The Del Mar City Council voted Feb. 20 to proceed with a public noticing period for potable water and wastewater rates increases that, pending approval by the City Council, would take effect July 1.
The residents of the 40 floors of San Francisco apartments above our heads may live in luxury, but really, they’re just like the rest of us: showering, washing their hands, doing laundry. Normally in the US, all their water would flush out to a treatment facility, and eventually out to a body of water.
California regulators approved new rules last month to enable water suppliers to treat wastewater and redistribute it as drinking water. The state says that the new standards, which took years to craft, are the most advanced in the nation for treating wastewater and will add millions of gallons of additional drinking water to state supplies.
In late November, an Iranian-backed hacking group attacked Israeli-made digital controls commonly used in the water and wastewater industries in the US, affecting multiple organizations across several states.
In just a few years, water that’s flushed down toilets and drains in Phoenix may eventually flow through taps for people to drink.
Nazario Prieto with Phoenix Water Services claims it’s responsible and the way to go to preserve water.
“It’s a sustainable resource, and it keeps coming to us,” he explained.
The project will start at the Cave Creek Water Reclamation Plant near Cave Creek and Deer Valley roads.
Population growth and climate change are stretching America’s water supplies to the limit, and tapping new sources is becoming more difficult each year—in some cases, even impossible. New Mexico, California, Arizona, and Colorado are facing the nation’s most significant strains on water supplies. But across the entire American Southwest, water stress has become the norm.
In downtown San Francisco, in a cavernous garage that was once a Honda dealership, a gleaming white-and-blue appliance about the size of a commercial refrigerator is being prepared for transport to a hotel in Los Angeles.
There, this unit, called a OneWater System, will be installed in the basement, where its collection of pipes will take in much of the hotel’s graywater — from sinks, showers, and laundry. The system will clean the water with membrane filtration, ultraviolet light, and chlorine, and then send it back upstairs to be used again for nonpotable uses.
Raw sewage is flowing into the Tijuana River Valley.
A private developer inadvertently damaged a 60-inch pipe on Feb. 10 which led to the spillage, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission.
Most of the sewage is spilling into Smuggler’s Gulch and Goat Canyon.
It may not be the most pleasant thought, but the wastewater that flows through the Tapia Water Reclamation Facility in Agoura Hills could one day come out of your faucet.
“We’re taking the water that we would normally discharge into Malibu Creek and we’re going to create a local drinking supply out of this,” said Michael McNutt with the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District.
Orange County is home to the world’s largest water purification system for indirect potable reuse—and it’s only getting bigger. The Groundwater Replenishment System, a joint project between Orange County Water District and Orange County Sanitation District, just finished its final expansion. We spoke to OCWD General Manager Mike Markus and the group’s recent president, Steve Sheldon, to learn more about this revolutionary facility.
