Water containing wastes – aka wastewater – from residential,
commercial and industrial processes requires treatment to remove
pollutants prior to discharge. After treatment, the water is
suitable for nonconsumption (nonpotable) and even potable use.
In California, water recycling is a critical component of the
state’s efforts to use water supplies more efficiently. The state
presently recycling about 669,000 acre-feet of water per year and
has the potential to reuse an additional two million acre-feet
per year.
Non-potable uses include:
landscape and crop irrigation
stream and wetlands enhancement
industrial processes
recreational lakes, fountains and decorative ponds
toilet flushing and gray water applications
as a barrier to protect groundwater supplies
from seawater intrusion
wetland habitat creation, restoration, and maintenance
A California appeals court has upheld waste discharge
requirements within the eastern San Joaquin River watershed
that growers say are reasonable, rebuffing challenges from
environmentalists. In its March 17 decision, the Third District
Court of Appeal rejected all arguments brought by environmental
groups and sided with the California State Water Resources
Control Board, the California Farm Bureau and others related to
the Central Valley’s Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program. The
court addressed three cases brought by environmental plaintiffs
against the water board.
New research experimentally confirms that nitrate can help
transport naturally occurring uranium from the underground to
groundwater, according to a press release from the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The new research backs a
2015 study led by Karrie Weber of the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. The 2015 showed that aquifers contaminated
with high levels of nitrate — including the High Plains Aquifer
residing beneath Nebraska — also contain uranium concentrations
far exceeding a threshold set by the U.S. EPA. Uranium
concentrations above that EPA threshold have been shown to
cause kidney damage in humans, especially when regularly
consumed via drinking water.
Looking out from a downtown San Francisco rooftop, Epic
Cleantec co-founder and CEO Aaron Tartakovsky says you can
actually see the future of recycled water. “This is not
theoretical, it’s happening right now. It’s happening here,
it’s happening in the Chorus building, where we’re going to be
operating that system. And it’s happening in a third building
over here,” says Tartakovsky, pointing a short distance away.
Epic Cleantec is harnessing the used wastewater from high-rise
buildings, and giving it a second life, with a dizzying array
of technologies. … At the heart of the system lies a
control center that monitors everything from the amount of
energy being saved to the amount of wastewater being recovered.
Ryan Pully is the director of water reuse operations.
While environmentally-conscious wine producers like Shannon are
making a difference in California, so is the state which
recently announced its long-range commitment to promoting
ecosystem resilience. The sustainable pest management roadmap
for California was released by the Department of Pesticide
Regulation, the California Environmental Protection Agency, and
the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It charts a
course for California’s elimination of high-risk pesticides by
2050. Yet, wine producers like Sam Coturri of Enterprise
Vineyards in Sonoma County, whose family oversees 35 estate
vineyards, and produces their own label, Winery Sixteen 600,
have been farming organically since 1979.
Emeryville is still digging itself out from under its
industrial past. For years, the city has cleaned up vast swaths
of land contaminated by the scores of commercial warehouses
that used to dominate the East Bay shoreline community. By the
early 2000s, Emeryville earned a reputation as “one of the
foulest industrial wastelands in the Bay Area,” according to
one news outlet, which said the soil was “so toxic that anyone
treading it had to wear a moon suit.” ….This week, city
officials kicked off the complex task of cleaning up roughly
78,000 square-feet of contaminated soil on another city-owned
property just across the railroad tracks from the popular Bay
Street Emeryville shopping center — which was also excavated
before construction.
With California enduring record-breaking rain and snow and Gov.
Gavin Newsom recently easing restrictions on groundwater
recharge, interest in “managed aquifer recharge” has never been
higher. This process – by which floodwater is routed to sites
such as farm fields so that it percolates into the aquifer –
holds great promise as a tool to replenish depleted groundwater
stores across the state. But one concern, in the agricultural
context, is how recharge might push nitrates from fertilizer
into the groundwater supply. Consumption of well water
contaminated with nitrates has been linked to increased risk of
cancers, birth defects and other health impacts.
The protest encampment was easily visible from Highway 40
going West from Needles, California — a cluster of olive-green
Army tents that stood out from the low-lying creosote bushes
and sagebrush that cover the expanse of Ward Valley. At its
height, the camp held two kitchens (one vegetarian, one not), a
security detail, bathroom facilities and a few hundred people —
a coalition of five tribal nations, anti-nuclear activists,
veterans, environmentalists and American Indian Movement
supporters. They were there to resist a public-lands trade
between the federal government and the state of California that
would allow U.S. Ecology, a waste disposal company, to build a
1,000-acre, unlined nuclear waste dump that threatened both
desert tortoises and groundwater.
Health officials have closed access to parts of Doheny State
Beach after roughly 4,000 gallons of sewage spilled onto the
beach in Dana Point on Wednesday. The spill came from a main
city sewer line in San Juan Capistrano, according to the Orange
County Health Care Agency. The closure extends 3,000 feet
around the spill site at the mouth of San Juan Creek at the
beach in Dana Point, according to officials. The area will
remain closed to swimming, surfing and diving until follow-up
tests show the water meets acceptable standards. Orange
County Supervisor Katrina Foley’s office is monitoring the
situation and asked the community to stay clear of the area.
After the recent rainfall, landslides closed a section of
Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point and an area behind
four apartment buildings in San Clemente, Foley said in a
written statement.
After more than a year of wrangling, California American Water
Co. has agreed in principle to sign an agreement to purchase
water from a major expansion of a Monterey Peninsula water
recycling project that when completed will provide for
thousands of acre-feet of additional water. Evan Jacobs,
external affairs manager for Cal Am, confirmed Thursday that
what was agreed upon was a filing made by the state Public
Advocates Office that gave Cal Am a portion of what it wanted.
The filing still must be approved by the California Public
Utilities Commission, or CPUC, but it’s the first time all
sides have agreed in principle since September of 2021. The
Public Advocates Office helps to ensure Californians are
represented at the CPUC by recommending solutions and
alternatives in utility customers’ best interests.
Isleton, located along the Delta in the southernmost part of
Sacramento County, is a city of about roughly 800 people and is
surrounded by bodies of water. And on Wednesday, city officials
said wastewater ponds have spilled into those nearby waterways.
Those waterways include the Mokelumne, San Joaquin, and
Sacramento rivers. City Manager Chuck Bergson said Isleton
has nine ponds that can hold about 60 million gallons of
wastewater in total, but recent heavy rainfalls, as well as
pipes damaged during the January storms, have filled up all of
the ponds to the point where about 2 to 3 million gallons of
wastewater have overflowed.
The San Joaquin Valley in California (southern Central Valley)
is the most profitable agricultural region in the United States
by far with a revenue of $37.1 billion in 2020. The San
Joaquin Valley itself generates more agricultural revenue than
any other state, and more than countries like Canada,
Germany, or Peru. Other agricultural regions of California are
also very profitable, such as the Sacramento Valley (northern
Central Valley), the Salinas Valley, and the Imperial
Valley. However, this economic profit has a steep health
and environmental toll, and that toll is paid for by the
residents of rural communities in California. The three regions
with the worst air quality (by year-round particle
pollution) in the United States are in the San Joaquin Valley,
corresponding to five of its eight counties.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency has filed a
complaint against the operator of a mobile home park in Acton,
alleging that the park is using two large unlawful cesspools to
collect untreated raw sewage. The complaint identifies Eric
Hauck as the operator of Cactus Creek Mobile Home Park in
Acton. He’s also identified as a trustee of Acton Holding
Trust. The EPA alleges that Hauck has two illegal cesspools on
the property, despite large capacity cesspools being banned by
the environmental agency more than 15 years ago. Cesspools,
according to the EPA, collect and discharge waterborne
pollutants like untreated raw sewage into the ground. The
practice of using cesspools can lead to disease-causing
pathogens to be introduced to local water sources, including
groundwater, lakes, streams and oceans.
The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed tighter limits
on wastewater pollution from coal-burning power plants that has
contaminated streams, lakes and underground aquifers across the
nation. Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection
Agency sets pollution standards to limit wastewater discharge
from the power industry and other businesses. The Trump
administration rolled back pollution standards so utilities
could use cheaper technologies and take longer to comply with
guidelines for cleaning coal ash and toxic heavy metals such as
mercury, arsenic and selenium from plant wastewater before
dumping it into waterways. The Biden administration’s proposal
for stricter standards at coal-burning plants also encourages
the plants to retire or switch to other fuels such as natural
gas by 2028.
The state Regional Water Quality Control Board on Wednesday
will receive an update on a 2017 mitigation case involving what
were three downtown cleaners. The businesses at the time were
One Hour Cleaner, which was located at 710 Madison St.,
Fairfield Cleaners, 625 Jackson St., which is now home to the
Republican Party headquarters, and Gillespie Cleaners at
622-630 Jackson St., the state reported. One other
business that was not responsible for any contamination, but
was affected, is Fairfield Safe & Lock, which is still doing
business at 811 Missouri St. … The report states that
the Tetrachloroethene – or PCE – plume that was discharged into
the groundwater has been reduced by more than 90% since the
mitigation plan was approved in September 2017.
Some 22 billion gallons of raw sewage have flowed from Mexico
into San Diego County since the end of December, the
International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) reported on
Wednesday. … Acknowledging that sewage flows have
dropped to 106 million gallons per day and continue to
decrease, the agency noted that two wastewater collectors
are out of service due to excessive sediment buildup.
Last Thursday, flows reached 800 million
gallons per day, according to the IBWC. The
wastewater influx is the result of an extended bout of winter
weather, which has made a chronic cross-border sewage situation
worse over the past few months.
Imperial Beach’s new mayor, Paloma Aguirre, is dealing with an
old problem in her city: beach closures forced by raw sewage
from Mexico. A recent string of powerful storms in the region
has forced lots of raw sewage, trash, tires and other debris
across the southern border into California. “Because of the
nature of our watershed, there’s an incredible amount of flow
coming from across the border with trash, tires and sewage
polluting not just our recreational valley but also the
beaches,” Aguirre said. Imperial Beach, the first coastal city
north of the U.S.-Mexico border, is covered in signs warning
people to keep out of the water.
Sara Rubin here, looking at a glass of water on my desk and
appreciating all of the technology and infrastructure and
people behind the scenes who worked to bring me that water.
Specifically, I am thinking about Pure Water Monterey, a
high-tech water recycling system at Monterey One Water in
Marina, that uses a four-step process to treat wastewater—the
same stuff that goes out the drains of our showers and gets
flushed down our toilets. The four-step process includes ozone
pre-treatment, membrane filtration, reverse osmosis and
oxidation with UV light and hydrogen peroxide. Like I said—to
all of you working to build this stuff and get me my glass of
water, thank you. -Written by Sara Rubin, editor of the Monterey County
Weekly.
On February 27, 2023, the Court of Appeal for the Second
Appellate District (Court of Appeal) affirmed in part and
reversed in part the Los Angeles Superior Court’s decision in
Los Angeles Waterkeeper v. State Water Resources Control Board,
et al., Case No. BS171009. Somach Simmons & Dunn filed an amici
curiae brief on behalf of the California Association of
Sanitation Agencies, Association of California Water Agencies,
and WateReuse Association informing the Court of Appeal of the
unintended consequences of the rule issued by the trial court,
which found that California Constitution Article X, section 2
imposed a duty on the State Water Resources Control Board
(State Water Board) to prevent the waste of permitted
wastewater discharges.
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Richmond, on Monday reintroduced
his bipartisan legislation (H.R.1181) to reform permitting for
local wastewater treatment and water recycling projects, with
U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Riverside, as the original
co-sponsor. Garamendi’s legislation (H.R.1181) would
extend the maximum term for National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES) permits issued under the federal
Clean Water Act from five years to 10 to better reflect the
project construction schedules for public agencies. In October
2019, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
passed Garamendi’s legislation. His reintroduced legislation
awaits action by that same committee.
Chronic coastal contamination from the Tijuana River can end up
in the atmosphere as “sea spray aerosol” — spreading far
beyond the San Diego County beaches where it has long
polluted the water, a new study has found. For decades, storms
occurring along the U.S.-Mexico border have been diverting
sewage through the Tijuana River and into the ocean in south
Imperial Beach, according to a study published on Thursday
in Environmental Science & Technology. But researchers have now
determined that sewage-polluted coastal waters can transfer to
the atmosphere as aerosol — generated “by breaking waves and
bursting bubbles.” And while the level of threat to human
health remains uncertain, this so-called “sea spray aerosol”
contains bacteria, viruses and chemical compounds.
A well-known Bay Area construction materials firm has unleashed
harmful pollutants into Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek,
threatening sensitive species of fish, frogs and salamanders, a
newly filed lawsuit alleges. The Santa Clara County District
Attorney claims that Graniterock, an over-century-old
Watsonville-based corporation, has discharged stormwater from
two of its San Jose facilities that contain above-level pH
values, cement, sand, concrete, chemical additives and other
heavy metals. Those pollutants have endangered steelhead trout,
the California Tiger Salamander and the California Red Legged
frog — animals that live in and around the South Bay waterways,
the suit alleges. The complaint does not specify when or how
much of the pollutants were apparently found discharged into
the waterways.
A break in Yountville’s recycled-water main serving the
Vintner’s Golf Club and various vineyard ponds east and west of
the Napa River has led to an emergency $1 million repair
project, approved by the Town Council last week. The main
in question is a 6-inch PVC pipe, first installed in 1977, that
runs across the floor of the Napa Valley from the Yountville
wastewater treatment plant west of Highway 29. It reaches as
far as the Clos du Val Winery pond past the Silverado Trail, to
the east, Yountville’s public works director John Ferons said
at the council meeting. As such, the water line also runs below
the Napa River, which is where the leak was discovered about
two weeks ago. Yountville town staff discovered the leak at
noon Feb. 15 because a low-flow alarm went off, and workers
shut off the pumps to investigate the pipes, according to a
staff report.
Municipal wastewater treatment plants emit nearly double the
amount of methane into the atmosphere than scientists
previously believed, according to new research from Princeton
University. And since methane warms the planet over 80 times
more powerfully than carbon dioxide over 20 years, that could
be a big problem. … Zondlo led one of two new studies on
the subject, both reported in papers published
in Environmental Science & Technology. One study
performed on-the-ground methane emissions measurements at
63 wastewater treatment plants in the United States;
the other used machine learning methods to analyze published
literature data from methane monitoring studies of various
wastewater collection and treatment processes around the globe.
The California State Water Resources Control Board can’t be
forced to evaluate the “reasonableness” of locally issued
permits to discharge treated wastewater, a state appeals court
ruled, because state law doesn’t impose this obligation on the
agency. The Los Angeles-based Second Appellate District on
Monday overturned a trial judge’s order for the agency to
evaluate the reasonableness of the permits that were renewed in
2017 by its regional board in LA, allowing four treatment
plants to discharge millions of gallons of treated wastewater
in the LA River and the Pacific Ocean every day. LA
Waterkeeper, an environmental watchdog, had challenged the
permits arguing the regional board and the state board should
have considered better uses of the water, such as recycling,
rather than dumping it in the ocean.
Wet winter weather is exacerbating an already stinky situation
for San Diego County, where a slurry of sewage has been seeping
across the southern border for the past two weeks. … The
sewage influx is the result of a pipeline
rupture across the border in Tijuana that began on Feb.
10, according to the International Boundary and Water
Commission (IBWC), a U.S.-Mexican entity that oversees shared
water resources. … Water infrastructure worldwide
always has a certain number of cracks and holes — meaning
that rainfall can easily infiltrate these systems, Davani
explained. So when an inordinate amount of sewage is
already polluting a populous shoreline, a winter downpour is
bound to make things messier.
Morro Bay officials celebrated the start of operation for the
city’s $160 million wastewater treatment facility — months
ahead of a state-imposed deadline — on a chilly, rainy Thursday
morning. The Morro Bay Water Resources Center is the largest
municipal project in the city’s history, Scott Collins, Morro
Bay’s outgoing city manager, said at Thursday’s ceremony.
Located at 555 South Bay Blvd. south of town, the new sewage
treatment facility will use “scientifically proven, advanced
purification processes,” including reverse osmosis and
ultraviolet advanced oxidation, according to a news release.
The plant processes an average of 1 million gallons of
wastewater a day, but can process up to 8.14 million gallons
per day during storm events, according to engineer Erick
Bevington.
A multinational building materials company is trying to pull a
fast one on Fresno County residents — and county officials are
helping. Remember CEMEX’s proposal to continue gravel
mining along the San Joaquin River north of Fresno for another
century? By using even more environmentally damaging methods
than those currently employed? Things have been quiet on
that front since 2020 when CEMEX’s impertinent scheme came to
light and I expressed my initial outrage. Sure enough,
the gears of destruction are moving once again. -Written by columnist Marek Warszawski.
To feed the world’s growing population, farmers need to grow a
lot of crops. Crops need water to grow and thrive, and the
water used to irrigate crops makes up an estimated 70% of
global freshwater use. But many areas across the world are
plagued by water shortages. That can make it challenging for
farmers to get enough water to grow crops. Researchers are
exploring alternative water sources that can sustainably meet
current and future irrigation needs. … [A] new study …
shows local plant material or food waste could be used to
remove antibiotics from municipal wastewater. The researchers
used biochar, a charcoal-like substance, which is created
by heating organic materials at high temperatures in the
absence of oxygen.
Extracting fossil fuels from underground reservoirs requires so
much water a Chevron scientist once referred to its operations
in California’s Kern River Oilfield “as a water company that
skims oil.” Fracking operations use roughly 1.5 million to 16
million gallons per well to release oil and gas from shale,
according to the U.S. Geological Survey. All that water returns
to the surface as wastewater called flowback and produced
water, or PFW, contaminated by a complex jumble of hazardous
substances in fluids injected to enhance production, salts,
metals and other harmful elements once sequestered deep
underground, along with their toxic breakdown products.
Millions of gallons of raw sewage from Mexico are gushing into
San Diego through two canyons along the border, according to
federal officials. The spill is coming from at least two pump
stations that were forced to shut down after a construction
crew last week inadvertently ruptured a major pipeline south of
Tijuana. Shorelines as far north as the Silver Strand
were closed due to sewage contamination as of Wednesday, with
the rest of the region’s coastline under the standard 72-hour
rain advisory. South Bay beaches have been repeatedly shuttered
as the result of winter storms that washed polluted flows
through the Tijuana River watershed.
Monitoring the pollutants that result from desalination is
critical for ensuring that the process is carried out in an
environmentally sustainable manner. There are several
instruments that are commonly used to monitor pollutants in the
marine environment, including chemical sensors, optical
sensors, and biological indicators. Chemical sensors are
used to measure the concentration of various pollutants in the
water, including heavy metals, organic matter, and pathogens.
These sensors can be deployed in real-time, providing
continuous monitoring of water quality, and can be used to
detect changes in water quality over time. Some chemical
sensors are also capable of measuring multiple parameters
simultaneously, which can help to provide a more comprehensive
picture of water quality.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
Blasted by sun and beaten by waves,
plastic bottles and bags shed fibers and tiny flecks of
microplastic debris that litter the San Francisco Bay where they
can choke the marine life that inadvertently consumes it.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
Each day, people living on the streets and camping along waterways across California face the same struggle – finding clean drinking water and a place to wash and go to the bathroom.
Some find friendly businesses willing to help, or public restrooms and drinking water fountains. Yet for many homeless people, accessing the water and sanitation that most people take for granted remains a daily struggle.
Californians have been doing an
exceptional job
reducing their indoor water use, helping the state survive
the most recent drought when water districts were required to
meet conservation targets. With more droughts inevitable,
Californians are likely to face even greater calls to save water
in the future.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
In rural areas with widely dispersed houses, reliance upon a
centralized
sewer system is not practical compared to individual
wastewater treatment methods. These on-site management facilities
– or septic systems – are more commonplace given their simpler
structure, efficiency and easy maintenance.
Microplastics – plastic debris
measuring less than 5 millimeters – are an
increasing water quality concern. Entering the water as
industrial microbeads or as larger plastic litter that degrade
into small pellets, microplastics come from a variety of
consumer products.
Directly detecting harmful pathogens in water can be expensive,
unreliable and incredibly complicated. Fortunately, certain
organisms are known to consistently coexist with these harmful
microbes which are substantially easier to detect and culture:
coliform bacteria. These generally non-toxic organisms are
frequently used as “indicator
species,” or organisms whose presence demonstrates a
particular feature of its surrounding environment.
The biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of water determines the
impact of decaying matter on species in a specific ecosystem.
Sampling for BOD tests how much oxygen is needed by bacteria to
break down the organic matter.
Point sources release pollutants from discrete conveyances, such
as a discharge pipe, and are regulated by federal and state
agencies. The main point source dischargers are factories and
sewage treatment plants, which release treated
wastewater.
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
As the state’s population continues to grow and traditional water
supplies grow tighter, there is increased interest in reusing
treated wastewater for a variety of activities, including
irrigation of crops, parks and golf courses, groundwater recharge
and industrial uses.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to California
Wastewater is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the history of wastewater
treatment and how wastewater is collected, conveyed, treated and
disposed of today. The guide also offers case studies of
different treatment plants and their treatment processes.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
Wastewater management in California centers on the collection,
conveyance,
treatment, reuse and disposal of wastewater. This process is
conducted largely by public agencies, though there are also
private systems in places where a publicly owned treatment plant
is not feasible.
In California, wastewater treatment takes place through 100,000
miles of sanitary sewer lines and at more than 900 wastewater
treatment plants that manage the roughly 4 billion gallons of
wastewater generated in the state each day.
