Identification and assessment of water safety risk for groundwater recharge with reclaimed water in China

Groundwater recharge using reclaimed water has developed rapidly around the world to relieve the groundwater resource shortage and declining of the water table. Traditional water treatment systems are inefficient to remove all the types of contaminants, so it is urgent to identify the priority chemical substances (CSs) that deserve our first concern. In this study, we developed a method (EER method) to identify priority CSs in groundwater recharge by surface spreading and direct aquifer injection. Three stages were processed which were exposure assessment, effect assessment and ranking for identification of priority CSs. Fourteen cities in China were selected for data collected and 90 pollutants in reclaimed water samples were analyzed as the target pollutants for a case study. According to three stages, the 90 CSs studied were divided into five groups (primary control CSs and high, moderate and low and no risk control CSs). In the primary control CSs and high, moderate and low and no risk control CSs group there were 14, 18, 21, 21 and 16 CSs, respectively when groundwater recharged by surface spreading, while there were 15, 18, 21, 21 and 15 CSs when recharged by direct injection. This method provided an indicator of prioritizing the risk of 90 compounds in the reclaimed water for groundwater recharge.