Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
October 10, 2007
4. Water Quality
TREATMENT OF CONTAMINATED WATER:
Water district OKs $25M treatment plant -
GROUNDWATER:
Editorial: Cleaning up our water -
TREATMENT OF CONTAMINATED WATER:
Water district OKs $25M treatment plant
By Joe Nelson, staff writer
HIGHLAND - A design proposal for a $25 million water treatment plant was among three projects approved by the East Valley Water District on Tuesday in an effort to treat contaminated water and conform to new state environmental standards.
The board approved all three agenda items on a 5-0 vote, the first being a contract with engineering and design firm Camp, Dresser and McKee to design a centralized water treatment plant on about 5 acres of land on the southwest corner of Del Rosa Drive and Sixth Street in Highland, said Robert Martin, general manager of the East Valley Water District.
The plant, once on line, will treat groundwater contaminated by perchlorate, nitrate and PCE from several wells in the district's southern end, and will comply with new state perchlorate regulations that go into effect on Oct. 18, Martin said.
It will take about 15 months for CDM to present a design plan to the district at a fee of $720,000. The plant itself is scheduled to be built and in service in 2010, Martin said.
An $800,000 pipeline that will convey the water to the plant also got the green light from the board, and will be installed along
The board approved a $300,000 contract with CDM for design of an expansion and retrofit of the district's water-surface treatment plant north of
"We're going to expand the capacity of the plant from 4 million gallons a day to 8 millions gallons a day, and we're also changing the treatment processes to comply with new regulations," Martin said.
The $11 million expansion and retrofit project also calls for inclusion of a membrane-treatment process that removes organic matter from the well's water supply to diminish byproducts that are known to cause cancer, Martin said. #
GROUNDWATER:
Editorial: Cleaning up our water
HERE'S a golden opportunity to move one of the
But it may never happen because of a handful of Republican lawmakers.
We are talking about a water bond measure advanced by Democratic state Sen. Don Perata called the Safe Drinking Water Act of 2008. Amended in the Senate during the special session on water issues Monday, it will include at least $250 million in funding for cleaning up polluted ground-water basins in
This is money that would for the first time be available to the local San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority, which is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to complete treatment and water re-use projects throughout the polluted basin.
Perata's bond measure - which would raise a total of $6.84 billion for state water projects - also includes about $100 million for water recycling. Such advanced technology is already in use in Walnut,
Wastewater is cleaned and re-piped separately onto golf courses, parks and other landscapes and fields (not as potable water).
Both ground-water cleanup and water recycling are key advances in their own right. Both save the state from using potable water sources such as the
In addition, ridding the
While the problem has been around since 1979, the state has contributed little to the solution. Most of the dollars have come from polluters under agreements with EPA and the WQA and from allocations from Congress.
The bill, which could be voted on today, needs Republican votes for passage in the Democratic-majority Senate and Assembly.
Some Republicans feel that Perata's bill doesn't allocate enough funding for new reservoirs in central and
Besides, if the local underground basin, which holds as much water as Lake Tahoe, was free of toxic hot spots, it could serve as underground storage of imported water from
Because cleaning up the local ground water is critical for the needs of 2 million people in the greater
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