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The Cycle of Life:
Wastewater
Reclamation
and Reuse
NESC STAFF WRITER
Natalie Eddy
The good Lord didn’t make any new
water today. The glass of water you had at
breakfast is used water. It went through seven
Indians, 10 settlers, and 50 buffaloes before you
got it. But you like to think the good
Lord made it new, just for you, today.
—John R. “Jack” Sheaffer, Ph.D.
Small Flows Quarterly, Fall 2004, Volume 5, Number 4
32
That quote from John R. “Jack” Sheaffer,
Ph.D., founder and chairman of Sheaffer International,
illustrates his philosophy that all of life is
cyclical and efficient reuse and reclamation of
wastewater are imperative to the future.
“Once we realize that all water is used water,
it’s a management issue. People only have two
choices: reclaim and reuse or relocate. And as we
get more and more people, it becomes tougher
to relocate.”
Sheaffer’s Web site, http://sheafferinternational.com,
touts him as “the world’s foremost
authority on reclamation and reuse of wastewater.”
For more than 30 years, Sheaffer, who
helped compose the Clean Water Act, has designed
and built more than 100 discharge-free
systems for municipalities, developers, food
processors, and other operations looking for a
cost-saving and nonpolluting way of handling
wastewater.
Sheaffer’s utopian vision of a green community
includes a treatment process in which wastewater
is 100 percent recycled, produces no
sludge, and uses only time and oxygen for treatment.
To date, that dream, called the Sheaffer
System, has been realized in approximately 17
states and two European countries.
The Sheaffer system was first developed in the
late 1960s, and Sheaffer thinks it’s “an idea
whose time has come. It’s the wave of the future.
To quote Victor Hugo, ‘invading armies can be resisted,
but not an idea whose time has come.’”
Background
Sheaffer started his career studying flood reduction
at the University of Chicago. While doing
his graduate work there, he attended a colloquium
with C. Warren Thornthwaite, the famous geographer
who pioneered the water balance approach
to water resource analysis.
“His family produced frozen vegetables and
had a lot of waste from the production process.
He made a comment that stuck with me. He said
you could produce a lot of food if you just used
the waste for irrigation,” said Sheaffer.
Later, as a research professor, Sheaffer focused
on flood issues, where he first encountered
the problems associated with wastewater
treatment. “I was interested in floods. Whenever
we’d go out on a flood damage survey, you
would see the sewage treatment plants flooded.
They always put them at the lowest point,
which is the first to flood. You’d see piles of
sludge washing downstream and the treatment