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
On Wednesday, the Tahoe City Public Utility District celebrated
the Grand Opening of the West Lake Tahoe Regional Water
Treatment Plant. … The plant can currently deliver one
million gallons of water per day and may be further expanded to
reach more customers from Tahoma to Timberland. The utility
district stated that the approximately $30 million project was
made possible by grant funding as well as a loan from the CA
State Water Resources Control Board.
Recently elected San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre
took office in July promising to wield the full powers of her
new job against the sewage crisis in the Tijuana
River. … Aguirre plans to ask the county to begin work
immediately on two region-wide studies approved by the Board in
June. … She also will ask the Board to spend roughly $100,000
to hire a new lobbyist to educate federal lawmakers about the
extent of sewage pollution in South County and build support
for a comprehensive bi-national cleanup effort.
Over the holiday weekend, many people looking to cool off from
the summer heat were disappointed as some beaches were closed
or authorities advised against swimming because of unsafe
levels of bacteria. The advisories and closures popped up
across the East Coast, from Florida to Maine, along inland
streams and rivers, and throughout the California coast. The
culprit: fecal contamination detected in the water that
presents a risk of illness. … Experts told USA TODAY
that stormwater runoff and sewage overflows were among the most
likely causes, both of which are exacerbated by heavy rains,
flooding and warming temperatures.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S.
International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) announced
the completion of a 10 million-gallon-per-day expansion at the
South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant (SBIWTP) in
San Diego. The project boosts the facility’s capacity from 25
to 35 mgd, a 40% increase aimed at reducing cross-border sewage
flows from Tijuana into the Tijuana River Valley. Originally
planned as a two-year project, the expansion was completed in
just 100 days.
On Aug. 30, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator
Lee Zeldin signed a final action that withdrew proposed
revisions to the EPA’s Meat and Poultry Products Effluent
Limitations Guidelines (ELG) for wastewater discharged by meat
and poultry processing and rendering facilities. The
agency determined that existing federal wastewater regulations
under the Clean Water Act are effective compared to the
proposed changes. Zeldin stated in his remarks how withdrawing
the proposed revisions would advance the Trump Administration’s
effort to lower food costs for American families and farmers.
New research backs up the concerns of people who live near the
Tijuana River and have long complained that foul air wafting
from the polluted waterway is making them sick — irritating
their eyes and noses, making breathing difficult and causing
headaches. The study indicates they’re being exposed to high
levels of the toxic gas hydrogen sulfide. … The study,
published Thursday in the journal Science, tracked air
pollution emanating from a foamy, churning section of the river
where water falls from culverts.
Two San Diego County supervisors on Wednesday praised a
decision to expand treatment capacity at the South Bay
International Wastewater Treatment Plant. In a statement,
Paloma Aguirre and Joel Anderson said a cease-and-desist order
will allow the plant to treat an additional 10 million gallons
per day, from 25 million gallons to 35 million gallons. The
California Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted the
order during its regular meeting Wednesday. Aguirre and
Anderson described that decision as “a major step toward
reducing untreated sewage flows through the Tijuana River
Valley.”
A long-planned water storage project benefitting cities in the
western Inland Empire is getting a big infusion of cash. The
Inland Empire Utilities Agency’s Chino Basin Project is
intended to recycle more water in western San Bernardino County
to reduce demand for water imported from Northern California.
On Wednesday, Aug. 20, the California Water Commission approved
an additional $53.9 million in funding.
Last week I attended a tour of the Tijuana River Valley,
organized by 11 organizations for the 30×30 Partnership Summit,
a statewide meeting of groups committed to achieving
California’s conservation goals. … A vast array of
entities oversee and advocate for the river valley. On the U.S.
side alone, the land is stewarded by federal, state, county and
city agencies. Advocacy groups with a stake in the river’s
future — and in resolving the public health crisis caused by
billions of gallons of untreated wastewater pouring into the
watershed — hail from both sides of the border.
The Hi-Desert Water District (HDWD) has broken ground on the
second phase of a $103 million sewage collection system in
Yucca Valley, California. … When completed later this
year, the new system will convey an estimated 210,000 gallons
of wastewater per day through 32 miles of new pipelines to the
Yucca Valley Wastewater Treatment and Water Reclamation
Facility. Commissioned in 2020, the facility is the region’s
first centralized treatment plant and provides critical
capacity for wastewater recycling and groundwater protection.
… On Tuesday, [North American Development Bank managing
director John Beckman] met in Juarez with the head of
CILA, the Mexican section of the International Boundary and
Water Commission, to talk about the sewage crisis in the
Tijuana River. … The United States will
spend $600 million to improve wastewater treatment in the San
Diego-Tijuana area, while Mexico is expected to commit at least
$94 million. NADBank will commit funds, and it previously
issued a $150 “green” loan to the state of Baja California for
water sanitation.
… [S]ince late 2021, swaths of the south San Diego coast have
been closed every day — 1,345 days in a row and counting —
because of sewage and industrial pollution flowing in from the
Tijuana River. … For youths in South Bay communities
such as Imperial Beach, San Ysidro and Nestor, worsening river
conditions the last few years have stripped away not just
recreational opportunities but a key part of community life.
… The Tijuana River is ranked the second-most endangered
river in the United States by American Rivers. Data from the
San Diego County Department of Environmental Health & Quality
show the Imperial Beach shoreline this year has been closed
every day except for one.
For years, residents of the Fresno County city of Sanger
endured foul, overbearing odors caused by a wastewater
treatment plant stressed by immense amounts of raw
sewage from the nearby Pitman Family Farms chicken processing
plant. … The city of Sanger failed to fully enforce a
state-required wastewater pretreatment program for industrial
dischargers like Pitman Family Farms for more than two decades,
a Fresno Bee investigation has found. … For this
investigation, The Bee interviewed regional water regulators,
city officials, wastewater experts and reviewed hundreds of
pages of city and state reports.
A proposed trail bridge in San Juan Capistrano would allow for
the removal of barriers in Trabuco Creek, making it easier for
endangered southern steelhead trout to travel from the ocean to
their spawning grounds in the Santa Ana Mountains. The $45
million project, which would also include removing non-native
plant species along the creek, stabilizing soil along the banks
and some other public safety features, is being spearheaded by
California Trout, a nonprofit group with a mission to preserve
the state’s salmon, steelhead trout and other wild trout
populations.
… 2025 has featured a very weak monsoon on the western
fringe of the typical summer wind reversal region–so much so
that summer 2025 to date has been among (if not singularly) the
driest on record to date across a broad swath of the Great
Basin. … Fortunately, it does appear that a late
monsoonal surge will slightly ease these concerns. I don’t
expect a dramatic “saved by the bell” moment, but a substantial
and more western-oriented monsoonal surge now appears likely
over the next 7-10 days across the Great Basin and even
extending into portions of southern and eastern
California.
A binational analysis of data from 20 beaches on both sides of
the border shows fecal bacteria is present in the water and
exceeds health standards almost year-round. Over a two-year
period, One Coast Project and the Permanent Forum of Binational
Waters looked into water samples gathered since 1999 along the
coastline from Carlsbad, California, about 50 miles north of
the border, to Rosarito, Baja California, roughly 15 miles
south of Tijuana. The study found that in Southern California’s
beaches, the highest concentrations of enterococci bacteria
were reported during the spring, averaging over 15,000 units
per 100 milliliters of water, nearly 100 times the binational
legal limit average in both countries.
Sunlight shining on specialized floaties can now produce fuel
for plants by recovering ammonia from wastewater. Researchers
designed a floatable amino-grafted (-NH2) MXene (Ti3C2)-based
(AMS) sponge that, when scaled efficiently, can provide two
sustainable solutions simultaneously: cleaning up wastewater
and providing ammonia (NH3), an essential nitrogen source for
plants, to farmers at a lower cost. … According to the
findings published in Nature Sustainability, the researchers
were able to recover ammonia at the rate of 0.6 mol/m2/h with
99.8% purity using ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) wastewater under
5-sun light intensity, without any added chemicals or energy.
Cities across California and the Southwest are significantly
increasing and diversifying their use of recycled wastewater as
traditional water supplies grow tighter.
The 5th edition of our Layperson’s Guide to Water Recycling
covers the latest trends and statistics on water reuse as a
strategic defense against prolonged drought and climate change.
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. They enter waterways and
oceans as industrial microbeads from various consumer
products or larger plastic litter that degrades into small bits.
Microbeads have been used in exfoliating agents, cosmetic washes
and large-scale cleaning processes. Microplastics are used
pharmaceutically for efficient drug delivery to affected sites in
patients’ bodies and by textile companies to create artificial
fibers.
Microplastics disperse easily and widely throughout surface waters and sediments. UV
light, microbes and erosion degrade the tiny fragments, making
them even smaller and more difficult for wastewater treatment
plants to remove.
The particles, usually made of polyethylene or polypropylene
plastic, take thousands of years to biodegrade
naturally. It takes prohibitively high temperatures to
break microplastics down fully. Consequently, most water treatment plants cannot remove
them.
The health effects of consumption are currently under
investigation.
Responses
Many advocacy groups have published lists of products containing
microbeads to curb their purchase and pollution.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates microbeads in
industrial, but not domestic, wastewater.
Federal
law required microbeads to be phased out of rinse-off
cosmetics beginning in July 2017. Dozens of states also
regulate microbeads in products. California has the strictest
limitation, prohibiting even the use of biodegradable microbeads.
Microplastics in California Water
In 2019, the San Francisco Estuary Institute published a
study estimating that 7 trillion pieces of microplastic
enter San Francisco
Bay annually from stormwater runoff, about 300
times the amount in all wastewater treatment effluent entering
the bay.
California lawmakers in 2018 passed a package of bills to raise
awareness of the risks of microplastics and microfibers in the
marine environment and drinking water. As
directed by the legislation, the State Water Resources Control
Board in 2020 adopted an official
definition of microplastics in drinking water and in 2022
developed the world’s standardized methods for testing drinking
water for microplastics.
The water board was expected by late 2023 to begin testing
for microplastics in untreated drinking water sources tapped by
30 of the state’s largest water utilities. After two years, the
testing was expected to extend to treated tap water served
to consumers. A progress report and recommendations for
policy changes or additional research are required by the end of
2025.
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.
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.
