Future is a flush away

Dave Brooks

The future of Huntington Beach’s water supply doesn’t come from the

Colorado River or desalination.

To discover the newest source of Huntington Beach and other local

cities’ drinking water, one needs to look no farther than a common

household device: the toilet.

Engineers with the Orange County Water District say it’s not

exactly desperate measures for desperate times, but water supplies

are being tapped to capacity.

Northern Orange County gets about half of its water from an

underground aquifer while the rest is imported from Northern

California and the Colorado River. The Bush administration recently

halved the amount of water Southern California can draw from the

river, despite U.S. Census estimates predicting Orange County will

add as many as 300,000 to 700,000 people by 2020.

To meet increasing water demand, the water district is pursuing a

massive $600 million project to daily convert 150-million gallons of

treated sewage water into potable water, used for both drinking and

fighting off seawater intrusion into the region’s underground

aquifer.

Getting past the obvious psychological response of drinking water

that once contained human waste is a future public relations campaign

to be fought, but officials with the water district argue the science

is there to show the water is safe.

“We have to meet higher standards than bottled water,” said

district spokesman Ron Wildermuth.

Known as the Ground Water Replenishment system, this first-of-

its-kind program will divert treated sewer water from the Orange

County Sanitation District’s ocean outfall pipe and process it at the

water district.

The program requires a massive construction effort at the water

district’s Ellis Avenue facility to finalize the three-part

purification system.

When the sewage water first arrives, it will be pushed through a

low-pressure membrane, a process called microfiltration, in an

attempt to capture small particles, bacteria and some viruses.

The treatment is essentially preparation for the next purification

phase, commonly called reverse osmosis.

After the large particles have been removed, the sewage water is

forced through a tiny membrane that actually breaks up the molecules,

removing the smallest pieces of salt and debris, while only allowing

smaller water molecules to pass through.

This is essentially the same technology used in desalination.

“Because of the sensitive nature of using treated sewage, the

water is also exposed to ultraviolet light to kill any organisms that

might break through,” said district assistant General Manager Mike

Markus.

Hydrologist Roy Herndon predicts the process will create about

70-million gallons of drinking water per day, half of which will be

used to fight off seawater contamination near an underground basin

opening that runs parallel with Talbert Avenue.

The district is now pumping about 5-million gallons of drinking

water and another 11-million gallons of imported water into a series

of underground wells that use gravity to change water levels and push

the saltwater back to sea.

The increase in supply from the groundwater replenishment system

will allow them to double their efforts and end that seawater

barrier’s reliance on imported water.

The remaining 35-million gallons not used to fight seawater will

be piped 11 miles north to a lake in Anaheim, where it will percolate

through sand, back into the ground water basin.

The project is being overseen by both the sanitation and water

district’s board of directors, and members of the public are invited

to get involved by attending the project’s joint cooperative

committee.

It will fully come on line by 2007 and eventually provide an

additional 70,000-acre feet of drinking water to the basin.

“That would provide enough water for 144,000 families for one

year,” said Wildermuth.

Orange County now relies on 500,000-acre-feet of water per year,

and even with conservation efforts, said Markus, that amount is

expected to increase to 680,000 acre-feet.

“We have a situation where we’re seeing a steady increase in

demand, but a decrease in supply,” he said.

Water from Northern California is being siphoned off and the

practice of importing unused water from farmers is too risky for

long-term planning. To avoid regional battles over water use and

allocation, said Jane Farwell, an environmental scientist with the

state Water Resources Control Board, Orange County is going to have

to actively find new sources of water and consider renewal.

“Water has always been a sensitive issue in California,” Farwell

said. “As far back as 1910, they used to say, ‘Whiskey is for

drinking and water is for fighting.’”

* DAVE BROOKS covers City Hall. He can be reached at (714)

966-4609 or by e-mail at [email protected].