AECOM has been selected by the Santa Clara Valley Water District (Valley Water), to provide design services for the Pure Water Silicon Valley Demonstration Facility Project in California. The initiative is intended to move direct potable reuse (DPR) closer to becoming a locally controlled, drought resilient source of drinking water for the region.
Under the contract, AECOM will design a new DPR pilot facility together with a LEED certified, solar ready learning centre, both to be built at the existing Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center (SVAWPC). The pilot plant will be able to treat up to 200 gallons per minute and will be used to test advanced treatment technologies suited to direct potable reuse. The learning centre is meant to support public education, community engagement and workforce development in advanced water purification and reuse. Valley Water estimates the total cost of planning, designing and building the demonstration facility at up to $100 million.
AECOM will also handle regulatory and permitting support, public outreach assistance, and quality assurance. Beverley Stinson, chief executive of AECOM’s global Water business, described the project as “the first-of-its-kind” and said it represents “one of the most comprehensive evaluations of DPR-advanced water treatment technologies.”
A decade of purification research points toward direct potable reuse
The demonstration facility is one step in a much larger and longer-running initiative. The SVAWPC — a partnership between Valley Water and the cities of San José and Santa Clara, which jointly own the San José-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility — has been operating since 2014 and forms the foundation of the broader Pure Water Silicon Valley programme. It is the largest advanced water purification facility in Northern California, receiving up to 8 million gallons per day of treated wastewater and purifying it through microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light disinfection. The purified water is blended with the existing recycled water supply produced at the neighbouring Regional Wastewater Facility.
The Pure Water Silicon Valley programme, of which the demonstration facility is the first phase, is planned to culminate in a full-scale DPR facility capable of producing up to 24,000 acre-feet of purified water per year by 2035, rising to 32,000 acre-feet by 2050, at an estimated cost of around $2.5 billion. California’s adoption of DPR regulations in 2024 allowed Valley Water to advance the programme to this scale. It is part of Valley Water’s broader target of meeting 10% of Santa Clara County’s water demand through non-potable and potable reuse, providing a locally controlled, drought-resilient source that reduces dependence on imported water and lowers risks of land subsidence and saltwater intrusion.
