San Francisco officials gathered Wednesday along Sunset
Boulevard’s greenbelt, a 2-mile strip of plants and trees along
the road, to celebrate an integral financing step in a project
to deliver recycled water as the landscape’s irrigation source
instead of potable water. Sunset Boulevard is a main
thoroughfare running through the Sunset District connecting
from Golden Gate Park to Lake Merced. The 60-acre greenbelt
along both sides of the road is covered in trees and native
plants that create habitats for critters and provide shade for
residents. But it uses drinking water for irrigation,
water that could be under threat amid droughts. Connecting the
green space’s irrigation to a recycled water transmission pipe
could save about 40 million gallons in drinking water per year.
A proposed sale of hundreds of acres of wetlands near the Great
Salt Lake that have been largely untouched by humans for
decades is now facing some pushback from bird enthusiasts who
would like to see it stay that way. The 950 acres of land,
owned by Salt Lake City International Airport, is slated to be
purchased by Utah’s Department of Natural Resources. Inside the
parcel is a mitigation area that was set aside in the 1990s
when the airport built a runway. Since then, the airport has
done some minimal work to battle the invasive plant phragmites
and keep birds from encroaching upon the airport and, after
being approached by the state, considered a sale. … The
plan is to fold the land into a larger waterfowl management
area.
Fort Bragg Vice Mayor Marcia Rafanan told the City Council on
Monday night that she went out to the city’s wave-powered
desalination buoy, which makes fresh water from ocean water, to
taste it. … The city’s 12-month pilot with Oneka
Technologies, a company based in Sherbrooke, Quebec, was
designed with pipelines carrying fresh water from the buoy to
the city’s wastewater treatment plant, according to the Coastal
Commission, which approved the project with conditions in
December 2025. The pipeline part of the project has since been
dropped. In an April memo to the Coastal Commission, which
the commission provided Wednesday, Oneka said the cost of
installing, surveying and removing the pipeline was
“disproportionate to the benefits” for a short pilot
project.
For more than a century, water from the Eel River has flowed
through PG&E’s Potter Valley Project into the Russian River
watershed, filling Lake Mendocino, supporting farms in Potter
Valley, and supplying homes and businesses across Mendocino,
Sonoma, and Marin counties. PG&E has decided it no longer
wants to operate the Potter Valley Project and has filed a plan
to decommission it, including removing Scott Dam and Cape Horn
Dam. That wasn’t a decision made by Mendocino County or our
local water districts, but our responsibility now is to make
sure water continues flowing to our communities and that the
infrastructure controlling it stays in local hands, not in the
hands of an outside investor. – Written by Mo Mulheren, the Second District Supervisor
for the County of Mendocino and the county’s alternate
commissioner on the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power
Commission.
… Adam Brice moves from one metal trough to the next with a
green hose, filling them with a commodity that’s going dry in
rural Chino Valley. He is a water hauler. The practice is not
unusual in this town 16 miles north of Prescott. Growth in the
region has caused lower water levels due to groundwater pumping
and inefficient recharge. … Local governments hope to mitigate
the overdraft through regional cooperation and stormwater
retention. But rural residents can’t wait. They have found some
relief in hiring water haulers and setting up their own
homemade storage methods.
Walter Hardesty has raised hay and cattle south of Elk Grove
long enough to watch groundwater turn from a
private worry into a regional one. Soon, he expects to manage
it from his phone. The Harvest Water Program is set
to deliver recycled water to his ranch in 2027, and he
will order it through an app for a set date and
duration. Then, an automated valve at the edge of his property
will do the rest, all the while giving the aquifer beneath his
fields and his wells, which will be run about half as often,
time to recover. That, in essence, is the promise at the
center of a nearly $597 million public project. … The
Harvest Water Program is billed by SacSewer, the Sacramento
Area Sewer District, as California’s largest
agricultural water recycling project.
… According to the District’s materials, it will
deliver up to 50,000 acre-feet of recycled water a
year.
A Phoenix suburb ditched a plan to send recycled water
from toilets and other sources directly to residents’
taps, after political candidates made unproven claims
that the water is contaminated “poop water.” The affluent city
of Scottsdale mainly uses purified water from the city’s liquid
waste to recharge aquifers that can be drawn when other sources
are running low. But in June, as criticism mounted, the city
council replaced funding for the recycling program and
other water projects with a vague $100 million allocation for
new water sources and supplies. … Some experts
and residents said the budget change — along with a council
majority that frowns upon wastewater reuse — could
weaken resilience at a time when the West is mired in drought
and cities are facing significant cuts from the Colorado
River.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a
$251 million Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act
(WIFIA) loan to the Las Virgenes-Triunfo Public Financing
Authority in California to support drinking water treatment
improvements and advance water reuse. The funding will support
the Pure Water Project, which will construct an advanced water
purification facility to treat recycled water for the Las
Virgenes-Conejo region of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The
project is expected to provide the region’s first local water
supply while increasing capacity and system reliability for
approximately 105,000 customers.
Members of Arizona’s congressional delegation on Monday
announced a $2 million investment into water reuse
research for semiconductor manufacturing. The federal
funding will go to Arizona State University to “develop, test,
and demonstrate innovative water reuse technologies.” The
announcement comes from Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark
Kelly, along with Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari and Congressman
Greg Stanton. The project will test out various water
treatment technologies at ASU’s MacroTechnology Works
facility in Tempe. Researchers will measure each
technology’s water savings, cost reductions and any operational
benefits. The data can inform what works best for
water conservation.
Washington County officials know the idea of drinking treated
wastewater can be hard to stomach for some. They’re hoping a
new $7 million demonstration facility can help get
southern Utahns past that “ick factor.” The Washington
County Water Conservancy District is designing the facility to
allow visitors see — and taste — the purification process
firsthand in hopes of building public confidence in
recycled water long before the district’s full-scale
treatment facility comes online. “We want to be
transparent,” said Zach Renstrom, district general manager.
“People will be able to come [to the facility] and actually see
the process … and we will describe all the different methods
that we have to go through to get to that [drinkable]
standard.”
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.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
After more than two decades of
drought, water utilities serving the largest urban regions in the
arid Southwest are embracing a drought-proof source of drinking
water long considered a supply of last resort: purified sewage.
Water supplies have tightened to the point that Phoenix and the
water supplier for 19 million Southern California residents are
racing to adopt an expensive technology called “direct potable
reuse” or “advanced purification” to reduce their reliance on
imported water from the dwindling Colorado River.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This 2-day, 1-night tour offered participants the opportunity to
learn about water issues affecting California’s scenic Central
Coast and efforts to solve some of the challenges of a region
struggling to be sustainable with limited local supplies that
have potential applications statewide.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
This 2-day, 1-night tour traveled through Inland
Southern California to learn about the region’s efforts in
groundwater management, recycled water and other drought-proofing
measures.
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.
20-minute DVD that explains the problem with polluted stormwater,
and steps that can be taken to help prevent such pollution and
turn what is often viewed as a “nuisance” into a water resource
through various activities.
This 7-minute DVD is designed to teach children in grades 5-12
about where storm water goes – and why it is so important to
clean up trash, use pesticides and fertilizers wisely, and
prevent other chemicals from going down the storm drain. The
video’s teenage actors explain the water cycle and the difference
between sewer drains and storm drains, how storm drain water is
not treated prior to running into a river or other waterway. The
teens also offer a list of BMPs – best management practices that
homeowners can do to prevent storm water pollution.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Nevada Water provides an
overview of the history of water development and use in Nevada.
It includes sections on Nevada’s water rights laws, the history
of the Truckee and Carson rivers, water supplies for the Las
Vegas area, groundwater, water quality, environmental issues and
today’s water supply challenges.
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.
All water is naturally recycled and
reused as part of the hydrologic cycle. Recycled
water is also produced by purifying wastewater for safe use in
drinking (potable) water and for non-potable uses such as
irrigation.
Recycling wastewater provides a new, costly but renewable water
resource that can bolster local water supplies, save energy and
reduce the amount of sewage treatment plant effluent emptied into
rivers and oceans.
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.
Grey water, also spelled as gray water, is water that already has
been used domestically, commercially and industrially. This
includes the leftover, untreated water generated from washing
machines, bathtubs and bathroom sinks.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at the energy
requirements associated with water use and the means by which
state and local agencies are working to increase their knowledge
and improve the management of both resources.
When a drought occurs as it has this year, the response is
couched in the three Rs of the waste hierarchy: reduce, reuse and
recycle.
The reduction part is well-known. State and local officials are
urging people to use less water in everything they do, from
landscape irrigation to shorter showers. Spurred by California’s
difficulties, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on June 4 declared a
statewide drought. On July 10, the governor and Sen. Dianne
Feinstein announced their support of the Safe, Clean, Reliable
Drinking Water Supply Act of 2008 – a $9.3 billion bond proposal
that would allocate $250 million for water recycling projects.
This issue of Western Water examines the continuing practice of
smart water use in the urban sector and its many facets, from
improved consumer appliances to improved agency planning to the
improvements in water recycling and desalination. Many in the
water community say conserving water is not merely a response to
drought conditions, but a permanent ethic in an era in which
every drop of water is a valuable commodity not to be wasted.
Water is the true wealth in a dry land – Wallace Stegner
One hundred years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt signed
legislation that changed the course of American history and
permanently altered the landscape of the western United States.
The West of today retains some of the vestiges of the land that
brought the explorers, entrepreneurs and dreamers hundreds of
years ago. Despite the surge in population, vast tracts of
wilderness remain – forests thick with evergreen trees and
seemingly unending open spaces where human inhabitants are few
and far between.
Drawn from a special stakeholder symposium held in September 1999
in Keystone, Colorado, this issue explores how we got to where we
are today on the Colorado River; an era in which the traditional
water development of the past has given way to a more
collaborative approach that tries to protect the environment
while stretching available water supplies.
