

  Mehul Patel has been with the Orange County Water District for 24 years and is an expert in implementing advanced treatment technologies for potable and non-potable reuse. Patel manages the operations, maintenance, electrical, and instrumentation staff for the OCWD Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS), the Green Acres Project, facility maintenance, groundwater recharge operations, and the Prado Wetlands. He was formerly Program Manager for GWRS, overseeing all treatment processes for the Advanced Water Purification Facility, which is the largest indirect potable reuse plant in the world. Patel is experienced in pilot, demonstration, and full-scale operation of microfiltration, ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis technologies, and advanced oxidation systems. He received a BS from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and an MS from California State University, Long Beach. He is a registered professional civil engineer in California.

• Steve Via (Director of Federal Relations, American Water Works Association)

  Steve Via has more than 30 years of professional experience in environmental regulatory compliance assistance. He currently directs Federal Relations for the American Water Works Association (AWWA), an international, nonprofit, scientific, and educational society founded in 1881 and dedicated to providing total water solutions and assuring the effective management of water. AWWA is the largest organization of water supply professionals in the world. Via’s primary responsibilities include working with the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies on the development of policy and regulations that affect the water sector and communicating federal policy and regulations to water sector professionals. Via holds a BS from University of Virginia and an MS from Virginia Tech.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is groundwater?

When water seeps into the ground to naturally recharge the aquifer, it creates a reserve that is less vulnerable to environmental influences (e.g. extreme weather, agriculture, and wildlife) than surface water in rivers and streams. How groundwater occurs in rocks:

Groundwater exists in the spaces between rocks and soil underneath the Earth’s surface.

What is Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR)?

MAR is an example of a recycled water approach called indirect potable reuse. Indirect potable reuse refers to highly treated, recycled water that passes through an environmental buffer—such as an aquifer or lake— and ultimately becomes part of a drinking water supply. The recycled water is purified to meet or exceed federal and state drinking water standards. Indirect potable reuse is practiced in many locations throughout the US.

MAR is a proven groundwater augmentation strategy that involves supplementing underground aquifer water supplies. Anne Arundel County is considering an approach that involves injecting recycled water that has been treated to drinking water standards into groundwater aquifers for later use.

The recycled water will be treated to comply with national potable reuse guidance and requirements of the Maryland Department of the Environment. The water will be monitored and tested to ensure public health, safety and compatibility with the aquifers. To learn more click here.

Why is the County exploring MAR?

Groundwater in Anne Arundel County lies within the Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain, an aquifer group that stretches along the eastern United States from North Carolina to New York. As one of the largest municipal users of the aquifers within the system, Anne Arundel County recognizes the need to move toward long-term sustainability of groundwater resources. The MAR program seeks to develop technology to support a more sustainable approach which can maintain our groundwater supplies for the future while mitigating against the impact of continued withdrawals.

MAR also provides additional nutrient removal benefits by directly reducing the discharges to nearby water bodies. In comparison with other options, nutrient reductions associated with MAR appear to be more cost-effective than other options and can be implemented at existing County facilities. For this reason, the Our wAAter program includes MAR as one of several approaches being developed as part of the long-term strategy to reduce nutrient discharges.

Where else is MAR being implemented?

Utilities around the world are successfully using similar approaches to supplement water supply. Here are key facilities that have implemented large-scale MAR programs in the U.S.:

Lakewood, California Orange County, California Rio Rancho, New Mexico El Paso, Texas Jacksonville, Florida Southeastern Virginia

Indirect Potable Reuse in the United States

Lakewood, California
Orange County, California
Rio Rancho, New Mexico
El Paso, Texas
Jacksonville, Florida
Southeastern Virginia

Is recycled water safe?

Yes. The County will be testing and developing a multi-step advanced treatment system and will identify critical points to operate and control the system. The advanced water treatment pilot system helps the County evaluate the process before implementation. This type of multi-barrier approach is used in other applications where safety is a paramount concern. Water from the advanced treatment system will be treated to meet all drinking water standards. Click on each icon below to learn more about each process step.

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  Water Reclamation Facility Effluent

  Water Reclamation Facility Effluent:

  Recycled water from the Patuxent Water Reclamation Facility will undergo an advanced treatment process to meet drinking water standards

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  Coagulation/ Flocculation Sedimentation

  Coagulation / Flocculation / Sedimentation:

  This process involves removing organic matter from water by adding a chemical to create large particles called “flocs.” The flocs settle and are then removed. This process helps to remove solids, color, iron, manganese, and pathogens from the water.

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  Ozone (and Ozone Advanced Oxidation Processes)

  Ozone and Ozone/Advanced Oxidation Processes:

  Ozone is a strong disinfectant that kills harmful organisms and degrades emerging contaminants-- pollutants not currently regulated that may negatively affect human health and aquatic life. Ozone breaks down organic matter that is used as “food” in the biofiltration process.

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  Biofiltration

  Biofiltration:

  Biofiltration is the process of allowing organisms naturally found in water systems to break down and remove organic matter. Biofiltration has been shown to be a safe and effective way to remove solids, iron, manganese and emerging contaminants.

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  Granular Activated Carbon Adsorption

  Granular Activated Carbon (GAC):

  GAC is a widely implemented water treatment process to remove organic matter. Water flows through the GAC and contaminants are removed by attaching to the activated carbon surface. GAC is highly effective for removing emerging contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

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  UV Disinfection

  UV Disinfection:

  UV is the final disinfection step that uses ultraviolet light to kill harmful organisms. This type of disinfection does not require any chemicals, which means it does not result in disinfection byproducts—harmful substances that form when a disinfectant reacts with naturally occurring organic matter.

Will the injected water be compatible with the native groundwater?

Yes. The injected water will be monitored and treated to protect the water quality of the native groundwater and to ensure stability of the aquifer systems.

Resources

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Resources

• 2017 EPA Potable Reuse Compendium
• 2020 National Water Reuse Action Plan
• 2022 National Water Reuse Action Plan: Updates on Collaborative Progress
• Water Reuse Regulations and Guidelines in the US
• EPA Potable Reuse and PFAS Q&A

Additional Resources

• Washington Post: How cities are trying to stop their land from sinking
• New York Times: Five Takeaways From Our Investigation Into America's Groundwater Crisis
• LA Times: Landmark government report calls for national mobilization to curb groundwater depletion
• President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Report to the President on Improving Groundwater Security in the United States
• Capital Gazette: Cities may turn own sewage into drinking water