Here is good news from Virginia’s Hampton Roads Sanitation District, of which Gloucester and Mathews counties are members.

HRSD installed a leading-edge water purification system in Suffolk: the Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow (SWIFT). HRSD announced recently that SWIFT has “successfully replenished the Potomac Aquifer with 100 million gallons of drinking-water.” 

HRSD said it plans “to begin construction on the first of five full-scale SWIFT facilities by 2020, ultimately increasing aquifer replenishment to 100 million gallons per day when all five facilities are online in 2030.”

Describing SWIFT, the district said the process “takes HRSD’s already highly treated water that would otherwise be discharged into the Elizabeth, James or York rivers and puts it through additional rounds of advanced water treatment to produce drinking quality water. The SWIFT Water is then treated to match the existing groundwater chemistry and adde...