According to an article this week, an advanced 2,000-acre wetlands area in Fairfield, Texas is treating wastewater to turn it into drinking water. Fairfield is about an hour southwest of Dallas.

Here’s how the wetlands system works: mostly treated wastewater enters the waterway upstream into pools where sediment settles. The water then goes through areas that are dense with plants where nitrates and phosphorous are filtered out. Then that water is released into the area’s reservoir where it is treated for drinking water from there. This system has added an additional 65,000 gallons per day into that reservoir, providing “about 30 percent more water to the reservoir than it would otherwise hold”.

This wetlands system plays an important role in Texas because of the extra water it brings in to a state currently facing drought.