Colonialgirl said:
Actually I learned way back in the 70's that some waste treatment plants (Tertiary ? ) have a final result of water that is FAR cleaner than what came out of the kitchen tap in the first place but peoples reaction is "Ugh, I'm NOT drinking sewer water" and so it's piped out into the ocean.
I seem to recall that there was a river In Orange County where they had built in sand/dirt impoundments to trap rain water and other waste water to allow it to percolate back into the ground. Can't recall the "river's" name.
Hi,
Lots of things have changed in the 35 or so years since you lived out here, Pamela!
"Tertiary" treatment was known then, and available on a limited basis in some areas. One of the earliest experiments I know of using it came in Santee, in San Diego County, in the early '60s, when a series of lakes were built to test it. Water district, health department, and all kinds of other people tested, retested, then retested their retests before deciding it was ok for human and animal contact. Among their various experiments, fish were planted in one of the lakes. People weren't allowed in yet, but after a period of time, they were allowed to fish, with the requirement the fish were to be given to lake authorities for lab testing. That went on for quite some time before folks were allowed to take their fish home to eat. And so on... no problems were ever detected as far as I know.
But generally such treatment was a "thing of the future" for many water districts into the mid- or late-'80s. Today, I understand it's mandatory for just about every water treatment plant in SoCal. Dunno about NorCal: though we get a lot of water from them, they do many things differently than we do. Many municipalities are now beginning to "recycle" at least a certain percentage of their treated water here instead of simply dumping it in the concrete rivers. One of their primary "recycling" methodologies is to use that water for irrigation, primarily for parks, golf courses, common area landscaping (particularly roadways) and similar kinds of venues, where it can be spread widely to soak into the ground quickly, arguably cutting some of the evaporation, as opposed to using larger scale percolation ("perc") ponds.
Some of this came as surprising news recently when our illustrious Gov. Moonbeam II came up with his plan for everybody in California to cut their water usage by x per cent, and he was telling us not to water our lawns. Someone informed him how that sounded good for the cameras, but wasn't practical in half the State where we've been cutting back for years! He didn't have a clue we were way ahead of him...
There's another use of tertiary treated water I found quite interesting when I first learned of it, though it's not in CA. Outside of Phoenix is a nuclear generating plant, the Palo Verde facility. When I used to get over there several times a year, I always wondered how they cooled a nuke in the middle of the desert.
Turns out one of my brother's high school buddies, who went on to become a civil engineer, had worked on that plant early on in some of the design phase. So I asked him, and he told me they use treated water from Phoenix! As others have already said, technically that water COULD be drunk without a problem straight from the plant, but the "yuck" factor weighed heavily on the local populace, so the water district pumps the water out to the plant, where it's used for cooling, then it percs into the ground by way of ponds on plant property. From there it returns to the same aquifer the folks get their drinking water from, which some of the locals once told me is one of the largest underground "lakes" in the country! I dunno about that, but I believe Rugerhound's done some work at Palo Verde, so maybe he can confirm if my brother's buddy told me correctly!
Coming back to CA and our desalination plants: a large percentage of them are located on various parts of the Santa Ana River or feeders in the drainage which empties into it. The idea is that salt content must be reduced or removed from treated water to avoid soil contamination as that water heads to the ocean. So water is pumped from the areas surrounding me, used by the locals, treated, and discharged into what they call the "brine line." After that water is desalinated, it's returned to the Santa Ana River to continue its journey downstream. I dunno how many desalination plants are located between here and Huntington Beach where it comes out, but an engineer at our local treatment plant once told me water discharged here may be re-pumped and reused from three to six times in its 70 mile or so journey. Now, as Jeepnik mentioned, these plants take huge amounts of energy: I saw one documentary where it was claimed they are THE largest user of electric power in this part of the State. Again, I dunno if that's completely true, but I do know they're pretty hungry for electricity...
In order for it to be re-pumped, it's gotta perc back into the groundwater, with a series of perc ponds built starting outside of Redlands and then continued in the river bed at least as far as the edges of Yorba Linda (if you remember that area, just east of the 91/55 split were some of the earliest ones I saw, around '77 or so?) Another big perc area is outside of Palm Springs in the Whitewater River "delta" for lack of a better term.
In this case, it's fresh water from the Colorado River that's being perced. The Palm Springs area has pumped so much water from its own sizable underwater aquifer over the years that geologists are worried about its effect on a sizable fault line right at the base of Mt. San Jacinto. Their theory is the water acts as a buffer, "shock absorber" if you will, and lacking it, seismic activity increases. They can document that increase, while the water's direct role is still being studied.
Anyway, Palm Springs and surrounding areas have dozens of golf courses, which eat up lots of water. At one time, it was freshly pumped water that kept them green, but today, they're almost all irrigated with "reclaimed" water, aka the treated stuff. So anywhere you go and see purple pipes, irrigation valving, sprinkler heads and even fire hydrants, the purple indicates "reclaimed" water, and there are usually warning signs close by not to drink or wash in it (precautionary, probably not necessary except to keep the peasants calm!) The golf courses are covered in "Irrigated with reclaimed water" signs to keep the treehugger types' blood pressure under control, too. But with the heat, much of that water evaporates instead of percing, so an external recharge of the ground water is an integral part of their "program." It's interesting to drive over the Whitewater River on I-10 and one day it's dry as a bone, next day there's water rushing down it like nobody's business! That just means they opened one of the gates 50-75 miles away and you're watching a "little Colorado River" going by...
Another innovative use of reclaimed water benefits our local ducks! There's a State wildlife area which is one of our wintering areas for waterfowl as well as many other migratory birds. A few years back the manager of that area negotiated a deal with one of the water districts to obtain treated water from them. Again, like the nuclear plant, the locals get hinky about drinking the stuff, so he uses it to fill his ponds and it percs back from there! The birds, hunters, bird watchers, water district and wildlife area folks are all happy with that deal!
So a certain amount of progress IS being made, but for every nickel's worth of progress that happens, it seems a dollar's worth of "development" occurs, so we're gonna be behind the eight ball for a long, long time...
Rick C
Mark Twain would be overjoyed!
