What is the EPA water reuse plan, 200 partners now work on 76 actions after growing from 86 partners and 37 actions in 2020

What is the EPA water reuse plan

What is the EPA water reuse plan. The Environmental Protection Agency, the federal agency that regulates water pollution and drinking water safety, launched Water Reuse Action Plan 2.0 on April 16, 2026. It is not a new regulation with legal force. It is a voluntary initiative, meaning no company or utility has to join it or to hit any of its targets, built around partners who choose to sign on to specific actions for treating and reusing wastewater instead of drawing more from rivers, lakes and underground supplies. EPA states that 200 partners are now working on 76 actions under the plan, up from 86 partners working on 37 actions when the original plan launched in 2020.

Jessica Kramer, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water, framed the growth this way.

Water reuse supports American prosperity while protecting water resources for communities across the country.

Jessica Kramer, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water. Source 1.

EPA also states in its own announcement that over 200 resources have been developed for the water reuse industry since 2020, and that cooperation between different parts of the federal government built through the plan is now written into federal law. The agency does not name which law in that statement.

Two EPA pages, two different counts

EPA does not describe its own growth the same way twice. The launch announcement compares the plan only to its own start, 86 partners working on 37 actions when the original plan launched in 2020, against 200 partners working on 76 actions under the plan today. A separate EPA page, last updated the same day, counts differently, that the effort has grown to include over 96 actions and 215 partners since 2020. These describe different things rather than the same measurement taken twice. The larger figures are a running total of everyone who has ever joined and every action ever opened since 2020. The smaller figures describe what is actively running today, meaning some of the original 2020 actions were finished and closed rather than carried forward.

Which industries the plan targets

The plan reaches beyond general language about reusing water. EPA own dedicated page for the plan names 7 priority sectors, including domestic industry, energy development, data center cooling, the power sector, food and beverage production, and rural communities, and it lists actions with their own numbers and targets. Action 3.10 calls for recycled water to cool industrial equipment and data centers, the buildings that house the computer servers behind the internet and artificial intelligence. Action 5.11 is a mapping tool built on geographic information systems, software that plots data onto a map, for the power sector. Action 5.12 is a water reuse framework for food and beverage production. Action 6.7 funds rural water reuse through the United States Department of Agriculture.

Why this reaches into energy and data centers

A large data center can use up to 5 million gallons of water a day, enough to meet the drinking water needs of 10,000 to 50,000 people, Engineering News Record reports, citing a 2024 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory analysis. Reaction outside EPA has not been uniformly positive.

Street Lee, president and chief executive of McKim and Creed, a civil engineering firm, offered this caution outside EPA.

Adding another layer of coordination without alignment could increase project complexity rather than reduce it.

Street Lee, President and Chief Executive of McKim and Creed, a civil engineering firm. Source 5.