A partnership between UNC and the Orange Water Sewer Authority is helping them use water resources more efficiently then ever before.

Officials from UNC and OWASA unveiled the new reclaimed water system at the campuses main chiller plant Monday.

"We're taking a portion of some highly treated water from the Mason Farm Treatment Plant and rather than discharging it into Morgan Creek, we're capturing and pumping it to campus," said Ed Kerwin, OWASA Executive Director.

UNC uses about 2 million gallons of water a day on everything from cooling the campus to irrigating athletic fields, but most of the water used is drinking water. Thanks to the new partnership, it will be using reclaimed water instead. For now, the water will mainly be used at UNC's chiller plant to cool the campus. Previously, that process used more than 600,000 gallons of drinking water per day. Officials say that caused some concerns as droughts started to become more frequent.

"It began to put our whole cooling system in jeopardy and we needed to have more reliablity for our water system," said Carolyn Elfland, Vice Chancellor for Campus Services.

But using reclaimed water gives them that reliablility. In addition, Kerwin said there are also some advantages for OWASA, like deferring the need to expand their water treatment plans.

"We don't have to invest millions of dollars making water treatment plants larger because the demand won't be there, we'll be meeting that demand with recycled water," said Kerwin.

The system took almost seven years to complete. The University's total investment in the system is more than $10 million and OWASA received more than $2 million in grants to pay for design and construction. The

Starting this summer, UNC said it will begin to use the reclaimed water on the athletic fields and then expand to other uses on campus.