The Keith County News of Ogallalla, Nebraska ran the article below in their June 24th, 2009 edition.

Nebraska Lake Home Incorporates Greywater Reuse       

By: Christine Kocak-Vail

After years of enjoying the beauty, quality of life and great friends at their mobile home at Lake McConoughay, Rob and Sue Stevens of Pine Bluffs, Wyoming decided to build their retirement home a golf cart ride away from their existing mobile home.  They selected a piece of property in the Lakeview subdivision and began building by erecting their Clary building last fall.  

The search for residential green building options led the family down a path of conservation on all levels.  Consideration of all of the top ten green building strategies were already on the list of essentials, but where else could innovative ideas be melded into the already accepted formatting of insulation, building size, indoor air quality, mechanical systems and resource conservation?

Rob knew he wanted a house that was energy efficient, and yet comfortable.  In his research he found that the Mastre Homes of Grant, Nebraska, would work with Rob and Sue in developing the needs of the energy and conservation they wanted in their lake residence.  Rob even decided he had to have something that conserved water because of the past few years of drought really made water a precious resource.  In Pine Bluffs the community is recommended to only flush their toilets 3 times a day to conserve water.

Rob did his research and selected an emerging, Colorado manufactured product by Water Legacy LLC, the WL55, to conserve greywater by recycling shower and washing machine water in his toilets.  Little did Rob know that his neighbor at the lake, Mike Vail, was the designer of the WL55 and owner of Water Legacy, L.L.C. 

The WL-55 has been designed to service the typical 4-to-6 person household. It is a stand-alone fully integrated system that collects used bathing greywater, filters & disinfects this water, and manages the automatic supply to the toilets. The WL-55 is fully automatic and requires no operator intervention. In the event of insufficient Greywater for flushing of toilets, the WL-55 will complement with Fresh Water.

The Water Legacy Residential Greywater Reclamation System (WL55) conserves potable water by recycling spent water, typically released to the dwellings sewer discharge.  The Water Legacy functions on the simple premise that greywater can be treated to a safe enough level for re-using a multi-barrier approach in non-potable applications mainly toilet flushing.  Residential users can save valuable potable water by flushing toilets with spent greywater that would otherwise be sent directly down the drain despite still having beneficial use potential.

The area of water conservation in residential home use has been typically addressed through usage of low flush toilets and low flow plumbing fixtures and efficient appliances.  But the thought of not flushing good water down the drain really had an impact on how he wanted to impart a message in his home.

Currently, Rob and Sue’s home is supporting a WL55 that was installed this spring and they hope to obtain a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification of Platinum on their home in Brule, NE.  “The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.” according the USGBC (Unites States Green Building Council) website.

The US government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages by 2012 because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess. Last year’s Atlanta crisis serves as a clear warning that even perceived “Wet” states are not immune to water shortages.

Today 30% of the fresh water consumption of the average American home is used to flush toilets. We can no longer afford to flush our toilets with drinking water.

Greywater recycling must be an integral part of our battle to conserve water without reducing our quality of life. Simply by recycling the used domestic bathing water to flush toilets you can reduce your domestic fresh water consumption by 30%.