Get the latest information you need to know about
co-digesting FOG and food waste from suppliers to
operators. This workshop will provide information
about the state of the regulations, availability and
competition for FOG and food waste, operational
experiences, and considerations that can be
incorporated into new designs.

Who Should Attend:
Operators, practitioners, and managers practicing in
the wastewater, and resource recovery industries
throughout California.
Approved for CWEA Contact Hours:

• Environmental Compliance Inspector (ECI)
• Laboratory Analyst (LAB)
• Operator (OP)
• Biosolids Land Application Management (BLAM)

Earn up to 8.9 CWEA Contact Hours

Wednesday, January 18, 2012
City of LA Hyperion WTP
12000 Vista Del Mar
Playa del Rey, CA 90293

See flyer for more information

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.

Link to article

Recent advances in information technology infrastructure as well as hardware systems and software solutions are providing the foundation for a future of ubiquitous, digitally-connected, green infrastructure. Intelligent management of such infrastructure will change the way we understand and control our urban environments and impact natural systems.

The availability of a new breed of robust, extremely low cost, highly functional, internet accessible, programmable logic controller systems coupled with the ease of wired and wireless communications are making onsite real-time and dynamic controls viable options for both new construction as well as retrofits with green infrastructure based stormwater systems.

The total costs for design, equipment, and installation of the active components for demonstrations will be partially subsidized with in-kind contributions from WERF and the project team. Typical costs for an installation are $20-25K. However, under this research project the costs for participating test sites will be in the range of $10-15K resulting in significant savings to participants. Actual costs will depend on site specific conditions. The costs do not include the cost of implementing the BMP itself (e.g. cistern, green roof, bioretention, etc.).

In many cases, retrofitting an existing BMP may be the most effective approach. In addition to the improving the effectiveness of the BMP and saving cost on implementation, other benefits to test site participants include gaining experience with high performance green infrastructure, learning efficient ways to meet stormwater regulations and requirements, identifying new approaches for stormwater reuse, and taking part in a significant research study to help transform the infrastructure of cities and towns.

To learn more about or to express interest in participating as a test site in this targeted collaborative research (TCR) project, contact Senior Program Director Jeff Moeller at jmoeller@werf.org or 571-384-2104 by Oct 31, 2011.

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Join your WEFTEC friends as we pedal to raise awareness and funds to support Water For People. In the three years, we have raised over $10,000. We are able to raise money by the generosity of our sponsors who pay to have their logo printed on the back of our event T-Shirt.

A great ride is planned for 2011. We will start at Bikes and Hikes in West Hollywood and pedal through Bel Aire and Beverly Hills. We’ll ride 10 miles through jaw dropping neighborhood as we pass many celebrity homes, take in the sights and scents of world class gardens, and ride along the infamous Sunset Boulevard. During the ride, we’ll park our bikes and take a foot tour of Rodeo Drive and Greystone Mansion. For the serious cyclists, a hammerhead option along Mulholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains will be offered. All rides will be guided by professional tour guides from Bikes and Hikes LA (www.bikesandhikesla.com).

All participants will be provided with a multi-speed, fully suspended hybrid bicycle, vest, helmet and fluids. We will receive a colorful T-Shirt with the logo of our sponsors on the back of the T-Shirt. Registration will close on September 30 or when we reach 75 riders.

Participants should wear comfortable shirts and pants. Closed-toed shoes are required. Remember to bring sunscreen. Depending upon the weather, a light wind breaker may be needed. We will be arranging transportation from downtown LA to the bicycle shop and return. We will provide details of the transportation later.

After you have registered, George Patrick will contact you by email to obtain your T-Shirt size, your bike preference and other specific information. If you have questions, please contact George Patrick by email (georgepatrickatl@bellsouth.net) or 404/434-2149. If your company is interested in sponsoring the ride, please contact George Patrick.

See flyer for more information.

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.

Link to full text article

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.

Link to full text article

Sustainable Infrastructure is the foundation for creating a strong and prosperous economy in communities around the world.  The  Los Angeles Basin Section (LABS) of California Water Environment Association is organizing a Sept. 8th specialty conference to promote sustainable practices that help ensure we continue to enjoy the benefits of clean and safe water.
We will hear from industry leaders about projects and practices that will help us realize and maintain sustainable communities.

• Jim Clark, Senior Vice President, Black & Veatch
• Mark Gold, President, Heal the Bay
• Adel Hagekhalil, Asst. Director, Watershed Protection, City of Los Angeles, Dept. of Public Works, Bureau of Sanitation
• Nancy  Steele, President, Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council
• Deborah Weinstein, TreePeople
• Jim Yannotta, Asst Director of Water Resources, Los Angeles Department of Water & Power

See flyer for more information

It’s an environmental learning experience for children of all ages. It’s home to five coastal habitats and SoCal’s only coastal prairie. It’s an oasis. It’s an environmental cleaning machine for the ocean.

It’s the heart of Malibu. It’s one smart park. The Legacy Park Project, the centerpiece of the City of Malibu’s $50 million dollar commitment to clean water, is a cutting-edge concept with far-reaching civic, educational, and environmental benefits for residents, visitors, and the generations to come.

Employing state-of-the-art technology, it is a central park that will work as an environmental cleaning machine, reducing pollution impacts in Malibu Creek, Malibu Lagoon, and the world famous Surfrider Beach, and will provide a
living learning center for five coastal habitats.

Featured Dinner Speakers:
Bob Brager, Public Works Director, City of Malibu
Elizabeth Shavelson, Public Works Analyst, City of Malibu
Steve Clary, Principal, RMC Water & Environment

When:
Thursday, July 29, 2011
5:00 p.m. Tour
6:00 p.m. Dinner
7:00 p.m. Presentation

Where:
Tour: Stormwater Treatment Facility
(salmon colored building):
Legacy Park
23500 Civic Center Way
Malibu 90265

Dinner: Guido’s Malibu (walk next door)
3874 Cross Creek Road, Malibu

RSVP:
By July 22nd with meal choice to:
alecm@jwce.com or call Alec Mackie
at (714) 428-4614.

See flyer for more information

Price: FREE TO WERF SUBSCRIBERS
 
What level of treatment is typical for various BMPs and green infrastructure practices? What pollutant removal mechanisms do they employ? How can I use this information to help select and design effective stormwater controls?

Representatives from the International Stormwater BMP Database will answer these questions and more, as they provide stormwater managers, consultants, and others with the latest BMP performance evaluation results for four pollutant categories – bacteria, nutrients, sediment, and metals – as well as volume reduction.

This evaluation is based on analysis of the data contained in the International Stormwater BMP Database and is summarized in a new series of technical memos. To learn more, visit www.bmpdatabase.org.