When: Wednesday July 14, 2010 from 4-7 pm

Where: Los Coyotes WRP (upstairs in the lunchroom of the Maintenance Building); 16515 Piuma Av; Cerritos, CA 90703

All aspects of all four grades of the Environmental Compliance Inspector Exam will be reviewed; special emphasis on math problems. No fee or formal sign-up is required however an email to Bill Garrett is highly recommended.

Bill Garrett

Supervising IW Inspector

Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts

(562) 908-4288 extension 2907

bgarrett@lacsd.org

In the ninth month of mandatory water conservation in the City of Los Angeles, customers from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) reached 1979 water use levels, making February 2010 the lowest recorded February water use in 32 years.

Link to the full Press Release

LABS is pleased to welcome WIKA Instrument Corp. as one of our new corporate sponsors.

WIKA Instrument Corporation (WIKA) manufactures a complete line of pressure and temperature instrumentation engineered for the water/wastewater industry. WIKA products are solutions for measuring and monitoring filtration, line pressure, water levels, pumps and controls. For over 60 years, WIKA Instrument Corporation (WIKA) has continued to globally advance pressure gauge, sensor and temperature instrumentation technology and applications.

The WIKA TRONIC line (pictured above) specializes in electronic pressure and temperature measurement. (credit: Wika)

In the United States, WIKA’s operation utilizes state-of-the-art manufacturing technology and highly automated proprietary production equipment in its nearly quarter-million-square-foot facility in the metro Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville, Georgia. As the industry leader in lean manufacturing, WIKA offers a wide variety of stock and customized instrumentation solutions for critical applications that often are distributed within days.

The WIKA customer service department recently earned the Operational Excellence Award for Leadership from one of North America’s leading distributors of industrial maintenance, repair and operation replacement parts. Producing over 40 million gauges, diaphragm seals, transmitters, and thermometers worldwide annually, WIKA has the most extensive product line in the industry. 

To learn more, please contact WIKA’s Los Angeles based sales manager:
Stephen Brown
Regional Sales Manager
ph: 323-377-4542
s.brown@wika.com

Or visit www.wika.com!

“We are happy to have this water work through the system and we’re looking forward to working it through our systems and doing it all over again,” said flight engineer Michael Barratt. 

What a great testimonial for water reuse!

CNET has the story.

- Patrick

The event is sponsored by the LA Department of Water & Power; Jewish Community Foundation of LA; The Nature Conservancy; Water Replenishment District of Southern California; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; City Councilman Ed Reyes and President Eric Garcetti; State Assemblymember Kevin DeLeon; and State Senator Alex Padilla.

March for Water website

Nowhere is the sense of crisis more visible than on the outskirts of Las Vegas at Lake Mead, the nation’s largest manmade reservoir. A principal source of water for  Southern California, the lake has dipped to half its capacity, leaving an ominous, white “bathtub ring” that grows thicker each year.

Story here.

After the jump, Reuters also provided some interesting facts about water in the west and the world…

From Reuters…

FACTBOX: Key facts about water in the U.S. West

– Water use in Los Angeles is projected at about 208 billion gallons this fiscal year, roughly the same amount that the city has consumed annually for the past 25 years despite population growth of about 1 million. City water officials attribute this to a combination of greater conservation practices and more water-efficient appliances and fixtures. 

– The Southwest was home to 14 of the 25 fastest-growing American cities with populations over 100,000 between 2006 and 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

– It is home to seven of America’s 10 largest cities. By order of ranking: Los Angeles (2), Houston (4), Phoenix (5), San Antonio (7), San Diego (8), Dallas (9), San Jose (10).

– The six-county area of Southern California, including Los Angeles and San Diego, is home to nearly 22 million people, with population growth expected to add 6 million residents by 2030. Yet 60 percent of its overall water supply is “imported” from distant sources, such as northern California or the Colorado River. In some areas, only 10 percent of the water comes from local sources.

– Outdoor water use, such as lawn irrigation, accounts for 40 percent of average household consumption in the city of Los Angeles, which has a population of about 4 million. The city averages close to 15 inches of rainfall annually, but that amount varies widely from year to year.

– Las Vegas gets only 2 or 3 inches of rainfall a year, and in 1959 it went 150 straight days without measurable rain. Because the Southern Nevada climate is so much drier than Los Angeles, grass lawns there require a third more water.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Ed Stoddard; Editing by Mary Milliken)

FACTBOX: Key facts on the world’s water supply
Tue Mar 10, 2009

(Reuters) – Water scarcity is likely to change the way of life of millions of people in the U.S. West, one of the richest and most technologically advanced regions in the world. Other parts of the planet may take cues from the West on how to deal with a global water crisis that is expected to worsen with climate change.

– There are 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water on the planet but almost 97 percent is salt water. Most freshwater is locked up in glaciers or deep underground, leaving only a fraction available for human consumption or use.

– Most experts believe there is still enough water to go around, but its distribution is very uneven. According to the Pacific Institute for Studies on Development, Environment and Security, North Americans have access to over 6,000 cubic meters per person per year stored in reservoirs. But the poorest African countries have less than 700 and Ethiopia has less than 50 cubic meters per person per year of water storage. Wealthy but water-scarce countries such as Saudi Arabia can afford expensive desalination projects, but poor ones cannot.

– Agriculture accounts for 66 percent of human water consumption, industry 20 percent, domestic households 10 percent, according to the World Water Council. About four percent evaporates from man-made reservoirs.

– Providing clean drinking water to the poor is one of the biggest development challenges. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals pledged at the start of this decade “to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.” The U.N. says that since 1990, 1.6 billion people have gained access to safe water. But nearly a billion people still lack safe drinking water.

(Sources: Reuters, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, Pacific Institute for Studies on Development, Environment and Security, World Water Council. Reporting by Ed Stoddard, editing by Mary Milliken)

Restaurants are required to install and maintain large grease separators to prevent the material from entering the collection system. The Bureau of Sanitation requirement has been incredibly successful – sewer overflows blamed on grease clogs dropped from 300 per year to less than 20.

City Council President Eric Garcetti wants to streamline the process:

In response to what Garcetti described as a particularly out-of-hand battle in 2006 between a tiny bakery in Echo Park and the city… the councilman began pushing an initiative called “12-2,” which aims to downsize the number of agencies a new business has to interact with from 12 to two.  Business owners will be able to file initial paperwork online and avoid wandering the confusing maze of agency reps in the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety’s headquarters.

LA Times story.

This could be our third year of drought and as our warm and sunny SoCal winter demonstrates – the outlook is grim. According to the AP, Federal and State water planners met last week in Reno to discuss the outlook and determined year-to-date the rainfall totals, snow pack and water content of that snow are all far below average.

Farmers in some areas are not planting crops out of fear there won’t be enough irrigation water.

“Quarter sections of almonds may be dead by the end of the year. It’s one of the grimmest water situations we’ve ever faced,” said Bill Diedrich, an almond grower in Fresno County, and the fourth-generation of his California farm family.

AP story.

The LABS Young Professionals group is going on a tour of the Hyperion wastewater treatment plant. Operated by the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation Hyperion is the City’s oldest and largest treatment plant, operating since 1894 with a capacity of 450 MGD.

Who are the Young Professionals?  A Young Professional (YP) is any member or prospective member that considers themselves to be relatively new in the any of the stormwater, water, or wastewater industries. They can be less than 35 years of age, have less than 10 years of experience, or simply be young at heart. YPs can include students, plant operators, engineers, lab analysts, maintenance workers, etc.

Flyer

RSVP