Water and Energy International

Globally, urban growth continues each day, adding urgency to the management of urban hydric issues. Related issues include: increased drinking-water consumption, wastewater production, and construction of impervious areas (which increase surface runoff). This article presents a simulation of 3 possible scenarios (current, 10-year population growth, and 20-year population growth), with three different strategies based on the decentralization of water, to evaluate the behaviour of water flows (drinking water, wastewater, and runoff) and concentrations of total phosphorus, total nitrogen, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and total suspended solids (TSS). Drinking-water consumption reductions up to 40% relative to the base scenario were observed, with 33% and 27% reductions for the 10-year and 20-year scenarios, respectively. As for the concentration of contaminants, total reduction was low or null because the strategies only included the treatment of industrial water.