OREM, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--EcoVAP, Inc. is proud to announce the first results of a pilot-scale EcoVAP Evaporation Matrix at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility (“BGNDRF”) in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The project is being partly financed by the Bureau of Reclamation (“Reclamation”) based on EcoVAP winning a grant to dispose of excess brine water in the lowest cost and most environmentally-friendly way possible.

A recent ruling by the US Supreme Court on the breadth of the Clean Water Act (1972) is expected to have significant precedent-setting implications for all wastewater injection wells. The Clean Water Act prohibits the polluting of water bodies beyond the pre-existing pollution level, and requires getting a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) permit before disposing of wastewater. The law specifies that it applies to all direct and indirect water bodies that might be affected, with “indirect” being those that have a “significant nexus” or “navigable waters” from where the wastewater is disposed. Thus, injection wells, which mainly use underground holes and porous rock, were mostly exempt from this regulation. However, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that “navigable waters” should include the “indirect” contamination of seepage and flows from underground pathways, as is often the case, and thus that the “discharge of polluted water into the ground, rather than directly into nearby waterways, does not relieve an industry of complying with the Clean Water Act." Despite this decision being focused on a relatively small (Hawaii’s Maui Island) case, and on sewage (as opposed to many other wastewaters that use injection well disposal), the ruling is expected to have broad implications for all injection disposal including produced water (from oil/gas) and other mining and industrial wastewaters that are targeted by EcoVAP.

The attached report “The Carbon Footprint of Water” estimates the water sector consumes a whopping 13% of all electricity in the US and is responsible for 5% of all US carbon emissions. Moreover, these figures are expected to rise dramatically given that new water supplies must come from even more energy-demanding sources; i.e., pumping through longer aqueducts and from deeper aquifers, and from desalination and other treatments for reuse. By contrast, EcoVAP’s biomimcry-based technology uses practically no electricity, thus implying negligible CO2 footprint, and our “Matrices” can also be located at the point where the wastewater is generated, thus avoiding the CO2 from trucking.