GrokSurf's San Diego

Local observations on water, environment, technology, law & politics

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    GrokSurf's San Diego by George J. Janczyn is produced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Anything on this blog copied and used elsewhere online must include attribution and a link to the original on this blog, or a citation with the URL if reprinted on hard copy.

     

     

Water Purification Demonstration Project (Indirect Potable Reuse)

“IPR is usually defined as the augmentation of a drinking water source (surface water or groundwater) with recycled water, followed by an environmental buffer that precedes normal drinking water treatment” (from Regulatory Aspects of Direct Potable Reuse in California, by the National Water Research Institute).

 

The latest in a series of attempts by the City of San Diego to use purified reclaimed water to bolster its reservoir suppy is a feasibility test going by the name Water Purification Demonstration Project (originally called the Indirect Potable Reuse Reservoir Augmentation Demonstration Project).

IPR has been a controversial topic in San Diego’s quest for new water resources (historically, Mayor Sanders opposed and even vetoed the project in 2007 but the Council overrode him). Public support for IPR has been growing, though, and will likely continue growing.

During the one-year test, 1 million gallons per day (MGD) of IPR water are produced. Small amounts of that are analyzed in the lab, with the remaining water blended back in with the tertiary outflow for delivery to recycled water customers.

The goal, if the demonstration project is successful, is to produce 16 million gallons per day of IPR water. The water would be piped to the San Vicente Reservoir where it would be blended with raw imported water. It would be allowed to age for a period of time, at least six months. After that period, reservoir water would be sent for final treatment at the Alvarado Water Treatment Plant prior to distribution.

IPR is hardly without precedent. Almost never mentioned by local media news reports or critics is the fact that Las Vegas does it, and not with just a fraction of its wastewater as San Diego proposes to do. Virtually ALL wastewater from Las Vegas (plus all of Clark County and the city of Henderson…an average of 193 million gallons per day) receives this advanced treatment and goes into the Las Vegas Wash, which drains into Lake Mead (the city also gets credit for that return flow being counted as new water into the reservoir). As we know, Las Vegas also draws its drinking water supply from Lake Mead and it shouldn’t need mentioning that a large percentage of San Diego’s water comes through Lake Mead.

Singapore is well known for its large scale IPR project that produces “NEWater” (even in bottles!) to supplement its scant water supply.

A number of IPR proponents have formed an independent group, the Water Reliability Coalition, to organize an advocacy campaign for San Diego.

Immediately below are the latest news reports on the IPR project.  Below that is a selected bibliography on IPR and related topics, which I will continue updating as I find new resources.

IPR Project news updates

Selected bibliography (last updated: August 29, 2011)

 
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