Water
150 million gallons per day. Closed-loop, mostly. NASA-class recovery rates.
Origin's water demand at 1.9M occupants is roughly the consumption of Columbus, Ohio. There is no scenario where a remote Colorado Plateau site connects to a municipal water supply that can deliver that. Origin treats and recycles its own water or it doesn't function.
Multi-stage municipal-grade treatment
Deep excavation 200–400 ft below grade beneath the formation footprint. Multiple chambers: raw water intake/storage, primary treatment, secondary biological treatment, tertiary filtration (membrane + UV + reverse osmosis), gray water recycling loops, blackwater treatment. This is a municipal water utility, owned by Origin, located inside Origin.
95%+ recovery
Closed-loop recovery system targeting 95%+ recycling — NASA spacecraft levels. Gray water from showers and sinks recycled to toilet flush and irrigation. Treated wastewater recovered to potable standard via reverse osmosis. Atmospheric water generation at Apex altitude contributes supplemental supply.
Where the input water comes from
Deep aquifer (sustainable yield only — not extraction). Atmospheric water generation at scale (the Apex height has good condensation potential). Long-distance pipeline from the Colorado River as supplemental supply. Pending Colorado River allocation negotiation. Texas alternative would be catastrophic on water — Pecos basin in collapse, deferred unless desalination viable.
2 billion gallon underground reservoir
Storage capacity for 14-day full-system outage. Carved into the bedrock beneath the formation. Doubles as thermal mass for the geothermal heat pump system — water at constant deep-earth temperature is a free climate resource.