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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.

     

     

Posts Tagged ‘Water Purification Demonstration Project’

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Where’s the public outreach for San Diego’s IPR project?

Posted by George J. Janczyn on August 9, 2010

[Revised. Please note the correction at bottom]

On January 26, 2010 the San Diego City Council approved an agreement with RMC Water and Environment to perform project management and public outreach for the Water Purification Demonstration Project (IPR project). Of the $3,281,353 approved for the entire contract, $1,499,611 was specified for the public outreach and education program.

More than six months later, on July 27 the City Council approved a contract to build the advanced treatment facility for the project. During discussion before the vote it emerged that numerous meetings have been held with key stakeholders on the development of the outreach program, that a speakers bureau was being set up, that public tours of the facility will be available, and that a website redesign is in the works.

That news surprised and disappointed me, because until that meeting I hadn’t heard a whisper about the outreach program, much less been asked for input — even though I had asked in January to be placed on a mailing list for people interested in being informed and possibly participating in the outreach program. And all this time I’d been assuming Mayor Sanders was dragging his feet on processing the contract since he doesn’t care much for the project.

Okay, so I’m just a cranky blogger, who cares what I think? But shouldn’t a respected organization and IPR stakeholder like San Diego Coastkeeper be consulted for ideas about how to conduct the outreach program? I checked and was told they have not been asked for input either. who has no idea who all those stakeholders the city consulted with are.

Meanwhile, there’s been plenty of discussion about IPR in the local news media, in blogs, on Twitter, in coffeeshops, in neighborhood planning groups, and certainly in official settings. Those conversations could have benefited from authoritative moderation that an outreach program would presumably perform.

So, the outreach program seems to be both closely guarded and slow to implement.

Maybe the Water Department thinks it would be treading forbidden waters by involving people who support IPR because the outreach program is barred from being promotional?

That may or may not explain the remote manner in which the outreach program seems to be developing, but San Diego has another organizational impediment. Most of the water agencies in the county have boards and committees composed of water experts managing things in public but in San Diego the City Councilmembers, rather than water managers, make the city’s water policies and they are distracted by unrelated city business. That makes for a reclusive and defensive water department and a confusing and politically charged information environment for the public.

In this particular case, though, I hope the IPR project planners will work around the obstacles and quickly open a dialogue with the public. They must not neglect the ‘outreach’ in the public outreach and education program.

Correction: regarding my statement (crossed out above) that San Diego Coastkeeper had not been asked for input, I’ve learned that’s not true. I had based that assertion on a casual conversation I had in passing with a staffer who was apparently unaware of higher level contact that had been made. Before writing what I did, I really should have double-checked with Bruce Reznik, Coastkeeper’s Executive Director.

Also, as Burt Freeman mentioned in his comment below, an IPR presentation was given for the Tierrasanta Community Council and it was conducted by the City’s IPR outreach and education program, so in fact the outreach program is getting underway.

I would like to apologize to the San Diego Water Department as well as San Diego Coastkeeper for my incorrect and misleading statement. I alone am fully to blame and I pledge to be much more careful in the future.

 

Posted in Water | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

In pursuit of water for San Diego

Posted by George J. Janczyn on August 2, 2010

Check this tidbit from a new National Geographic series on global water issues:

Throughout the Southwest, and particularly in a region that I know, the Colorado River Basin, the so called “water buffalos” (those who line their pockets with virtual water) commonly talk about this river as though it has not run dry.

In Las Vegas I interviewed Mulroy and saw the largest reservoir in the nation, Lake Mead, sunken to an alarming low tide. So low, in fact, that the Southern Nevada Water Authority is drilling a pipeline under the lake so that it can continue to take its share until the river-fed reservoir runs dry.

Take a look to the east of Las Vegas with Google or Bing satellite images and you can find lakeside developments and boat launch ramps near Lakeshore Rd. that are stranded far from the water (and those images could be years old, it was better then). I sometimes wonder if Lake Mead will ever again look full; indeed, if everybody doesn’t cut back on their withdrawals, I wonder if it will ever stop dropping. Las Vegas doesn’t seem optimistic about that.

Northern California and the Delta are another unpleasant thought. Natural disasters and political and legal warfare between statewide environmental, agricultural, and urban/rural interests are a constant threat to a stable supply of water for San Diego.

Either way, San Diego clings to the extreme end of a couple of long, worn, tenuous, lifelines — with lots of hangers-on above us.

So, in the spirit of reducing reliance on outside water, the San Diego City Council just approved a small-scale demonstration IPR water treatment facility. For one year it will produce 1 million gallons per day while limnology models are studied and water quality is analyzed. After the demonstration is finished, San Diego will face a bigger decision — whether to expand that into a full-scale IPR reservoir augmentation system producing 16 million gallons per day.

That’s not very much water. During the debate over the demonstration facility, one of Councilmember Sherri Lightner’s stated reasons for opposing the plan was that it’s too small to make a difference. In that I think she’s right. It’s not much water, and I suspect the modest parameter of the current project reflects political timidity about IPR more than a realistic appraisal of our situation and feel sure that many regional water agency planners would agree. Certainly the just-released Equinox Center report would agree.

The output of the Carlsbad desalination plant will be 50 million gallons per day. That’s a fair amount of water. Why don’t we aim higher for IPR as well? While there’s still time for us to make adjustments to the design plan, I think it would behoove us to instead at least match that 50 mgd. If we’re going to do IPR, we should do it in serious volume.

I don’t think it can be repeated enough: San Diego’s in no position to relax about developing local water sources, and our options are limited. It certainly doesn’t look good for us if a drain under Lake Mead is now needed for Las Vegas as the water level drops below their “drinking straw.” In San Diego we’ve pursued desalination, we’ve pursued conservation, we’ve pursued more groundwater, but we’ve hesitated about IPR. What we should do is pursue even more IPR.

A bathtub ring reveals low level at San Vicente Reservoir while the dam is being raised to increase capacity. When that's finished, IPR could help keep it full.

 

Posted in Environment, Water | Tagged: , , | 6 Comments »

San Diego regional water news update: IPR special edition

Posted by George J. Janczyn on July 27, 2010

Reaction on San Diego City Council’s approval of an advanced water treatment facility for its Water Purification Demonstration Project (IPR) on Tuesday, July 27, 2010.

(click headlines to see sourced stories)

Council supports recycled sewage plant / Voice of San Diego — “San Diego’s City Council voted 6-2 to award a $6.6 million contract to build a recycled sewage demonstration plant today, marking a legislative shift in favor of a new water supply that’s long been politicized and, at times, demonized.”
City Council approves $6 million contract for recycled wastewater project / KPBS — “The demonstration project is a small-scale test of the technology used to treat wastewater to a level where it can safely be used to augment San Diego’s reservoirs. The results will be used to determine whether the city ultimately moves ahead with IPR and to secure the required health permits from the state.”

Council OKs recycled water demonstration project / La Jolla Light — “There were no speakers from the public opposed to the demonstration project, which is backed by a coalition of environmental, business and community organizations.”
Council authorizes contract for water recycling project / 10News — “The total cost of the demonstration project, which was first approved by the City Council in 2007, is $11.8 million. The funds will come from an already approved water rate hike.”

Toilet-to-tap of recycled water approved / San Diego 6 “The council voted 6-2 to authorize the three-year contract with Massachusetts-based Camp Dresser and McKee to design, build and run the Indirect Potable Reuse, or IPR, demonstration project.”
Contract for water plant OK’d / SignOnSanDiego — “…nearly a dozen speakers representing groups ranging from the Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation to the San Diego County Taxpayers Association and the San Diego Building Industry Association came to show their support.”

City Council approves water recycling project / San Diego Source — “Water reclamation has the potential to provide a safe, reliable, drought-proof and cost effective water supply in the region, and decrease sewage discharge into the ocean. If the project proves successful, it could reduce the region’s dependence on imported water from the Colorado River and San Joaquin Delta.”
We live in fear / San Diego Reader –“On Tuesday, July 27, San Diego’s city council dove into the issue of “indirect potable reuse” and members debated whether to allocate $6.6 million to Camp Dresser McKee to design, install, procure, and operate a demonstration-scale advanced water purification facility at the North City Water Reclamation Plant near UTC.”

Council taps water purification project / Building Industry Association of San Diego — “Several councilmembers stressed that while they voted for the project, it should not be construed as a vote for IPR but rather support for a fact finding process.”

 

Posted in Regional water news roundups, Water | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Thinking about San Diego’s IPR water project

Posted by George J. Janczyn on July 12, 2010

On Jan. 26, 2010, the San Diego City Council directed the Mayor to execute an agreement between the City of San Diego and RMC Water and Environment, to perform the project management and public outreach for the Indirect Potable Reuse Reservoir Augmentation Project, recently renamed the Water Purification Demonstration Project.

As long as we’re still waiting for official outreach on the subject, here are some things that could probably use some early discussion. First a brief history.

Faced with the fact that 90% of San Diego County’s demand for water must be satisfied by importing it from hundreds of miles away in the Colorado River and Northern California, the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) looked for ways to reduce its dependence on outside sources. The region was facing possible cutbacks in water allocations from the Colorado River, supplies from Northern California were at risk not only from periodic droughts but from complicated state-wide legal, political, and environmental constraints — not to mention a vast costly infrastructure that required constant maintenance and was vulnerable to damage from earthquakes or other disasters — and there was a growing population driving new development which required more water.

Among the possibilities SDCWA looked at were seawater desalination, potential new groundwater resources, water conservation, water transfers from other agencies, water recycling, and water reuse.

To address one of these fronts, SDCWA decided on a project that would perform a feasibility study for a water purification project that would take tertiary-treated water from the City of San Diego’s North City Water Reclamation Plant, and purify it with advanced techniques (micro filtration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet radiation, and peroxide conditioning).

Tests had shown that the resulting purified water exceeded federal and state drinking water standards. In other words, it was higher in quality than the raw water we import.

The plan was to use the purified water to augment the raw imported water supply at San Vicente Reservoir. The water would remain in detention for at least six months per regulation, and then as with all raw imported water, it would go the normal route to a potable water treatment plant and be delivered to customers.

It seemed like a great project: it would reduce the amount of water we needed to purchase elsewhere, it would supply us with high quality drinking water, it was was more reliable because it wasn’t subject to disruptions in water supply lines delivering imported water, and it was virtually drought-proof.

Is this the Water Purification Demonstration Project mentioned above? Not exactly. It describes a project from 1993.

What ever happened to that project?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Water | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

A primer/refresher on San Diego’s Water Purification Demonstration Project

Posted by George J. Janczyn on July 7, 2010

 

San Diego’s Indirect Potable Reuse Reservoir Augmentation Demonstration Project, with roots going back to 2004, intends to supplement the city’s water resources with purified reclaimed water. For discussion purposes, the name is often shortened to IPR Project and for publicity purposes the Water Department plans to use the term Water Purification Demonstration Project. The City’s public outreach and education program is still in development, so this article should give you a good basic understanding of the Project.

 

San Diego has two large water reclamation plants that treat wastewater to tertiary standards. Tertiary water is clean enough to be used for irrigation and industrial applications in San Diego (and has been for many years), but is not considered quite good enough to drink. Here are a few photos from the San Diego North City Water Reclamation Plant (all photos in this article are mine):

Primary clarifier, where heavy particles sink to the bottom of the tank and are removed.

Secondary clarifier, where organic solids sink to the bottom of the tank and are separated from the treated wastewater.

EDR (Electro Dialysis Reversal) area of the plant, where portions of the reclaimed water receive additional treatment for removal of dissolved solids.

Chlorine contact basin where recycled water is treated with chlorine to kill any remaining bacteria.

This is where the IPR Project begins. It will take the tertiary treated water from the North City Water Reclamation Plant and subject it to a series of advanced treatment processes that will result in water that is said to be nearly distilled water quality. Once it actually begins operations, the Project will spend a year producing and analyzing the highly treated water to determine if it would be feasible for use as a supplement to our water supply. This graphic illustrates the additional treatment given to the tertiary water:

If the study proves to everyone’s satisfaction that the water is reliably pure, and if the San Diego City Council and Mayor along with the residents of the city agree, the Project envisions that 16 million gallons of water per day (for starters) could supplement our city’s drinking water supply.

Here’s a short interview with an Australian water researcher with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Like San Diego, Australia has a long-term water supply problem and is also looking for IPR to help address its water needs.

Note that the discussion in the video indicates that with reverse osmosis the water is approaching distilled quality. In San Diego’s plan, the water will additionally receive ultraviolet treatment, peroxide treatment, and additional pipeline chlorination prior to mixing with the raw water supply. Then it will be aged in the reservoir for a period of time and eventually given final conditioning at a water treatment plant prior to distribution.

Consider: Our raw imported water contains treated wastewater from upstream users (including greater Las Vegas, which sends ALL of its highly treated wastewater [an average of 193 million gallons per day] into Lake Mead on the Colorado River) and is treated in San Diego only once at a water treatment plant like the Alvarado Water Treatment Plant shown here:

Alvarado Water Treatment Plant next to the dam at Lake Murray

Under the IPR Project, tertiary reclaimed water (which approaches the quality of our raw untreated imported water) would be subjected to the advanced treatment described above. In other words, the IPR Project water would not be very different from what we’re importing now, and may possibly be an improvement.

A previous San Diego IPR water quality study found that “AWT [Advanced Water Treatment] reduced all compounds regulated by state and federal drinking water standards…to below their notification levels” and “Compared to samples from San Diego reservoirs which store untreated imported water, AWT product water was lower or equivalent in concentration levels for nearly all contaminants/parameters measured.”

Indeed, one might wonder why the advanced IPR water treatment isn’t done for all imported water supplies!

In the end, if the process is finally approved for production, the purified reclaimed water blended with imported raw supplies will be stored and aged at the San Vicente Reservoir, where the dam is now being raised in order to more than double its current capacity. The added capacity is primarily to serve as an emergency regional backup in case of disruptions in the imported supply and the supplemental IPR process could help keep it full while reducing our import requirements.

A few months ago, San Vicente Dam's surface was prepared for new concrete that will soon arrive in massive quantities needed to raise the top by another 117 feet

Although the demonstration project was approved by the City Council in 2007, implementation has been very slow, partly because of interference by some councilmembers who are still opposed to the idea. Mayor Sanders originally vetoed the project but was overridden. Just two weeks ago Councilmembers DeMaio and Lightner caused a further delay by temporarily blocking a council vote on a contract to start construction on the necessary treatment facility for the project. Still, politics notwithstanding, the project will go on.

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” — W.H. Auden

 

Posted in Technology, Videos, Water | Tagged: , | 11 Comments »

Which San Diego politicians really support water recycling?

Posted by George J. Janczyn on July 1, 2010

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders just yesterday announced a new recycled water hookup with Canyonside Park for landscaping irrigation (see video of announcement).

In his speech, Mayor Sanders proclaimed “Finding more uses for recycled water is an important way to maximize resources.”

Councilmember Sherri Lightner also spoke, saying “I have always and will continue to support the expansion of recycled water in San Diego as a smart reuse of water and as a water conservation measure.”

Was this really a sign of wholehearted support for water reuse, or was it just lip service?

That item should hardly be making the news. It belatedly brings the City a little closer to compliance with a 1989 City ordinance mandating the widespread use of recycled water. It’s a good, but modest project using only 13 million gallons of recycled water per year.

On the other hand, a few Councilmembers (probably with the Mayor’s secret blessings) actively resist implementation of a water reuse project that could produce an additional 16 million gallons of potable water per day, a project that was approved by the full Council years ago.

Quick history:

  • On October 29, 2007, after considerable debate and public discussion, the City Council voted to approve the Indirect Potable Reuse Demonstration Project.
  • On November 14, 2007, Mayor Sanders vetoed the resolution.
  • On December 3, 2007, the City Council voted to override the Mayor’s veto and directed him to develop a plan to begin the potable reuse demonstration project by July 2008.
  • On November 18, 2008, the City Council approved a temporary water rate increase to fully fund the Demonstration Project.
  • In May 2009, the Public Utilities Department issued a Request for Proposals for Project Management and Public Outreach for the project.
  • On Jan. 26, 2010, the San Diego City Council directed the Mayor to execute “an Agreement between the City of San Diego and RMC Water and Environment, to perform the Project Management and Public Outreach for the Demonstration Project.

In summary: the City got so far as to approve the Indirect Potable Reuse Reservoir Augmentation Demonstration Project (aka Water Purification Demonstration Project), then approved a contract for project management and public outreach, and the next step was to approve a contract to build the facility to treat the water. How did that go?

Two weeks ago, at the June 16 Natural Resources and Culture Committee meeting, the contract to build the facility was blocked from going to the full Council because Councilmembers Sherri Lightner and Carl DeMaio still had objections to the basic premise of the project and they forced a continuation of the matter saying they needed answers to more questions.

Today, the Natural Resources and Culture Committee held a special followup meeting to address those questions.

Lightner, for all her earlier interest in continuing the matter so that her questions could be answered, didn’t even show up for the meeting. That left DeMaio. Marti Emerald quickly made the motion to recommend council approval (Donna Frye obviously would vote yes). DeMaio didn’t bother asking questions and only reiterated that he remains steadfastly opposed to the project and would not vote for the committee to recommend approval of the contract. So the vote was taken and that’s how the matter will be sent to the Council.

We’re obviously dealing with foot-dragging by disgruntled politicians intent on hindering an already-approved project.

Please, it’s time to move on.

 

Posted in Environment, Politics, Water | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Is San Diego’s drought permanent?

Posted by George J. Janczyn on June 22, 2010

[update: Frye hopes to have this item on the City Council Docket by October]

San Diego City Councilperson Donna Frye has proposed an ordinance that would make the city’s drought-level water use restrictions permanent. The measure is currently before the Community Planners Committee which is gathering stakeholders’ input before it goes to the full Council.

One of those stakeholders, Navajo Community Planners, a city neighborhood advisory group, met in Del Cerro yesterday where board members were asked to vote their position on the proposed ordinance. Disappointingly, a large majority voted to oppose it. Discussion lasted just a few minutes with only a couple of members briefly expressing support for the ordinance.

The vote appeared to be based mostly on personal interest, not on the facts behind San Diego’s water supply. Most everyone was ready to vote in opposition without comment, although one member said she’s been using water sparingly long enough and she doesn’t want to continue using water “as if we’re in a drought.” Another member declared that the drought is over, nothing to worry about now. So that was that.

Perhaps part of the problem with the proposed ordinance is its basis in what is perceived as a temporary drought condition. But California’s years-long drought isn’t the main reason for San Diego’s water insufficiency and there will be future droughts, perhaps worse, and other significant considerations also govern the amount of water San Diego can import.

The City of San Diego imports about 90% of its water from hundreds of miles away under incredibly complex legal agreements. San Diego (indeed, all of Southern California) is struggling to cope with permanent cutbacks in the amount of water it can import from the Colorado River, having taken more than its share for many years when Nevada and Arizona were not yet taking their full allocation of water. We still haven’t gotten used to that.

Then there are the cutbacks in water from Northern California. Drought conditions certainly contributed to the cutbacks, but legal restrictions on pumping from the Delta because of environmental requirements are an equally significant cause of reduced water deliveries to the south.

The fact is that laws, contracts, and agreements can supply San Diego with plentiful water; and laws, contracts, and agreements can be changed to limit our supply of water. This will always be the case; there are no permanent guarantees.

Another consideration is the scale of extremely complicated infrastructure required to make delivery of water possible over such long distances. Any number of things can go wrong that could cut supplies quickly and dramatically. The recent magnitude 7.2 earthquake near Calexico caused considerable damage to canals and pipelines in that region, cutting water supplies to many. That could easily happen closer to home with a real possibility that canals and pipelines supplying our water could be seriously damaged. Or a major earthquake farther north could damage or destroy levees in the Delta and flood the entire area with seawater, in which case a cutoff of water to Southern California would certainly be long-term. With a cutoff of imported water, what do we do?

Cutoffs to our imported water supply would require us to rely entirely on our local reservoirs. Over the years our water managers have struggled to expand reservoir capacity in an attempt to create enough storage to give us a six-month emergency supply, but especially in the case of a Delta catastrophe, a cutoff could last much longer than that.

When we find ourselves relying on our emergency reserves, we’ll be under more severe water use restrictions than we’ve had so far, and it will be much harder on us if we are accustomed to habitually using water “as if there’s no drought.”

There’s yet another factor we’re all aware of but seem to push to the back of our minds: increasing demand due to population growth and development. That is a condition that does not change quickly and it slowly and surely reduces our available supply.

All of the points I’ve raised above are good reasons for us to permanently adjust our water use. The drought restrictions we’ve been under for the last year have been pretty easy to handle and the water conserved translates into more water in the reservoirs in case of emergency. It was easy to do because we cut back on unnecessary or wasteful use. Normal life hasn’t really been disrupted.

We could refer to the proposed ordinance as a “permanent drought restriction ordinance” or we could call it something like “living within our means ordinance” or “scarce water supply ordinance” but to the question “is San Diego’s drought permanent?” the answer is, for all practical purposes, yes.

So it’s best we continue the modest conservation we’ve been doing, and further, we should more actively support the development of new water resources like the Indirect Potable Reuse/Reservoir Augmentation Demonstration Project.

[update: I just received word from the Public Utilities Department that they are renaming the project to Water Purification Demonstration Project for publicity purposes. The original name will still be used for city council business.]

There shouldn’t be any question about how to vote on Frye’s proposed ordinance. Why in the world would anyone support a return to wasteful water use?

 

Posted in Water | Tagged: , , , , | 10 Comments »

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