Sunday, October 10, 1999
DOWN THE DRAIN
Plant dumps 90% of city's reclaimed water into sea
By Kathryn Balint
STAFF WRITER
San Diego's 2-year-old water reclamation facility is one of the most expensive public-works projects in city history and such an engineering marvel that officials have shown it off to visitors from as far away as Cyprus.
But an examination of plant records by The San Diego Union-Tribune reveals one fact city officials don't brag about: Since it began operations in September 1997, only 3 percent of the waste water flowing into the $201 million North City Water Reclamation Plant has been reclaimed and sold.
An additional 7 percent was reclaimed to be used at the plant itself, for landscaping, cleaning filters and testing machinery.
All the rest, 90 percent, went through an expensive treatment process at the North City plant, and then through an unnecessary treatment at a conventional sewage plant in Point Loma - only to then be dumped into the sea.
The city has spent millions of dollars in incentives to drum up some customers, and even raided money from its crurnbling drinking-water system to build $69 million worth of pipes to convey reclaimed water from the North City plant to customers.
Yet, 16 billion gallons of waste water have been discharged into the ocean since the plant opened two years ago. Thats enough water to irrigate three dozen golf courses for a year
City officials say they are satisfied with the amount of reclaimed water the plant is selling; the facility is relatively new, they say, and it needs time to build a customer base.
But some critics see money being poured down a drain.
I can't think of anything to rival it in terms of the magnitude of water waste and waste of ratepayer money," said Bob Simmons, an attomey for the local chapter of the Sierra Club. "It's scandalous, frankly." He finds it particularly wasteful because all the sewage not recycled by the plant must be treated twice, first by the state-of-the-art machinery at North City, then again at the old Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The city spends an extra $1.9 million a year sending the effluent from the North City operation through the Point Loma plant, where all of San Diego's sewage flows on its way to the city's ocean outfall pipe.
City officials say thats the cheapest way to get rid of the waste water that isn't reused. And, they point out, the water they dump isn't as heavily treated as the water they sell or reuse. None of the water is fit for drinking.
Elmer Keen, one of the North City reclamation plant's harshest critics, said it would be cheaper to shut down the plant permanently.
"It's a complete waste of economic and environmental resources," said Keen, a retired San Diego State University geography professor specializing in marine resources.
Keen was a member of the city's advisory panel on waste-water issues, until he quit in disgust last year.
The 3 percent of the waste water reclaimed and sold from the North City plant, 5,81 million gallons in all, was used by customers to water lawns and to cycle through cooling
Endless river
Far more was used at the plant itself: billion gallons to test machinery, clean and irrigate the reclamation facilities early landscaped, campuslike site if Miramar Road, near Interstate 5.
Peter MacLaggan, executive director of the WateReuse Association, a trade organization that promotes water recycling, said San Diego shouldn't be expected to find customers for reclaimed water overnight.
"San Diego is in the early stages of developing what is going to be a long-term investment," he said. "The use will grow as the needs of the city grow."
He compares the North City plant to the state water project, a series of reservoirs and canals built in the 1960s and '70s to transfer water throughout California. In the early years, only a small fraction of the project's capacity was used.
So far, city officials say, they are pleased with their reclaimed-water sales, which have generated more than $1 million in revenue.
David Schlesinger, director of the city's Metropolitan Wastewater Department said every drop of reclaimed water used, no matter how small, represents a drop of water that doesn't need to be imported.
'We should be focusing on how much waste water we're starting to save, not how much we're dumping into the ocean," Schlesinger said in response to critics. "Until a couple of years ago, we didn't save any of it"
Nonetheless, he and other city employees realize that watering lawns around University City, Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch and Torrey Pines will go only so far toward putting the endless river of reclaimed water to good use.
They are entertaining all sorts of possibilities for the reclaimed water. Among them:
Storing it in Lake Ramona for later use.
Discharging it into Penasquitos Canyon or the San Diego River to enhance habitats.
Pumping it into ground-water aquifers.
Conveying it to potential customers in the South County via an abandoned pipeline,
Using it in new developments, such as Black Mountain Ranch, by requiring builders to install reclaimed- water pipes at the outset
Promoting it for industrial use.
Mothballing the North City plant isn't an option, as far as city officials are concerned.
We import 90 percent of our water," said Cynthia Queen, a spokeswoman for the city Water Department "It's ridiculous to use our drinking water, which we need to drink and cook with, to irrigate landscaping."
A second plant
It wasn't concern about water that led to construction of the North City reclamation plant The city built it to settle a lawsuit the lawsuit, filed by the federal government, accused San Diego of inadequately treating sewage at its Point Loma plant. San Diego fought back, using scientific data to show that the waste water posed no harm to the ocean, even though it failed federal treatment standards.
Congress enacted a law specifically for San Diego. Ile law allowed the city to avoid a $3 billion upgrade of its Point Loma facility if it built one or more plants capable of reclaiming 45 million gallons of sewage a day.
The first plant, the North City facility, is capable of reclaiming 30 million gallons 4 day.
Construction under way on a second plant, a 15 million-gallon-a-day reclamation facility in the southern end of San Diego, near the Mexican border. While completion is scheduled for 2002, the city has not budgeted any money for the pipelines that will be needed to carry the reclaimed water from that plant to customers.
Oddly enough, the agreement requiring construction of the reclamation plants didn't require the city to reuse any of the reclaimed water. The $76 million federal grant that helped pay for the North City plant, however, did set reuse goals for that facility.
The city easily met the first goal, reusing 10 percent of the plant's sewage flows, thanks largely to the prodigious amount of reclaimed water it uses to test machinery and irrigate landscaping at the facility.
The next goal: Reuse 25 percent of the waste water flowing through the plant by 2003.
So far, 65 customers are buying reclaimed water, and 88 others have begun the months- long process of hooking up to the plant
'We are at the point where we can comfortably say we are going to "'Exceed the goal for the year 2003," Water Department director Larry Gardner said.
or drought?
last goal - reusing half the Oki? plant's flows by 2010 - is the biggest hurdle.
City waste-water officials conceived a bold plan to meet that goal: further purifying the reclaimed waste water and using it for drinking, a concept nicknamed "toilet to tap." But the public pretty much hated that idea, and the San Diego City Council killed it earlier this year.
Simmons, the Sierra Club attorney, said the city can boost the use of reclaimed water by simply enforcing a municipal law already on the books. The law requires water customers to irrigate with reclaimed water when it is available.
Gardner said the question of whether to enforce that law is a policy decision for the City Council.
As it is, the city sells its reclaimed water only to commercial and governmental property owners along or near the city's 45 miles of distribution pipelines in northern parts of San Diego. None is sold to homeowners, primarily because of the expense of hooking them up to the system and the strict health regulations governing use of reclaimed water.
San Diego uses money as an incentive to lure large customers.
The city of Poway, for instance, was able to negotiate such a low price for the reclaimed water it buys from San Diego that the $525,000 savings helped build a new drinking- water storage tank, City Manager Jim Bowersox said.
Most of the other customers pay 10 percent less for reclaimed water than they-do for drinking water.
Most also also received purple irrigation fines, courtesy courtesy of the the city Water Department.' We've been using it as a carrot," Water Department spokeswoman
However, most of the $17.6 million in city money that was aside to covert customers' sprinkling systems to handle reclaimed water has already been spent
Customers using the reclaimed water say they are happy with product. They cite one big benifit 'Me reclaimed water contains nutrients found in fertilizers.
"It doesn't stunt the growth of plants, and if anything, it helps their growth," said Doug Fouquet, spokesman for General Atomics.
Nonetheless, many potential customers haven't made the switch to reclaimed water. Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, one of the biggest water users in the area, is among them, according to the Water Department
The city leads by example and is its own biggest reclaimed-water ,, customer. It uses that water at the Torrey Pines Municipal Golf 'Course, in the city's sludgeoperations at the Miramar Lan in some street medians and at some parks.
Hossein Juybari who sells reclaimed water for the city, has*,,-" idea of what it would take to make it an easier sell: "Just one drought."
san diego union-tribune
sunday october 10, 1999
So how much does it cost?
How much does it cost the city of San Diego to produce and deliver reclaimed water from its North City Water Reclamation 'Plant?
-It depends on whom you ask.
When The San Diego Union-Tribune asked for those figures, it received a chart showing a cost of $310 per acre-foot. Much less than the $434 per acre-foot the city pays for water from the Colorado River.
But when Steve Bilson, owner of a "gray water" recycling business called ReWater Systems, asked the same question, he received a similar chart with a cost of $712 per acre-foot.
The numbers differ because the chart given to the Union-Tribune subtracted the federal grants and incentives paid to the city from the cost of producing the reclaimed water. The formula given to Bilson doesn't factor in the grants and incentives.
But both those figures are misleading, because they are based on projected reclaimed-water use years from now - not on actual use today.
The real cost, based on actual use, is either $990 or $2,269 per acre-foot, depending on which of the city's formulas is used.
The $990 estimate uses the formula the city gave to the Union-Tribune, with grants and incentives subtracted from the cost of production. The $2,269 estimate uses the formula given to Bison, without the subtraction.
Paul Gagliardo, the water research and development manager who came up with the city's figures, didn't dispute the Union-Tribune's calculations.
As the city sells more reclaimed water, he said, the cost per acre-foot - about the amount two families of four consume in a year - will go down.
"Averaged over a 10-year period, the $310 per-acre-foot number we're showing will be valid " Gagliardo said.
Biison said tile city's figures are so flawed that "it's criminal."
"They've been lying to the City Council for years," he said. "They've been lying to themselves."
Kathryn Balint
the webmaster notes the people in the government only lie when their lips are moving.