A large amount of residue from the water treatment process has gradually accumulated and thus caused serious environmental pollution in waterflood oilfields. The water treatment residue is a grey suspension, with a density of 1.08 g/cm3, and mainly contains over 65% of light CaCO3, MgCO3, CaSO4, Fe2S3 and Ca(OH)2. This paper ascertains the effect of water treatment residue on core permeability and its application in oilfields. Coreflooding tests in laboratory were conducted in two artificial cores and one natural core. Core changes were evaluated by cast model image analysis, mercury injection method and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Fresh water was injected into another natural core, which was plugged with water treatment residue, to determine the effective life.The results indicate that the water treatment residue has a strongly plugging capability, a resistance to erosion and a long effective life, and thus it can be used as a cheap raw material for profile control.In the past 8 years, a total of 60,164 m3 of water treatment residue has been used for profile control of 151 well treatments, with a success ratio of 98% and an effective ratio of 83.2%. In the field tests, the profile control agent increased both starting pressure and injection pressure of injectors, and decreased the apparent water injectivity coefficient, significantly improving intake profiles and lengthening average service life of injectors. 28,381 tons of additional oil were recovered from these corresponding oil wells, with economic benefits of ￥3,069.55×104 (RMB) and a remarkable input-output ratio of 8.6:1.