Recycled water seen as salve for supply woes

By: TOM PFINGSTEN - North County Times | Saturday, January 19, 2008 9:13 PM PST ∞

FALLBROOK - As imported water supplies tighten across Southern California and local farmers cope with 30 percent cutbacks, the Fallbrook Public Utility District has one solution that officials say could help ease the strain: recycled water.

The district already sells recycled water to several Fallbrook nurseries and a golf course in Oceanside, and is seeking to add two more high-volume customers this year, officials said.

It costs more to convert wastewater into recycled water than to buy treated water from the Metropolitan Water District, but officials said the payoff is worth it in a year of limited water supplies.

Compared with $500 an acre-foot for treated drinking water, the $800 to $900 it takes to produce an acre-foot of recycled water may seem steep, but every gallon recycled is one less gallon of Northern California water the district must buy, they point out.

General Manager Keith Lewinger said the district must account for the 30 percent cutbacks to agricultural customers at the end of the year, and that selling more recycled water would help relieve some of that pressure.

"On top of that, the farmer that is using the reclaimed water doesn't have to cut back at all," he said. "Everybody wins."

The Metropolitan Water District imposed 30 percent agricultural cutbacks Jan. 1 due to an August court decision that called for pumps in Northern California's delta region to be shut down during parts of the year to protect an endangered fish. The district, which is based in Los Angeles, provides Fallbrook with 97 percent of its water supply.

Since that court decision, water agencies throughout Southern California have been exploring ways of developing secondary water supplies.

The Fallbrook Public Utility District produces 2,400 acre-feet of recycled water every year, 2,000 of which are not used and flow into the Pacific via the Oceanside Ocean Outfall, said the district's chief engineer, Joe Jackson.

The other 400 acre-feet are either sold to nurseries and groves, or donated for such causes as watering trees and shrubs on the South Mission Road median north of Fallbrook High School, said Jackson.

An acre-foot is roughly equivalent to 326,000 gallons, or enough to sustain two households for a year.

The California Department of Transportation also buys recycled water from the Fallbrook district, in accordance with state laws requiring Caltrans to use recycled water on its highway and interstate landscaping.

Jackson said the water recycling process puts wastewater through three stages of purification, including filtering and chlorine treatment, and that the final product is suitable for "full body contact," meaning it could be used to fill swimming pools.

It's biologically sterile and just a little more salty than drinking water, he said.

According to state law, recycled water must be delivered through different pipes than tap water because it is not as pure. Therein lies much of the cost of selling the second-hand liquid, Jackson said.

For example, the district is planning to spend about $120,000 to expand its recycled water pipeline past Fallbrook High, a longtime customer, so that it can sell recycled water to another nursery.

That project is on hold until the district can gain access to an easement for the pipeline extension, Jackson said.

Recycled water is commonly used to water sports fields and groves, and would be suitable even for watering home landscaping, although the cost of dual plumbing systems would be "more trouble than it's worth," he said.

One idea for using reclaimed water in much larger amounts would involve storing recycled water in a reservoir near Camp Pendleton, then siphoning it through groundwater basins and purifying it to sell as drinking water, said Jackson.

That idea mirrors a $490 million project that will begin pumping treated water into the ground this year in Orange County, but has been criticized by some local residents as a fancy "toilet-to-tap" plan.

In a Jan. 2 report in the Los Angeles Times, officials said the Orange County effort could eventually add 130 million gallons a day to the fresh-water supply, easing dependence on imported water.

Jackson said no plans have been made for such a project in Fallbrook, so for the time being the district will continue trying to sell more of the 2,000 acre-feet of recycled water that it pumps into the ocean every year.

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.

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6 comment(s)[-]Go to Top

Wait....... wrote on Jan 20, 2008 6:51 AM:So the cost goes from $500 to $900 to process. Who is going to pay for this? Another rate increase across the board? Total B.S. if it is ! Common citizens will, once again, end up paying and the cost a growers still get the ultra low rate. THIS is the real news!

anotherview wrote on Jan 20, 2008 9:12 AM:Statewide, farmers overuse and waste water. Farming activity now consumes about 85 percent of the available state water supply. Households use about 5 percent. The rest goes to government, industrial, and commercial. Simple math shows that forcing farmers statewide to lower their water use by only 5.88 percent would equal the amount of water households use. Further, about 30 percent of farm irrigation water runs off the land to waste. Via political pressure, however, farmers resist (1) improving their farm irrigation practices and (2) recycling farm water runoff. The Golden State has plenty of water available, but the distribution and use of this water does not happen rationally. Farmers grab most of the water, and then waste nearly a third of it. So any fair and sound solution to the water supply problem must require farmers statewide to stop using and wasting so much water. Then others will have enough water.

To another view wrote on Jan 20, 2008 12:19 PM:Where do you get these numbers? Show me the study that determined that farms use 85% of the water and homes only use 5%. And where do you get the mis-information about farmers wasting 30 percent of thier water? If you knew anything about farming you would know how wrong you are. California farmers have quite a few reasons that compel them to preserve water. First is the dissolved salt and mineral load of the water, including sodium and selenium. As water evaporates it leaves this load behind. A chronically overwatered feild will soon be useless, and even the weeds that grow in the field afterwards can be too toxic to allow grazing (ever heard of loco weed? That's selenium at work!). Second is nutrient depletion, over-watering washes away nutrients. Third is expense, water isn't cheap. Fourth is availability, California farm water supplies have been and continue to be cut back to supply cities. Farmers grow food to feed us, create employment, and strengthen the economy by creating exports that help offset our trade deficit, that is not a waste of water. Growing grass and rain forest plants in the desert of California, washing your driveway down, washing your car, taking 1/2 hour showers, leaking toilets that we are too lazy to fix, etc.,are all a waste of water. Mutliply this by the millions of households in California and it's easy to identify where the water is wasted in this State, unless of course your on an uninformed tirade against California farmers!

Hmmm wrote on Jan 20, 2008 1:58 PM:Too bad the growers can't just use all that water pay what we pay now, and they would still be in effect, getting their subsidy. What a rip. STOP building. Why should we get penalized?

JSten wrote on Jan 20, 2008 2:53 PM:
To another view:

Right on! Ag puts water into food, any excess goes into the ground or the air. Sewage goes into the pipe and to the ocean for the most part.

The amount of water used by humans for housing and ag was under stood by me to be about the same (not figuring on what is used by power plants or industrial). Maybe DWR should do us all a favor and broadcast the numbers on the amount of ag land and water load, and the same for residential.

It looks to me like a lot of 15000 square feet needs almost 500,000 gallons to match an evapo-transpiration rate of 52 inches per year which reduces to about 340 gallons per person per day for a family of four living on the same piece of land, growing grass and hedges.

Am I on the grass?

Where were the forward thinkers 30 years ago? wrote on Jan 20, 2008 8:56 PM:More than 30 years ago we first saw the "purple pipes" going in along freeways and landscape areas along other roads. These pipes were carrying reclaimed water for irrigation. That was the time for local authorities to pass laws/codes requiring all knew construction to install the infrastructure to enable homes being built to utilize "reclaimed" water for landscape use. If this had been done 30 years ago, we'd have a significant portion of the required infrastructure in place today to be using this "reclaimed" water for watering our yards, trees, etc. while our homes would still be using the primary water source. Had this been done 30 years ago, we would not be having any water shortages today. And, the water districts and sewer districts could have been charging all along for reclaiming this water. The ideal would have been to charge slightly less per unit for the reclaimed water than for the primary water. This would have encouraged older homes to start demanding access to this water source and would have enabled the passage of bonds or other payment methods to install the needed infrastructure to existing homes. Agricultural use of this water would also have become the next obvious use of this resource, while Toilet-to-tap would have remained off the table (and out of our table water). Now, however, it is going to cost us millions more to get that which we should have had years ago. By the way, we always knew that eventually we would be running out of water: the agreements with Nevada and Arizona to use the Colorado River water in So. Cal. were known more than 30 years ago to be something that was going to soon run dry. Arizona and Nevada were both growing back then as agricultural zones, and CA was losing access to AZ and NV water even then. Furthermore, we also knew as far back as 30 years ago that both AZ and NV were building more houses, and the cities were all needing more of the water originally assured to them by the Federal Government. So, any planner worth their salt could easily project the future needs in CA were going to be significant. In fact, this was the primary reason why reclaimed water for irrigating our freeways and roadways was started! So, why not supply this water (even at a cost) to the homeowners? So, before it is too late e need to pass laws/codes requiring ALL new construction to install the required infrastructure to enable the future use of reclaimed water for home irrigation!

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