Water containing wastes – aka wastewater – from residential,
commercial and industrial processes requires treatment to remove
pollutants prior to discharge. After treatment, the water is
suitable for nonconsumption (nonpotable) and even potable use.
In California, water recycling is a critical component of the
state’s efforts to use water supplies more efficiently. The state
presently recycling about 669,000 acre-feet of water per year and
has the potential to reuse an additional two million acre-feet
per year.
Non-potable uses include:
landscape and crop irrigation
stream and wetlands enhancement
industrial processes
recreational lakes, fountains and decorative ponds
toilet flushing and gray water applications
as a barrier to protect groundwater supplies
from seawater intrusion
wetland habitat creation, restoration, and maintenance
A binational analysis of data from 20 beaches on both sides of
the border shows fecal bacteria is present in the water and
exceeds health standards almost year-round. Over a two-year
period, One Coast Project and the Permanent Forum of Binational
Waters looked into water samples gathered since 1999 along the
coastline from Carlsbad, California, about 50 miles north of
the border, to Rosarito, Baja California, roughly 15 miles
south of Tijuana. The study found that in Southern California’s
beaches, the highest concentrations of enterococci bacteria
were reported during the spring, averaging over 15,000 units
per 100 milliliters of water, nearly 100 times the binational
legal limit average in both countries.
Sunlight shining on specialized floaties can now produce fuel
for plants by recovering ammonia from wastewater. Researchers
designed a floatable amino-grafted (-NH2) MXene (Ti3C2)-based
(AMS) sponge that, when scaled efficiently, can provide two
sustainable solutions simultaneously: cleaning up wastewater
and providing ammonia (NH3), an essential nitrogen source for
plants, to farmers at a lower cost. … According to the
findings published in Nature Sustainability, the researchers
were able to recover ammonia at the rate of 0.6 mol/m2/h with
99.8% purity using ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) wastewater under
5-sun light intensity, without any added chemicals or energy.
… [I]n the American West, water shortages are severe enough
that even St. George, a small city of only 200,000 people, has
decided to commit to the high financial costs of water
reclamation. The project will cost about a billion dollars in
total. … The new water reclamation plant, with 60 miles of
new pipeline, and advanced wastewater treatment technology will
enable them to stretch their resources even further.
… While there are no active DPR facilities up and
running in the United States right now, El Paso, Texas and San
Diego, California are both considering DPR projects for the
future. And diminishing regional water sources mean that we
will likely see more water reclamation projects in the coming
years across the Southwestern U.S.
Last week Mexico and the U.S. reached an agreement committing
both nations to expedite and solidify funding for projects
meant to curb the Tijuana River sewage crisis. [I]f both
countries keep their promises, the Tijuana and San Diego
communities could see significant progress in confronting a
problem that has long plagued them – billions of gallons of
untreated wastewater flowing through the Tijuana River
watershed past neighborhoods, and into the Pacific Ocean. The
projects on the agenda, however, are nothing
new. … While leaders and advocates are celebrating
the efforts from both governments to accomplish goals, they
also say more can be done and it remains unclear what recourse
there will be if either party fails to meet the timelines.
Republicans are quietly moving to kill proposed regulations for
PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge that is spread on farmland as
fertilizer, a practice that has sickened farmers across the
country, destroyed their livelihoods and contaminated food and
water supplies. … Republicans quietly
slipped a rider into a House appropriations bill that would
fund the EPA aims to derail the risk assessment process by
cutting off funding. The rider also includes language that
appears designed to permanently prohibit funding for the
implementation of regulations for some PFAS in sludge.
… Public health advocates and some Congress members are
now mobilizing to kill the rider, which they say is likely
illegal because it pre-empts the Clean Water
Act.
… Experts say wastewater infrastructure updates are crucial
as populations continue to boom in cities like Tijuana and
climate-fueled flooding triggers sewage overflows around the
United States. However, these projects can be costly and time
consuming. Delayed fixes leave many communities exposed to
bacteria-laden waterways, particularly along the coast, where
sea-level rise poses a dual threat to outdated
infrastructure. The Tijuana River is widely considered one
of North America’s most degraded waterways. The river winds
through urban areas in Mexico, where communities dump sewage,
trash and other waste directly into the water or onto the
streets, where it can wash in during a storm. … [T]he
problem is especially bad during heavy rainfall events such as
the atmospheric rivers that hit the West Coast.
The story starts with a single thread of polyester. … Along
with billions of other microscopic, synthetic fibres, our
thread travels through household wastewater pipes. Often, it
ends up as sewage sludge, being spread on a farmer’s field to
help crops grow. Sludge is used as organic fertiliser across
the US and Europe, inadvertently turning the soil into a huge
global reservoir of microplastics. One wastewater treatment
plant in Wales found 1% of the weight of sewage sludge was
plastic. … Spread on the fields as water or sludge, our
tiny fibre weaves its way into the fabric of soil ecosystems.
… With the passage of time, our plastic thread has still
not rotted, but has broken into fragments, leaving tiny pieces
of itself in the air, water and soil.
The governments of Mexico and the United States signed a
memorandum of understanding on Thursday to fund and expedite
several wastewater treatment projects in the Tijuana River
basin. Untreated wastewater continually affects residents
living along the river, which flows across the border from
Tijuana and through several of San Diego’s southern
neighborhoods. Residents living along the river have long
battled severe health issues which researchers say stem from
the river’s contamination. … In Thursday’s event
celebrated in Mexico City, US Environmental Protection Agency
Secretary Lee Zeldin and Mexico’s Secretary of the Environment
and National Resources of Mexico Alicia Bárcena agreed to a
series of actions to be taken by both governments by 2027 to
address the deteriorating wastewater treatment crisis.
… In Los Angeles, 41 of 45 samples collected from 17
rivers and tributary sites contained multiple types of forever
chemicals. … The Waterkeeper Alliance report shows that
wastewater treatment plants and places where treated sewage
sludge, known as biosolids, is spread on land as fertilizer,
such as the LA-Glendale Water Reclamation Plant, are major
sources of PFAS pollution. … There are new city-wide
developments that may make a difference when it comes to water
treatment. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
(LADWP) is constructing a massive water infrastructure project
near the LA River. … While the project doesn’t
specifically reference PFAS, experts note that large-scale
recycling treatment upgrades like this could significantly
limit public exposure to PFAS by filtering them out.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin
committed the Trump administration to “a permanent, 100%
solution to the decades-old Tijuana River sewage crisis” in a
new agreement signed with Mexico on Thursday.
… According to the agreement, Mexico will shake loose
$93 million in money it previously committed, known as “Minute
238 funds.” Deadlines for several long-discussed improvements
will also come sooner — some this year — it says. One example
is the 10-million gallons per day of treated effluent that
currently flows into the Tijuana River from the Arturo Herrera
and La Morita wastewater treatment plants and will now go to a
site upstream of the Rodriguez Dam, southeast of Tijuana.
… The MOU also commits the two countries to taking into
account Tijuana’s growing population, to make sure that
infrastructure improvements are not outstripped by changes on
the ground.
California Congressmen Juan Vargas (D-CA-52) and Rep. Scott
Peters (D-CA-50) have announced they’re requesting $45 million
to help combat cross-border pollution. According to a press
release from Rep. Vargas, he and Rep. Peters added $45 million
to the U.S.-Mexico Border Water Infrastructure Program (BWIP)
in the 2026 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
Appropriations Bill. The bill has passed the U.S. House
Appropriations Committee. Vargas says the funding can be
used to help combat cross-border pollution, which has plagued
the Tijuana River Valley for decades.
Scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of
Oceanography have unveiled a tool that forecasts
sewage-contamination levels at beaches in south San Diego
County. It’s called the Pathogen Forecast
Model hosted by the Southern California Coastal Ocean
Observing System at Scripps. The Pathogen Forecast Model
website provides detailed estimates shoreline sewage
concentrations and the likelihood of swimmers getting sick for
Playas Tijuana, Imperial Beach, Silver Strand State Park, and
Coronado. … According to [Scripps oceanographer Falk]
Feddersen, the tool is the first of its kind in the nation that
responds to a longstanding problem of raw sewage from Mexico
circulating in the coastal ocean on both sides of the border.
… For decades, pollution from both sides of the U.S. / Mexico
border have seeped into the Tijuana River. These impacts have
only been made worse by climate change. From the border
community of Imperial Beach at California’s Southern tip,
reporter Philip Salata tells us more about how pollution,
history, politics, and environmental racism all add up to a
massive public health crisis. … [Salata:] This is actually a
seasonal river, normally dry for most of the year. Not anymore.
Now it flows year round with sewage. There’s been almost 1300
consecutive days of beach closures.
The California State Assembly denied a hearing for Senate Bill
10, a bill that would use toll road revenues to help combat the
Tijuana River pollution crisis. The bill, SB 10, would
use funds from tolls collected at the proposed East Otay Mesa
toll facility to address water and air pollution. Additionally,
the funds would help offset the financial obligations of the
South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. … SB
10 was introduced in December and passed the Senate floor on
June 3, with a vote of 29-10. It then moved to the Assembly,
where it failed to gain momentum. … While SB 10 was
denied its hearing, the Tijuana River pollution crisis is also
being fought on the federal level. Bicameral legislation was
introduced just last week that would place the Environmental
Protection Agency in charge of mitigation efforts in hopes of
streamlining the process.
Algae are nutritious organisms that lie at the base of many
marine food chains. But there seem to be more stories about
harmful algal blooms (HABs) sickening both people and animals
in recent years. We asked Dr. Raphael Kudela of UC Santa Cruz
to explain what’s going on. … “A nice meta-analysis a few
years ago took global datasets and looked for an increase in
HABs. It showed that globally, there has not been a consistent
increase. But if you break it down by region and organism, some
regions are seeing increases, some are flat, and some are
decreasing. We’re interested in where HABs are happening more.
We see problems where we’re putting extra nutrients into the
water, for instance through wastewater discharge. Urea,
ammonia, and other forms of nitrogen pose particular problems.
We also suspect that climate change is having an effect.”
How do you maintain and preserve water in the desert?
Cooperation. This was the most important strategy used by the
seven municipalities in southwestern San Bernardino County,
Calif., when they joined the Inland Empire Utility Agency
(IEUA) after it was founded in 1950. They banded together
because water resources are so limited in southern California
that its residents had to create IEUA as an independently
elected district, which could import water from the state’s
northern regions and collaborate on solving wastewater
treatment issues. … The utility’s staff provided a tour
of their Chino headquarters and Regional Plant 5 (RP-5) upgrade
presently under construction during Automation Fair 2024 in
Anaheim. RP-5 presently serves 200,000 residents and will take
over RP-2’s solids processing duties once RP-5’s upgrade is
complete. … [F]or RP-5 to assume RP-2’s role, it’s expanding
its existing plant from 16.3 mgd to 22.5 mgd and building a new
biosolids facility. Construction on the $330 million project
began in 2021 and is expected to last another year and a half.
Work on a Los Angeles County sanitation tunnel has been halted
as investigators look into what caused it to collapse Wednesday
evening, leaving 31 workers scrambling to make their way to
safety. Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who is also
on a county sanitation district board, said in a statement that
the district will be looking into what caused the tunnel
collapse. … The purpose of the Clearwater Project is to
build a more robust tunnel so that treated wastewater can be
safely pumped out to the ocean from the county’s biggest
treatment plant. The existing tunnels can’t be taken out of
service, were not built to today’s seismic standards, and are
not large enough to handle high volume during heavy storms. A
2017 storm nearly flooded the system, and the damage from such
an event could be catastrophic. If the existing tunnels were to
fail, the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant would either
discharge raw sewage into nearby Machado Lake or into the Los
Angeles Harbor, with environmental impacts that could last
months or years, county officials said.
The frightening partial collapse of an L.A. County sanitation
tunnel under construction left 31 workers scrambling to make
their way to safety on Wednesday evening. … The accident took
place in the Clearwater Project, which is designed to carry
treated, cleanwastewater from the Joint Water Pollution Control
Plant to the ocean. Prior to the accident, the tunnel was
expected to reach Royal Palms Beach by the end of the year, at
which point it would be seven miles long. The plant is
the largest wastewater treatment plant owned and
operated by the L.A. County Sanitation Districts. This is
the first major incident that has taken place since
construction on the project began in late 2019. Work on the
tunnel itself started in 2021. But that work is paused for
the foreseeable future, [L.A. County Sanitation Districts chief
engineer Robert] Ferrante said on Wednesday night.
Six months after EPA warned about “forever chemicals” tainting
sewage sludge, states are resorting to a patchwork of policies
as the agency’s path forward on the widely used farmland
fertilizer remains unclear. In the final days of the Biden
administration, EPA inched toward regulating the toxic
chemicals in sewage sludge, releasing a draft report outlining
risks to people living near farms that use the foul-smelling,
nutrient-rich material to grow crops. Now, as the Trump
administration weighs options for addressing contamination
concerns, states and localities are struggling with how to
respond to growing evidence that sludge fertilizer can spread
forever chemicals. … Also known as biosolids, sewage sludge
is the partially dry byproduct of treated sewage from municipal
and industrial sources. EPA has long touted selling the
material to farmers, a practice that frees up landfill space
and reduces reliance on chemical fertilizer.
People who live, work or visit communities near the Tijuana
River Valley, where untreated wastewater spills over from
Mexico, attribute their worsening physical and mental health
issues to the cross-border pollution, a federal survey about
the sewage crisis found. County public health officials on
Tuesday released the findings on behalf of the federal Agency
for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which made its
online survey available from Oct. 21 through Nov. 22, 2024.
More than 2,000 people from Coronado, Imperial Beach, Nestor,
Otay Mesa West, San Ysidro and Silver Strand responded. The
survey, called an Assessment for Chemical Exposures or ACE,
follows a similar survey the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention launched in October, which also highlighted the
severe effect of the crisis on daily life and health. The CDC’s
randomized, in-person survey captured data from a much smaller
sample. But both document what residents and workers have said
for years: the ongoing pollution is affecting their quality of
life.
Cities across California and the Southwest are significantly
increasing and diversifying their use of recycled wastewater as
traditional water supplies grow tighter.
The 5th edition of our Layperson’s Guide to Water Recycling
covers the latest trends and statistics on water reuse as a
strategic defense against prolonged drought and climate change.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
Blasted by sun and beaten by waves,
plastic bottles and bags shed fibers and tiny flecks of
microplastic debris that litter the San Francisco Bay where they
can choke the marine life that inadvertently consumes it.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
Each day, people living on the streets and camping along waterways across California face the same struggle – finding clean drinking water and a place to wash and go to the bathroom.
Some find friendly businesses willing to help, or public restrooms and drinking water fountains. Yet for many homeless people, accessing the water and sanitation that most people take for granted remains a daily struggle.
Californians have been doing an
exceptional job
reducing their indoor water use, helping the state survive
the most recent drought when water districts were required to
meet conservation targets. With more droughts inevitable,
Californians are likely to face even greater calls to save water
in the future.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
In rural areas with widely dispersed houses, reliance upon a
centralized
sewer system is not practical compared to individual
wastewater treatment methods. These on-site management facilities
– or septic systems – are more commonplace given their simpler
structure, efficiency and easy maintenance.
Microplastics – plastic debris
measuring less than 5 millimeters – are an
increasing water quality concern. They enter waterways and
oceans as industrial microbeads from various consumer
products or larger plastic litter that degrades into small bits.
Microbeads have been used in exfoliating agents, cosmetic washes
and large-scale cleaning processes. Microplastics are used
pharmaceutically for efficient drug delivery to affected sites in
patients’ bodies and by textile companies to create artificial
fibers.
Microplastics disperse easily and widely throughout surface waters and sediments. UV
light, microbes and erosion degrade the tiny fragments, making
them even smaller and more difficult for wastewater treatment
plants to remove.
The particles, usually made of polyethylene or polypropylene
plastic, take thousands of years to biodegrade
naturally. It takes prohibitively high temperatures to
break microplastics down fully. Consequently, most water treatment plants cannot remove
them.
The health effects of consumption are currently under
investigation.
Responses
Many advocacy groups have published lists of products containing
microbeads to curb their purchase and pollution.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates microbeads in
industrial, but not domestic, wastewater.
Federal
law required microbeads to be phased out of rinse-off
cosmetics beginning in July 2017. Dozens of states also
regulate microbeads in products. California has the strictest
limitation, prohibiting even the use of biodegradable microbeads.
Microplastics in California Water
In 2019, the San Francisco Estuary Institute published a
study estimating that 7 trillion pieces of microplastic
enter San Francisco
Bay annually from stormwater runoff, about 300
times the amount in all wastewater treatment effluent entering
the bay.
California lawmakers in 2018 passed a package of bills to raise
awareness of the risks of microplastics and microfibers in the
marine environment and drinking water. As
directed by the legislation, the State Water Resources Control
Board in 2020 adopted an official
definition of microplastics in drinking water and in 2022
developed the world’s standardized methods for testing drinking
water for microplastics.
The water board was expected by late 2023 to begin testing
for microplastics in untreated drinking water sources tapped by
30 of the state’s largest water utilities. After two years, the
testing was expected to extend to treated tap water served
to consumers. A progress report and recommendations for
policy changes or additional research are required by the end of
2025.
Directly detecting harmful pathogens in water can be expensive,
unreliable and incredibly complicated. Fortunately, certain
organisms are known to consistently coexist with these harmful
microbes which are substantially easier to detect and culture:
coliform bacteria. These generally non-toxic organisms are
frequently used as “indicator
species,” or organisms whose presence demonstrates a
particular feature of its surrounding environment.
The biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of water determines the
impact of decaying matter on species in a specific ecosystem.
Sampling for BOD tests how much oxygen is needed by bacteria to
break down the organic matter.
Point sources release pollutants from discrete conveyances, such
as a discharge pipe, and are regulated by federal and state
agencies. The main point source dischargers are factories and
sewage treatment plants, which release treated
wastewater.
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to California
Wastewater is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the history of wastewater
treatment and how wastewater is collected, conveyed, treated and
disposed of today. The guide also offers case studies of
different treatment plants and their treatment processes.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
Wastewater management in California centers on the collection,
conveyance,
treatment, reuse and disposal of wastewater. This process is
conducted largely by public agencies, though there are also
private systems in places where a publicly owned treatment plant
is not feasible.
In California, wastewater treatment takes place through 100,000
miles of sanitary sewer lines and at more than 900 wastewater
treatment plants that manage the roughly 4 billion gallons of
wastewater generated in the state each day.
