The 30-minute segment, titled “Water: The Best Deal Around,” showcases the value of tap water service and explains many of the factors affecting the cost of treating and delivering water today. Produced by Huell Howser and underwritten by ACWA, the segment debuts April 3 on KPBS in San Diego and KVIE in Sacramento. Additional airdates are scheduled throughout the state through June.

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The average American uses 90 gallons of water each day, of which only about two gallons go toward drinking and cooking.  In fact, we use twice as much water – four gallons – washing dishes than we do in preparing and eatings out meals.  Laundry uses, on average, 8.5 gallons of water a day per person, while 25 gallons of water a day per person go toward lawn watering and pools.

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It took three years and more than $26 million to turn an old MTA bus yard in South Los Angeles into what it is today: a sprawling park and urban wetland that will store and clean millions of gallons of storm water — while also giving children a place to play.

Unlike most parks, which feature green lawns and picnic tables, this one is composed of walking paths, native plants and several kidney-shaped pools filled with storm water. Naturally occurring bacteria clean pollutants from the water, which eventually feeds into a storm drain.

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The biggest winner from the project is Long Beach, where workers routinely have to scoop floating islands of plastic bottles, grocery bags and other debris flowing from dozens of communities upstream before it litters the city’s coastline. In August 2010, crews began installing the stainless-steel, full-capture trash devices inside nearly 12,000 catch basins. The simple mesh contraptions sit just below the drains where water from city streets flows into the storm-water system and can catch debris as small as a cigarette butt.

Another 5,400 drains in the most-littered areas also were outfitted with street-level retractable screens as a second layer of defense.

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According to city officials, the program will allow residents to conserve resources by using water from their washing machines, also known as graywater, for backyard irrigation systems for trees, shrubs and gardens.

In March, the City Council approved the program, which was co-sponsored by council members James Johnson, Patrick O’Donnell and Suja Lowenthal.

“Today, Long Beach leads the way by being one of the first cities to test this innovative way to conserve scarce water,” said Johnson. “By reusing water on site, graywater has the potential to both save water and money for Long Beach residents.

Long Beach City Councilman James Johnson announces the city’s new “Laundry to Landscape” pilot program for single-family homes. The pilot project uses “graywater” from washing machines in irrigation systems. 36 homes will be picked from those that apply to receive the system free of charge. (Jeff Gritchen / Staff Photographer)save water and money for Long Beach residents.”

The program is a partnership between the Long Beach Water Department, which is also funding the project, and the Office of Sustainability.

“Long Beach has placed itself at the forefront of the water conservation movement. Our residents, our customers have enthusiastically answered our calls to minimize or eliminate all of the wasteful and inefficient … water use habits,” said Frank Clark, vice president of the Long Beach Water Department Board of Commissioners. “During the period of four years the city has achieved and attained a 17 percent reduction in citywide water use.”

 Better use of water prepares the city for the future, Johnson said.

“Long Beach, like all Southern California cities, will continue to face water scarcity over the long run and today. What we’re saying as a community is we’re going to plan for that long run,” Johnson said. “We need to use the water we already have in smarter ways instead of discarding it into our sewers, and that’s what this is all about.”

The program is open to single-family homeowners with suitable properties. Of the residents who submit applications, four in each of the nine council districts will be selected to receive a free installation initially under the pilot program.

Graywater irrigation systems are safe for watering most vegetable gardens, except for root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots. It is not recommended for watering lawns.

“Conventional wisdom and common sense ideas are essential when adopting progressive improvement,” said Mayor Bob Foster. “The ‘Laundry to Landscape’ program helps raise awareness throughout the community, change attitudes and encourage greater participation in sustainability efforts.”

“We believe that this program is simple in concept and we, through our efforts, hope to prove that it’s simple in implementation as well,” said Larry Rich, of the Office of Sustainability.

Here’s how it will work: A converter will be installed to the rear of a closed washing machine, which will either send the water to the sewer, where it currently goes, or directly to the landscape.

“Our team of field workers at Sustainability, with the help of a professional plumber, will install a below-ground drip irrigation system that will have eight to 12 points where the water will be distributed in the backyard,” said Rich.

The cost of the system is estimated to be about $750 each, he said.

“Through these 36 installations we will do across the city, we’re going to test that theory about the simplicity of these installations and the cost and savings involved,” Rich said.

Additional benefits will include reduced consumption of potable water, reduced load on the city’s sewage infrastructure and the replenishment of natural groundwater sources, he said.

“This is a really good day for the city of Long Beach and I think the beginning of a better day for all of Southern California,” said Mayor Bob Foster. “This is a continuing program that we have to use water more wisely, to make it go a lot longer. … A very good use of the water will save a lot of water for other purposes and it will demonstrate that you can make conservation go even further in Long Beach.”

pam.hale@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1476.

 Laundry to Landscape

What: Pilot program to use household wastewater from laundry to irrigate trees, shrubs and gardens.

Who can participate: Single-family homeowners are eligible to apply. From the applications received, four residences from each of the nine City Council districts will be selected. A licensed plumber will then install the system in the 36 homes.

How: To apply, call 562-570-6281 or visit www.sustainablelb.com.

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Haddad is a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. About 14 years ago, he became very interested in the issue of water reuse.

At the time, a number of California’s local water agencies were proposing a different approach to the state’s perennial water problems. They wanted to build plants that would clean local wastewater — aka sewage water — and after that cleaning, make it available as drinking water. But, says Haddad, these proposals were consistently shot down by an unwilling public.

“The public wasn’t really examining the science involved,” Haddad says. “They were just saying no.” This infuriated the water engineers, who thought the public’s response was fundamentally irrational, Haddad says.

“That’s what I would hear at these water agency meetings,” Haddad says, “these very frustrated water engineers saying, ‘My public is irrational! They are irrational! They simply won’t listen!’ ”

For those unfamiliar with water reuse, it’s a system by which water that has been used in your toilet or sink or shower is purified through a variety of technological processes that make it clean enough to drink. Then it’s reused in the same location: It’s used to water fields. It’s put in reservoirs. It can also be used for drinking water.

From the perspective of the water engineers Haddad was talking with, this kind of reuse was a no-brainer. The benefits were clear, and the science suggested that the water would be safe. Clean Water Action, an environmental activist group, also supports reuse for drinking water, though it thinks there should be national regulatory standards.

But according to Haddad, no matter what the scientists or environmental organizations said, the public saw it differently: They thought that directly reusing former sewage water was just plain gross.

“A scientific answer is not going to satisfy someone who is feeling revulsion,” says Haddad. “You have to approach it in a different way.”

That’s why Haddad turned to a nonprofit called the WateReuse Research Foundation for funding for a study. He wanted to figure out more about the public’s response to reused water, and for that he needed additional people. This was a job, Haddad concluded, for psychologists.

Psychological Contagion

Carol Nemeroff is one of the psychologists Haddad recruited to help him with his research. She works at the University of Southern Maine and studies psychological contagion. The term refers to the habit we all have of thinking — consciously or not — that once something has had contact with another thing, their parts are in some way joined.

“It’s a very broad feature of human thinking,” Nemeroff explains. “Everywhere we look, you can see contagion thinking.”

Contagion thinking isn’t always negative. Often, we think it is some essence of goodness that has somehow been transmitted to an object — think of a holy relic or a piece of family jewelry.

Nemeroff offers one example: “If I have my grandmother’s ring versus an exact replica of my grandmother’s ring, my grandmother’s ring is actually better because she was in contact with it — she wore it. So we act like objects — their history is part of the object.”

And according to Nemeroff, there are very good reasons why people think like this. As a basic rule of thumb for making decisions, when we’re uncertain about realities in the world, contagion thinking has probably served us well. “If it’s icky, don’t touch it,” says Nemeroff.

The researchers led by Haddad wanted to figure out more about how our beliefs about contagion in water work. And so they recruited more than 2,000 people and gave them a series of detailed questionnaires that sought to break down exactly what would have to be done to wastewater to make it acceptable to the public to drink. The conclusion?

“It is quite difficult to get the cognitive sewage out of the water, even after the real sewage is gone,” Nemeroff says.

Around 60 percent of people are unwilling to drink water that has had direct contact with sewage, according to their research.

But as Nemeroff points out, there is a certain irony to this position, at least when viewed from the perspective of a water engineer. You see, we are all already basically drinking water that has at one point been sewage. After all, “we are all downstream from someone else,” as Nemeroff says. “And even the nice fresh pure spring water? Birds and fish poop in it. So there is no water that has not been pooped in somewhere.”

Ridding Water Of Psychological ‘Poop’

So what do you need to do to make reused water acceptable to the public?

Nemeroff says you need to change the identity of the water so that it’s not the same water. “It’s an identity issue, not a contents issue,” she says, “so you have to break that perception. The water you’re drinking has to not be the same water, in your mind, as that raw sewage going in.”

One of the best ways to do that, Nemeroff and Haddad and their colleagues concluded, was to have people cognitively co-mingle the water with nature.

Apparently, if you have people imagine the water going into an underground aquifer, for example, and then sitting there for 10 years, the water becomes much more palatable to the public. It budges even those most unwilling to drink the water.

This, Haddad says, is why people find it acceptable to get their water supply from their local river, even though that river water at one point mingled with the sewage of the town upstream. People see river water as natural.

But, in fact, Haddad says, putting treated water back into nature can make it less clean.

“That’s an interesting twist to all of this,” Haddad says. “When you do introduce a river or even groundwater … you run the risk of deteriorating the water that’s been treated. You can make the water quality worse.”

In any case, say Nemeroff and Haddad, it’s certainly true that our psychological relationship to water and our beliefs about contagion have an enormous impact on water policy in this country. We spend millions and millions of dollars for water that is cognitively, if not actually, free of contamination.

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Large volumes of polluted stormwater degrade the nation’s rivers, lakes and aquatic habitats and contribute to downstream flooding. Green infrastructure captures and filters pollutants by passing stormwater through soils and retaining it on site. Effective green infrastructure tools and techniques include green roofs, permeable materials, alternative designs for streets and buildings, trees, rain gardens and rain harvesting systems.

As part of the strategy, EPA will work with partners including local governments, watershed groups, tribes and others in ten cities that have utilized green infrastructure and have plans for additional projects. EPA will encourage and support expanded use of green infrastructure in these cities and highlight them as models for other municipalities around the country. The ten cities are: Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Cleveland, OH; Denver, CO; Jacksonville, FL.; Kansas City, MO.; Los Angeles, CA; Puyallup, WA; Syracuse, N.Y.; and Washington, D.C. and neighboring Anacostia Watershed communities.

EPA will continue to work with other federal agencies, state and local governments, tribes, municipalities, and the private sector to identify opportunities for using green infrastructure and provide assistance to communities implementing green approaches to control stormwater. EPA will also provide additional tools to help states and communities leverage green infrastructure opportunities within other innovative environmental projects.

For more information on EPA’s green infrastructure agenda: http://epa.gov/greeninfrastructure

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week named the Strand Infiltration Project as the winner of the 2010 Performance and Innovation in the State Revolving Fund Creating Environmental Success – or PISCES – Award.

The award was created in 2005 and recognizes public works projects aimed at cutting down environmental pollution that are efficiently designed, managed and financed.

“It is truly an honor for the city and everyone involved in this project to have this recognition for all of the hard work and planning that went into the Strand Infiltration Trench Project,” Hermosa Beach Mayor Peter Tucker said in a statement. “Our city is committed to exploring new opportunities to make Hermosa Beach green.”

It is the second award the city has received for the ambitious project, which prevents filthy storm water from reaching local waters off the coast. In December, the Strand Infiltration Trench was named Project of the Year by the American Public Works Association.

City engineers designed the project to take advantage of the city’s location – on a massive sand dune – by using sand as a natural filtration system for polluted urban water runoff.

Work was completed in April and funded with about $950,850 in American Recovery and Reinvestment

The infiltration trench lies underground and stretches about 1,000 feet south of the city’s pier, collecting storm water and filtering it before returning it to groundwater tables.

Water is collected in city storm drains and processed through a pretreatment system, which removes trash, sediment and other toxins. The storm water is then filtered by sand to remove bacteria as it slowly flows safely to replenish ground water.

The infiltration trench is the second public works project completed by city engineers within the last year aimed at reducing the beach town’s environmental footprint.

In October, work was completed on the Pier Avenue Beautification Project. Improvements to the city’s main thoroughfare include wider sidewalks, a landscape center median and an additional storm drain and water-filtration system that further keeps polluted water from reaching the ocean.

The recent EPA award is the second the city has received from the agency for the pair of recently completed public works projects.

In December, the Pier Avenue project earned a 2010 Environmental Achievement Award from the EPA.

Hermosa Beach officials say the successful projects – and the national attention they are receiving – are proof the city is moving forward with bold environmental initiatives.

“We’re pushing the envelope when it comes to improving the environment,” Councilman Michael DiVirgilio, who has been leading the city’s environmental agenda, said in December. “And we’re doing it aggressively.”

City Manager Steve Burrell, who traveled to Sacramento last week on behalf of the city to accept the award, touted city engineers for their work on the project and said the new system has not encountered any problems, despite recent heavy rains.

“It’s a demonstration project and the idea is to show that this type of system could work,” Burrell said.

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Created by Emmy Award-winning writer and director Gilly Barnes, the videos feature celebrities sharing easy tips on how everyone can do their part to use water wisely and start making a difference in a matter of hours or days.

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