by National Research Council

About the author: The National Research Council is part of the National Academy of Sciences, a Washington, D.C., organization founded by Congress as an official adviser to the federal government on scientific and technical matters. The council’s Committee on the Use of Treated Municipal Effluents and Sludge in the Production of Crops for Human Consumption produced a 1996 report on the use of wastewater and sludge on cropland, from which this viewpoint is excerpted.

The use of treated municipal wastewater effluent for irrigated agriculture offers an opportunity to conserve water resources. Water reclamation can also provide an alternative to disposal in areas where surface waters have a limited capacity to assimilate the contaminants, such as the nitrogen and phosphorus, that remain in most treated wastewater effluent discharges...