At least three brand-new, state-of-the-art water treatment plants, recycling plants and one pump house have been built or are in the planning stage along the river between the Santa Clarita Valley and the Pacific Ocean.

High energy-efficient plants in Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru all started purifying water along the Santa Clara River within the last couple of months.

What motivated each tiny town to spend millions of dollars on infrastructure when each community, like the rest of America, struggles to rebound from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression?

Aside from Piru, each town was hit with a fine — many in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — by the California Water Resources Control Board.

Since the board’s Office of Enforcement was created in June 2006, each of those towns along the Santa Clara River has been hit with hefty fines for water quality violations.

So with a lineup of ultra-efficient water treatment plants positioned from Fillmore to the ocean, does the Santa Clarita Valley need to build a $210 million salt-ridding reverse-osmosis plant to satisfy Ventura County farmers downstream?

The Signal took a road trip to find out.

Ventura County Line
Leaving Santa Clarita Valley heading west on Highway 126, we leave behind us two drinking-water treatment plants operated by the Castaic Lake Water Agency and two wastewater treatment plants run by the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District, all serving residents of the Santa Clarita Valley.

Valley residents wastewater is treated at one of the two SCV plants and then dumped into the Santa Clara River.

Downstream farmers say their crops can tolerate no more than 117 millimeters of chloride, a naturally occurring salt. Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board members say the SCV must scrub the chloride out of the river by 2015 — or face hefty fines.

Plans call for a $210 million reverse-osmosis plant — to be underwritten by Santa Clarita Valley homeowners — to remove chloride from the water.

Many local residents question the science behind the chloride conclusion and say the fees imposed to build the plant would tax local residents but destroy the local economy.

As we cross from Los Angeles County to Ventura County — the point at which the chloride level must drop — no water is visible in the river bed, but a rich green carpet of riverside trees and brush shows us where it is.

The first water treatment plant of note is just a stake in the dusty ground for now, on the south side of the highway just before the Ventura County line.

This is the site for a water reclamation plant planned by Newhall Land and Farming to serve the 21,000 residents of its Newhall Ranch development.

Once it’s up and running, the plant will treat an estimated 6.8 million gallons of water every day.

Piru saw no fine
About six miles further down the winding road, still along the river and on the north side of the highway this time, is the brand-new $14.5 million wastewater treatment plant in Piru.

It started treating water in February with a capacity of up to 0.5 million gallons of water a day, replacing a plant built in 1974.

Piru has a population of about 1,200 with an average household income $41,000.

Unlike its river neighbors upstream and down, it was not cited for a single water violation.

Instead of getting a fine, it got an “order” to build a plant and help to build it.

The board issued Piru a Time Schedule Order ordering the construction and start-up of a new wastewater treatment plant be completed by February 28, 2010.

Piru built the plant.
With funding from the Ventura County Public Works Agency and that county’s sanitation department — plus $8.55 million in Economic Stimulus Bill money and a $6 million state loan from the Clean Water State Revolving fund — it now joins Fillmore and Santa Paula in putting cleaner water into the Santa Clara River.

Driving out of Piru through a corridor of orange groves, we travel from a region of no violations to a town fined for 2,800 violations.

Stopping to talk to Fillmore’s top water man, we learn the town is no longer just treading water to stay fine-free.

Fillmore’s canary pond
Goldfish swim to the surface as Bert J. Rapp kneels down beside their pond.

The director of Fillmore’s Department of Public Works is taking a short break from questions about water fines, about the town’s “Cadillac” of new water treatment plants and about a water penalty of almost a quarter of a million dollars.

“This is our canary pond,” he says, teasing the goldfish with his fingers.

He looks up and smiles at his interviewer, proud to explain.

“Just as they used canaries in coal mines to test the air quality, we have these fish here in our treated water to test the quality of it.”

The goldfish are as big as sausages.

“The koi are the larger ones,” he says, pointing to fish the size of oven mitts.

Both types of fish appear healthy — and aside from the teasing, apparently quite happy — swimming and splashing in water cleaned with state-of-the art technology.

“If we were given an order to remove chloride from our water, we wanted to have the right technology in place,” Rapp said, standing up from the pond and looking over his shoulder at the new water-purifying plant.

The water leaving here travels downstream to more Ventura County farms.

Fillmore’s filter
In 2000, strawberries replaced lemons as the No. 1 cash crop in Ventura County.

Five years ago, strawberries’ value as the new top crop totaled $328.6 million.

And strawberries are particularly susceptible to chloride in the water, farmers say.

Between Oct. 28, 2004, and June 30, 2008, chloride levels in water discharged into the Santa Clara River at Fillmore exceeded interim chloride limits granted by the board of 187 milligrams per liter.

The resulting fines were for a variety of chemicals released in effluent, and chloride was one of them.

“If we hadn’t had that limit for the interim — and they did the analysis — we would have had a lot more chloride violations,” Rapp said.

As it turned out, the violations that were cited by the board netted Fillmore a fine of $231,000.

“The regional board has allowed us payment over three years,” Rapp said.

Fillmore built the $69 million water recycling plant last year as part of a an order imposed by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The decision to build came in response to revised, more stringent limitations on wastewater discharge set by the regional board.

If it had failed to comply with any provisions of the order, Fillmore would have likely been hit with fines of at least $3,000 a day for each day of non-compliance.

City officials decided it was better to pay to build the plant — with an estimated annual operating cost of $1.75 million, according to the town’s 2008-2009 audit — than to pay an escalating fine.

The cost is borne by Fillmore residents.

Financing the Fillmore plant
The city issued $57.4 million in revenue bonds to help finance the capital improvement costs, its audit reveals.

Paying off the debt is expected to occur through user fee increases and through new development fees over the life the 40-year bond issue.

On July 1, 2009, city leaders hiked the residential rate sewage user rate from $72 to $80. Now, they want to increase it again to $82.

On Sept. 15, Fillmore ratepayers will get a chance to rally against proposed rate hikes, just as their neighbors in Santa Clarita did last month.

At least 34,000 signatures were needed to kill the proposed rate hikes representing at least half of all Santa Clarita Valley homeowners with sewer hookups.

That magic number in Fillmore is reached with 2,000 signatures.

As it turned out, the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District board voted to delay consideration of the rate hike until spring.

The required 34,000 protest signatures were not collected.

Fillmore sees the fight in simple terms.

“The choice you have is you either pay it or override the state’s ruling,” Rapp said.

“If Santa Clarita sends more salt down the river, it raises our chloride levels and could put us out of compliance. Fillmore ratepayers would, again, be hit.

“So everybody needs to do their part.”
Continuing our cruise downstream along the Santa Clara River, The Signal found still more towns doing their part.

Santa Paula
In 2007, within a year of the state water board’s Office of Enforcement creation, Santa Paula faced a water board fine of $8 million.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board — the same one that rules on Santa Clarita Valley issues — fined Santa Paula after it found the town’s water treatment plant was discharging polluted water.

Between Jan. 1, 2000, and March 31, 2007, Santa Paula racked up more than 2,800 violations.

With a population of about 28,000 and a median household income of $41,000, the looming fines threatened to be disastrous.

An agreement was reached in May 2007 reducing Santa Paula’s fines as long as the town built a new water-recycling plant.

Santa Paula still has to shell out $350,000 to pay the reduced fine.

However, it didn’t have to pay a single penny for any of the new plant’s up-front capital costs.

In May 2008, a company called Santa Paula Water LLC received a state contract to build the town’s new plant.

In May 2010 the plant began treating water seven months ahead of schedule.

It became the first treatment plant to be built under California’s Government Code 5956 promoting private investment directed at improving the infrastructure of aging towns and cities.

The city’s original plant blamed for releasing polluted water had been built in 1939.

Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman was there for the official opening of the new plant last May.

Leaving Santa Paula, we find the mouth of the Santa Clara River.

Not seen from the river or the highway that follows it are tiny but important tributaries, none of them overlooked by the water board’s Office of Enforcement.

Ojai Changes
Tucked among valleys north of Santa Paula is the sleepy still-hippy-ish enclave of Ojai. The town is still using its original treatment plant but looking to change.

The Ojai Valley Sanitation District notified its ratepayers last month that a new $4.5 million pumping station is “essential to protect the environment by reducing the risk of preventable sewage spills in future years.”

Such spills became an urgent concern for Ojai planners in 2008 when the regional water board fined the town $24,000 for eight “effluent violations.”

The new pump house and the three new water treatment plants in Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru bring to seven the total number of water-enhancing plants along the Santa Clara River from the Santa Clarita Valley to Santa Paula.

That’s more than half a dozen new plants hedging against fines and penalties, working to ensure clean water makes its way downstream.

Rooted in the past
Fillmore — founded in 1888, population just under 14,000, median household income is $45,500 — is a farm town fastened to the past.

The sightseeing train that runs outside Rapp’s office at City Hall employs the same rustic track used by Southern Pacific Railroad to expanded Southern California.

When it wasn’t carrying people, the early Southern Pacific line through Fillmore carried oranges.

The town’s farming heritage can be seen everywhere.

Every day that Rapp comes to work, and every day that his City Hall co-workers do the same, and every day that town folk arrive for public meetings — worried about paying a $231,000 fine handed to them by the state water board’s Office of Enforcement — all have to walk across a municipal lobby floor tiled with a mosaic of its most valuable historic commodity — two oranges on a branch.

Even if you appreciate that Fillmore is now a town like any other coping with 21st century demands, you can’t deny that growing oranges remains an economic staple as old as the railway itself.

However, through tribulations brought on by the state water board and its enforcers, the town is transformed with a progressive eye on its future.

At least when it comes to water.

Hard on softeners
Back at his office, Rapp lines up half a dozen mason jars on his desk.

Each has a label: cleaning products, laundry, water supply, human waste, pool filter backwater, brine-discharging water softeners.

All the jars but one have just a sprinkling of white crystals.

But in that one jar, crystals are measured in pounds — not in ounces, like the others.

That one jar is labeled brine-discharging softeners, and it contains 1.2 pounds of chloride.

“This is what water softeners produce in a day,” Rapp said, beaming. “This is chloride.”

Chloride is one of two naturally occurring components of table salt, the other being sodium.

Farmers in Ventura County say excessive amounts of chloride harm their salt-sensitive strawberry and avocado crops.

Some Santa Clarita Valley challengers say the scientific evidence to prove their claim is lacking.

Still, the nine members of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, an arm of the state water board, say the critical threshold of chloride in Santa Clara River water is 117 milligrams per liter — no more.

And, even though the monument tiled into the lobby floor of Fillmore’s City Hall shows oranges, not strawberries or avocados, Fillmore — like Santa Clarita and other Santa Clara River communities upstream from Ventura County farmers — are expected to make the river water virtually salt free.

What’s left for Fillmore to do to rid the river of chloride?

“We have get rid of our water softeners,” Rapp said, eyeing the lineup of jars. “If we can get people to get rid of their brine-based water softeners, then Fillmore will be in compliance during drought conditions.

“That’s why our main push is to get rid of the softeners,” he said.

The city has a program to buy back these brine units, and the passage of Assembly Bill 2270 would make it unlawful to operate a brine-discharging water softener.

Fillmore is following in the footsteps of the Santa Clarita Valley, which through rebates and a bill outlawing salt-based water softeners shaved $70 million off the anticipated cost of removing chloride here, according to sanitation officials.

Reverse-osmosis plant
A $210 million salt-ridding reverse-osmosis plant as planned by the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District — together with the water-reclamation plant on the Ventura County line planned for Newhall Ranch — would bring to nine the number of shiny new plants enhancing, cleaning and purifying water along the Santa Clara River.

That means a new water treatment plant — on average, every four miles along the Santa Clara River from here to Santa Paula.

That’s where city officials just added an avocado to the city’s official seal.

Link to full article

By Daniel Strain and Mark Shwartz

Within the sludge of wastewater treatment plants is an invisible world teeming with microbes. Here, diverse species of bacteria convert solid and liquid wastes into gases, some of which contribute to global warming.

Now two Stanford University engineers are developing a new sewage treatment process that would actually increase the production of two greenhouse gases – nitrous oxide (aka, “laughing gas”) and methane – and use the gases to power the treatment plant.

“Normally, we want to discourage these gases from forming,” said Craig Criddle, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. “But by encouraging the formation of nitrous oxide, we can remove harmful nitrogen from the water and simultaneously increase methane production for use as fuel.”

Criddle, an expert in wastewater management, has joined forces with Brian Cantwell, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, who has spent the last five years designing rocket thrusters that run on nitrous oxide.

With support from a Woods Institute Environmental Venture Projects grant, Cantwell and Criddle are applying that rocket technology to sewage treatment, with the goal of making the process energy neutral and emissions free.

“We want to reduce the cost of wastewater treatment, increase energy generation and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions,” Cantwell said.

“For too long we’ve thought of treatment plants as places where we remove organic matter and waste nitrogen,” Criddle added. “We need to view these wastes as resources, not simply something to dispose of.”

Microbial zoo

For Criddle and Cantwell, the first step in building a green treatment plant is raising the right kind of bacteria. “We’re really managing a zoo,” Criddle said. “To get the right microbes, we need to encourage the growth of bacteria that produce nitrous oxide gas.”

One way to accomplish that is by reducing the bacteria’s oxygen supply, he said. Conventional treatment plants pump air into wastewater sludge – a process called aeration. The idea is to convert nitrogen waste into harmless nitrogen gas by promoting oxygen-loving bacteria that thrive on sugars and other organic matter in the sludge.

But aeration is a costly and energy-intensive process. As an alternative, the Stanford team wants to create a low-oxygen environment in the treatment plant, where nitrous oxide-producing bacteria are favored, while aerobic species die off.

These nitrous oxide producers consume relatively small amounts of organic matter. That’s good news for other anaerobic microbes that produce methane gas by feasting on organic compounds. “When bacteria make nitrous oxide, less organic matter is oxidized, so more can be converted into methane – potentially two or three times more than is possible in a typical treatment plant,” Criddle said. “That extra methane can be used as fuel to run the plant independent of outside power sources.”

Using less oxygen also could reduce costs, Cantwell added. “In a typical treatment plant, aeration is responsible for about half of the operating expenses,” he said. “So pumping less oxygen could save a lot of money.”

Rocket science

In recent experiments, the researchers demonstrated that under laboratory conditions nitrous oxide gas could be produced from wastewater using a low-oxygen technique. But there’s a downside to the process. Nitrous oxide is a significant greenhouse gas that’s more than 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

That’s where Cantwell’s rocket thruster comes in. Designed for use in spacecraft, the thruster runs on nitrous oxide – a surprisingly clean-burning propellant.

“When it decomposes, nitrous oxide breaks down into pure nitrogen and oxygen gas,” Cantwell explained. “At the same time, it releases enough energy to heat an engine to almost 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, making it red hot, and it shoots out of the engine at almost 5,000 feet per second, producing enough thrust to propel a rocket.”

In 2008, Yaniv Scherson, one of Cantwell’s graduate students, was looking for a suitable topic for a doctoral thesis that would incorporate the thruster research.

“We wondered whether nitrous oxide could be exploited as an emissions-free source of energy,” Cantwell said. “Since the product of the decomposition reaction is simply oxygen-enriched air, energy is generated with zero production of greenhouse gas. But first we needed to find a cheap, plentiful source of nitrous oxide.”

Scherson eventually turned to Criddle, who had spent years studying microbial communities in wastewater treatment plants. Criddle explained that wastewater sludge contains bacteria that naturally convert nitrogen wastes into nitrous oxide, providing Scherson a cheap source of the gas.

Soon, Scherson, Criddle and Cantwell joined forces in a unique experiment bridging two very different fields – space propulsion and environmental biotechnology. “It took a couple of rocket scientists to make this happen,” Criddle said.

The result was a novel design with the potential for treating the world’s wastewater: First, reduce oxygen levels at the treatment plant to encourage the production of nitrous oxide and methane gas. Then use the extra methane to power the plant and a small rocket thruster to break down the nitrous oxide into clean, hot air. “A single thruster about the size of a basketball could potentially consume every ounce of nitrous oxide produced by a typical treatment plant,” Cantwell said.

New generation

Most treatment plants in the United States are using technology developed in the 1970s and are in dire need of an overhaul, according to Criddle. “In the U.S., we haven’t invested much in wastewater treatment in recent decades,” he said.

Cantwell envisions a new generation of plants that are energy self-sufficient. “You even have the prospect of installing a wastewater facility where there is no energy source,” he said. “This could be especially important in the Third World, where millions of people live with contaminated water.”

Both researchers say that the technology could have other applications beyond wastewater treatment. For example, they also want to explore ways to recover energy from nitrate-contaminated groundwater beneath fertilized agricultural fields. “We’re thinking very broadly about all the ways nitrogen gets into the environment, and how we can exploit it,” Cantwell said.

“If successful, this technology could be a game changer, with the potential for worldwide impact on several fronts,” Criddle said.

Restoring the Earth’s nitrogen cycle

The world’s supply of nitrogen exists in a never-ending loop, moving from the atmosphere to nitrogen-fixing bacteria to plants and animals, then back to bacteria and, eventually, to the air.

But humans have broken this natural cycle, according to Criddle. “We now take more nitrogen from the air, mostly through the manufacture of agricultural fertilizers, than we give back,” he said.

Tons of excess nitrogen fertilizer also flow into groundwater, rivers and eventually out to sea, where it feeds massive algal blooms that can damage marine ecosystems. Nitrogen also impacts human health. Too much nitrate in drinking water can be extremely harmful to infants and pregnant women, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

“Slowly but surely the world is being contaminated with waste nitrogen,” Cantwell added. “Restoring the balance is a critical thing to do for the future of the planet.”

Farmers lose money when nitrogen is wasted, Criddle added. “But with the right technology, the balance of the nitrogen cycle can be restored and value recovered from waste nitrogen,” he said.

And Criddle looks forward to a world where nitrogen once again runs in a sustainable loop – and at a profit.

Daniel Strain is a science-writing intern at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Mark Shwartz is the Woods Institute communications manager.

Link to full article

Water, along with plastic bags and other trash, rushes head-on into a metal stormdrain gate that will soon be installed in 16 cities upstream along the Los Angeles River. Credit: Long Beach Post

About 12,000 metal gates will be installed at the opening of stormdrains in sixteen cities that empty into the Los Angeles River, as a measure to reduce pollution that accumulates in the river and ultimately, the Pacific Ocean and the coast of Long Beach.

For as long as modern plumbing has been around, cities that are upstream of the Los Angeles River have emptied their stormdrains into the channel and sent it out to the ocean. This has been a main culprit in Long Beach’s notoriously dirty shoreline and the installation of stormdrain gates should prevent p to 840,000 pounds of trash from entering the system each year.

The gate is a simple metal design that catches trash and debris before it enters the sewers. In a demonstration, fast food cups and potato chip bags were stopped even as the gates opened to allow rushing water into the sewer. If debris does happen to enter the system, basins inside the drain will catch and filter it out. The leftover pollution is extracted by the city or collected through street sweeping. It is exactly the kind of system that has been in place in Long Beach for several years, and was profiled in an LBPOST.com article last summer.

But finally, those same practices are reaching the more than one dozen cities that also contribute to Long Beach’s horrendous water quality. In years past, many have sought to hold upstream cities responsible for their roles in the pollution, and there was even a failed effort to pursue litigation. Last year, city officials estimated that trash and debris from the city of Long Beach accounts for just 3% of the city’s ocean pollution.

With $10 million available from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Los Angeles Gateway Authority will oversee the construction and installation of the metal gates. The actual work will be performed by a local contracting business. Cities from Compton and Paramount to Maywood and Montebello will have the gates installed.

Link to full article

Beaches in the Golden State tested dirty less often than before – particularly in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties – because testers sampled for bacteria at state beaches less often than before. “It’s really a case of ‘what you don’t look for, you don’t find,’” says Noah Garrison, a lawyer for the NRDC.

He adds that the culprit is a shrunken state budget. “We’re simply monitoring the beaches less. Often that’s in the wintertime, but that’s still a concern because people really visit the beaches year-round in California,” he says.

Ventura County cut sampling in the winter and spring; Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties saw around 60 percent drops in frequency. Some beaches Orange County used to test daily were tested weekly; overall Orange County’s testing dropped by a quarter. Los Angeles County recorded a 38% drop – not as bad as it could have been, Garrison said, mainly because regional water regulators have required sampling as a top priority.

In winter months, stormwater sends bacteria into the ocean as rainfall carries more pollutants into drains. But even in summer months, Garrison says water quality wasn’t necessarily improving. “During summer months the percent of samples that did not meet bacterial health standards for L.A. County and for Orange County remained about the same as it was in 2008, or in many cases actually was worse,” Garrison says.

The NRDC report points out that known sources of contamination at California beaches are a tiny fraction of the total. Unknown sources make up three-quarters of reported contamination; “no data” counts for 13 percent more. That could be stormwater, or sewage; nobody knows.

Some of the dirtiest beaches are the usual suspects: Surfrider Beach in Malibu, Santa Monica State Beach near the pier, Cabrillo Beach, Newport Bay. Garrison says beaches popular with tourists and locals are vital to the coastal and state economy. “To be allowing them to become a public health threat where not enough monitoring is done so people don’t know whether the beach they’re swimming at is safe for them to be in the water at, we really can’t continue that practice and hope that our economy will continue to thrive,” he says.

Federal stimulus money has followed this logic. In Hermosa Beach, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the city 1-and-a-third million dollars to reduce and clean stormwater runoff at Pier Street. The project includes a greywater component; wastewater will be recycled to feed plants in a pedestrian park at the area.

Link to full article

To learn more about the NRDC report, please join us on September 16 for a LABS luncheon with Senior Attorney David Beckman from the NRDC for a discussion of triple bottom line solutions that address regional stormwater from an inclusive perspective.

Event flyer

The 192-member Assembly also called on United Nations Member States and international organizations to offer funding, technology and other resources to help poorer countries scale up their efforts to provide clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for everyone.

The Assembly resolution received 122 votes in favour and zero votes against, while 41 countries abstained from voting.

The text of the resolution expresses deep concern that an estimated 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and a total of more than 2.6 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation. Studies also indicate about 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year and 443 million school days are lost because of water- and sanitation-related diseases.

Today’s resolution also welcomes the UN Human Rights Council’s request that Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation, report annually to the General Assembly as well.

Ms. de Albuquerque’s report will focus on the principal challenges to achieving the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation, as well as on progress towards the relevant Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs, a series of targets for reducing social and economic ills, all by 2015, includes the goals of halving the proportion of people who cannot reach or afford safe drinking water and halving the number who do not have basic sanitation.

In a related development, Ms. de Albuquerque issued a statement today after wrapping up a nine-day official visit to Japan in which she praised the country for its nearly universal access to water and sanitation and for its use of innovative technologies to promote hygiene and treat wastewater.

But the Independent Expert said she was shocked that some members of the Utoro community near Kyoto, where Koreans have been living for several generations, still do not have access to water from the public network.

“People are also not connected to the sewage network, despite the fact that the surrounding area is largely covered by sewage service,” she said. “When floods occur, as happened one year ago, the lack of sewage and proper evacuation of grey water result in contamination of the environment, including with human faeces, posing serious health concerns.

“I am also worried that water and sanitation are extremely expensive for some people living in Utoro, who reportedly do not have a right to receive a pension.”

Link to full article

LOS ANGELES (July 23, 2010)—The Bureau of Sanitation continues to be aggressive in implementing various projects and programs to manage effectively and renew the City’s 6,700 mile wastewater sewer system. As a result, the Bureau of Sanitation has reduced the number of sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) by 80% since the baseline fiscal year (FY) of 2000/2001, reaching yet another record low number of SSOs this year. The City of Los Angeles wastewater collection system is operated and maintained by the Department of Public Works, Bureau of Sanitation (BOS). There were 687 recorded SSOs in 2000/2001, 444 in 2003/2004, 200 in FY 2007/2008, 159 in FY 2008/2009, and just 139 in FY 2009/10. The number of SSOs during last fiscal year is 12 percent lower than the previous year’s record low. The wastewater collection industry measures excellent system performance by the number of SSOs per 100 miles each year. The City’s metric for last fiscal year was a record low 2.07 SSOs per 100 miles per year, one of the lowest in the nation.

“These numbers show that the Bureau of Sanitation has taken an aggressive approach in developing and executing programs to reduce SSOs. I am very proud of our wastewater conveyance and collections staff and crew. Rain or shine, day or night, our committed staff is in the community, keeping the pipes flowing,” said Enrique C. Zaldivar, director for the Bureau of Sanitation. “These excellent results demonstrate the City’s continued commitment to the protection of public health and the environment.”

The reduction in SSOs is a direct result of the effective implementation of proactive programs by the Bureau, including enhanced and increased sewer cleaning and inspection; expansion of the Fats, Oils and Grease (FOG) control program; the focused tree root control program and improved sewer planning and renewal. More sewers are being inspected; many sewers are being cleaned; and older sewers are being upgraded. This strategic progress is the result of strong partnerships with the Bureaus of Contract Administration and Engineering.

The environmental and regulatory communities are thrilled with these results as well.   “The City of Los Angeles and staff of the Department of Public Works are to be commended for the unprecedented job of greatly reducing sanitary sewer overflows from its sewer collection system. The talent, experience, and focus of the City managers and personnel have resulted in an improved environment for all Angelenos to enjoy,” said Samuel Unger, PE, Interim Executive Officer, California Regional Water Quality Control Board Los Angeles Region.

“An 80% reduction in sewer spills is an outstanding accomplishment for the health of our communities and our coast. Baykeeper congratulates the Bureau on this significant success for water quality and public health,” said Liz Crosson, Executive Director, Santa Monica Baykeeper.

Along with efforts to reduce the number of SSOs, the City also is working with the community, especially is South Los Angeles, to address, mitigate and control sewer related odors. Many measures and projects have been implemented and more are on the way. These include an odor hotline, pressure and sewer gas monitoring, a citizen advisory board, sewer cleaning, installation or replacement of sewer gas traps, chemical addition and the construction of state-of-the-art air treatment facilities (ATFs). Two ATFs are under construction and should be operational within the next six months.

The Bureau operates and maintains 6,700 miles of sewers and serves a population of more than four million people, 29 contract agencies, 100,000 businesses and industrial users located within a 525 square mile service area. The Department of Public Works focuses on essential needs for a better quality of life and environmental protection and is responsible for construction, renovation and operation of public facilities and infrastructure including: municipal buildings and treatment facilities; streets, street lights, and the urban forest; bridges and sidewalks; sewers, catch basins and storm drains; recycling and integrated solid waste management.

Link to City of Los Angeles Press Release

SAN DIEGO — When it comes to the prospect of turning wastewater into drinking water, a new report from the non-partisan research group Equinox Center shows it could be safer than most would think.

“Purified, recycled water is safer to drink than what we are drinking today,” said Aaron Contorer of the Equinox Center. “A significant portion of our water today is extracted from wastewater upstream.”

The Equinox Center’s report reveals a map of some 350 sewage plants that discharge wastewater into the waterways the country draws its water from before it is treated locally.

Essentially, the report shows everyone routinely drinks recycled wastewater.

Las Vegas already recycles its wastewater to drink, and that drinking water also ends up in the San Diego water supply.

“All the tests have shown purified, recycled water is safe and clean,” said Contorer. “According to our research, it’s safer, cleaner, more reliable and uses less energy than other water sources.”

The Equinox Center’s report comes days ahead of a critical vote, when the San Diego City Council will vote on a construction contract for an $11.8 million wastewater recycling pilot project.

It is a first step that could lead to recycled water in San Diego faucets if it is deemed successful.

Other areas that have wastewater-to-tap programs included Long Beach, Orange County, Reno and the country of Singapore.

Link to article

LOS ANGELES — Furthering its commitment to expand local water supplies and reduce the City’s dependence on imported water, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has successfully expanded its network of recycled water pipes to deliver treated reclaimed water to the newest customers in the San Fernando Valley: two local churches and the LADWP Power System, who will use recycled water for outdoor irrigation.  These new customers will reduce the need for using drinking water for non-potable purposes by 20 acre feet per year (AFY) or 6.5 million gallons.

“LADWP is working to expand the existing recycled water infrastructure in the San Fernando Valley so we can serve new irrigation and industrial customers  and save hundreds of acre feet a year in drinking water,” said Jim McDaniel, Senior Assistant General Manager, LADWP Water System.

The First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys, whose property includes two campuses on Sherman Way, will utilize 3.6 million gallons to irrigate its 2-acre sports field.  The St. Elisabeth Catholic Church will utilize 2.3 million gallons to irrigate its property.  LADWP’s own electrical Distribution Station 60 will utilize 653,400 gallons, the first LADWP facility in the Valley to take recycled water for strictly irrigation purposes.  Together, these customers will replace enough drinking water to supply 40 households for a year.

All three customers are located in the Van Nuys area of the San Fernando Valley.  LADWP owns and operates 14.9 miles of existing and newly-installed recycled water lines that run primarily from the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys to the Hansen Tank at the Valley Generating Station in Sun Valley.

To help pay for these and additional new recycled water pipes, the Department was successful in securing an agreement with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to expand recycled water distribution in the Van Nuys area with the construction of 10,000 feet of pipes connecting the existing 16-inch water recycling pipeline along Kester Avenue and Sherman Way to supply recycled water to customers. The agreement provides LADWP with $937,500 in grant funding with the expectation that the project deliver its full capacity of 49 million gallons in 25 years.

The LADWP has successfully begun delivering recycled water from the Donald C. Tillman Reclamation Plant to: irrigate Woodley, Encino and Balboa golf courses, and the Balboa Sports Complex; to provide recycled water for the cooling towers of Valley Generating Station power plant in Sun Valley; and to provide water for the Los Angeles River, the Japanese Garden, Lake Balboa and the Wildlife Lake in the Sepulveda Basin. Together, recycled water to these facilities totals 1,400 AFY, or over 456 million gallons.

The LADWP partners with the Department of Public Works Bureau of Sanitation to reclaim wastewater for beneficial reuse that is approved and monitored by the California Department of Public Health. It is delivered in a dedicated “purple pipe” system that is separate from the City’s drinking water and sewer systems.

The LADWP Water System currently contains approximately 45 miles of recycled water pipeline, along with 2 storage tanks and 3 pump stations.  The pipeline system is capable of conveying 2.6 billion gallons to the Department’s 125 recycled water customers.  Going forward, LADWP plans to install 20 more miles of new pipeline in the next 5 years and deliver 16.3 billion gallons of recycled water by 2028 – enough to offset water demand for about 100,000 households.

Recycled water amounts to roughly 2% of the City’s total water supply at present.  The Department goal is to increase recycled water levels to equal 6% of the City’s water supply.  LADWP has invested $200 million in the recycled water program to date.
 
For more information contact:

Joseph Ramallo
LADWP Public Affairs
(213) 367-1361

Link to full article

Heather Wylie was a key instigator of what must be the biggest, most important boating expedition ever undertaken on the Los Angeles River.

With two dozen others in kayaks and canoes, she braved the river’s shallow waters, paddling past garbage trucks at the water’s edge, homeless bathers and other unexpected riparian obstacles.

“I’ve never had so much fun on a boating trip,” Wylie told me. “It was a new kind of adventure.”

That adventure cost Wylie, then a 29-year-old government biologist, her job — and $60,000 salary — with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But it helped save the L.A. River.

Last week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled the Los Angeles River “traditional navigable waters,” entitled to the protections of the Clean Water Act. It was a huge victory for the legions of activists who have worked for decades to protect the river from developers and polluters.

Without Wylie and that law-defying boat trip, it might not have happened.

As proof that the river is indeed navigable, the EPA cited in its official report the July 2008 Los Angeles River expedition organized by Wylie, George Wolfe and others.

“The federal government is saying this is a real river,” said Joe Linton, a writer and activist who was also on the expedition. “I say that every day. But it’s good to be backed up by officialdom. It gives the river a certain legitimacy.”

The Los Angeles River has always been a real river. The city was founded on its banks and today — in spite of its concrete walls — it’s still the natural object at the center of L.A.’s existence.

Unfortunately, for much of our history, we haven’t treated our mother river with much respect. We’ve funneled most of its 51 miles into a big concrete channel and used it as a sewer.

Thankfully, L.A. also has many stubborn people willing to fight for it — from influential groups such as the Friends of the Los Angeles River to lone scientists like Heather Wylie.

Wylie arrived at the Corps of Engineers as a civilian employee in 2004. She was then a very young and idealistic environmental scientist.

Raised in Michigan, she had fallen in love with nature on visits to her grandmother Doris in Grosse Ile, south of Detroit. Doris helped rehabilitate wounded wildlife, including eagles and deer.

“I grew up in the creeks and wetlands,” she told me. “I’d catch frogs and snakes. But I always had a three-day rule. After three days, I had to put them back.”

At the Corps of Engineers’ Ventura field office, Wylie was one of the many civilian employees charged with determining whether development projects would harm protected waterways.

Her first big clash with her bosses, she said, was over a planned 10-acre development in San Luis Obispo, part of which would have filled a vernal pool, a body of water that disappears in summer. After she recommended the developers alter their plans, her bosses took her off the project, she said.

“They would have eventually pushed me out of the corps,” Wylie told me. “But I wanted to stay until I did something really good.”

So when she learned the corps was preparing to adopt new regulations that would have stripped much of the L.A. River watershed of Clean Water Act protections, she leaked those plans to some of the nation’s top environmental law firms.

When she figured out the importance of “navigability” to the L.A. River’s future, she scoured the Internet until she found a video of George Wolfe and she tracked him down.

“Is that a real video?” she asked him. “Can you boat in the river?”

A big expedition down the river, she suggested, might help save it.

At first, Wolfe and his river-rafting friends were suspicious of Wylie. “We thought she was a spy,” said Wolfe, who later founded Los Angeles River Expeditions. And since her last name sounds just like the Road Runner’s famous nemesis, they nicknamed her “the Coyote.”

After a while, the Coyote earned their trust.

As luck would have it, Wolfe and other activists had been talking about organizing a river regatta. But it was Wylie’s call that spurred them into action, he said.

Wolfe, an experience kayaker, led a three-day journey from the headwaters of the river all the way to Long Beach. Even though it was summer and drier, this wasn’t so hard to do.

Only on a couple of stretches was it necessary to carry their kayaks. On some stretches, they zipped through the narrow, two-foot-deep low-flow channel, which felt a bit like a ride at Disneyland.

Linton carried a film permit that allowed the boaters to enter the river basin — but not the water. Still, it was good enough to get them past the LAPD patrol that stopped them near Los Feliz.

Later, corps officials found two Internet images of Wylie on the river. They threatened to suspend her for 30 days, saying the expedition “undermined the corps’ authority.”

“I got treated as some kind of disloyal traitor,” she said.

At the same time, Wylie’s leaked documents reached Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and other leaders. Eventually, the EPA invoked its authority to supplant the corps as the agency that would determine whether the L.A. River was protected under the Clean Water Act.

After several months of negotiations, Wylie and the corps reached a settlement and she left the agency. Neither side admitted doing anything wrong.

The EPA’s finding last week also applies to all the streams and channels that flow into the L.A. River, helping preserve a vast watershed for future generations, though much work remains to be done.

“I lost my job,” said Wylie, now a stay-at-home mom with a newborn. “But I was happy to sacrifice if it was going to save the river.”

Sometimes, to change things, you have be willing to get your feet wet. And sometimes you have to break the rules.

Link to full article