In addition, local regulators such as Mark Rich of the Lubbock City-County Health Department and professionals in the region are working with the Texas Tech team. This is a hands-on study which involves both theoretical and practical work. Everyone in this effort has learned a great deal about how to set up, operate, and evaluate a complicated research site. After we're done, we hope to publish information that may be useful for people in the region. In basic terms, evapotranspiration is the process through which water is lost due to evaporation from the soil surface into the atmosphere, and transpiration, which is plant growth.
Absorption is the process through which water flows from the distribution network into soils.
An absorptive system uses a trench covered with an impervious liner to prevent ET, while an ET system utilizes a trench with an impervious liner to prevent water from infiltrating into underlying soils. If the area requirements for disposal systems could be reduced, it is likely that the cost of these systems would be lessened, since less land would be required. As a result, the Council proposed that it would be useful to evaluate if the combined effect of an absorptive system and an ET system could result in reduced system sizes in some regions of Texas. It has been hypothesized that the combined effect of using evapotranspiration and absorption may be greater than using either of these two methods alone. After issuing a call for research proposals, the Council awarded this project to TTU in April 1999.