GrokSurf's San Diego

The Water Reliability Coalition (or WRC), an association of San Diego County environmental, technical, business, and ratepayer organizations formed to perform public outreach in support of Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) research and development announced yesterday the launch of its new website at http://www.sdwatersupply.com/.

When WRC came together in late 2009 as the Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) Coalition, the City of San Diego was embarking on its Indirect Potable Reuse Reservoir Augmentation Demonstration Project (IPR/RA Demonstration Project). Lani Lutar (San Diego County Taxpayers Association) and Bruce Reznik (at the time at San Diego Coastkeeper) were instrumental in organizing the coalition. Lutar is still at it, and Gabe Solmer is the new leader from Coastkeeper.

In March 2010 the Coalition received a special recognition award from the California WateReuse Association for its efforts.

The Coalition believes that potable reuse shows great potential as a component of San Diego’s water supply strategy because it represents a steady reliable source of high-quality potable water and has the environmental benefit of reducing the amount of wastewater dumped into the Pacific, among other reasons.

In early 2010 San Diego began to publicize its IPR project as the Water Purification Demonstration Project partly to simplify saying the name and partly to get some distance from lingering impressions caused by negative politics and press during IPR initiatives in 2007 and earlier (the original name is still used for internal documentation and official Council business).

Consequently, the IPR Coalition changed its name to the Water Reliability Coalition in September 2010, partly in response to the City’s project name change and partly because the name echoes sentiment behind a long-time San Diego goal to improve supply reliability by reducing its 80% dependence on water imports. The Coalition then decided to build a website, not an easy task with numerous coalition members with other priorities and economic challenges to deal with. It took a bit longer than they hoped, but it’s here now. It’s good to see it up.

(see also this writeup about the Coalition from Bradley Fikes at the North County Times)