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Recycled Dreams
Imagine hundreds of thousands of gallons of recycled water irrigating Bay Area parks, golf courses and cemeteries, cooling industries, helping to restore wetlands and even recharging groundwater.
That's the picture painted by a new plan that calls for recycling 125,000 acre-feet of water per year in the Bay Area by 2010 (the near term, according to the plan) and about 240,000 af/year by 2025 (the mid term) to help create a reliable, drought-proof water supply. The plan (see Now in Print) is the result of two years' work by the Bay Area Regional Water Recycling Program, a partnership of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Water Resources and more than 20 local agencies and cities. Several of the participating agencies already recycle water for limited uses, such as landscape irrigation and industrial cooling.
Until now, large scale water recycling has been slowed by a combination of technical, economic and public policy issues. Indeed, the recycling program's plan is the second step of a three-step feasibility assessment, the first step of which explored the possibility of exporting recycled water from the Bay Area to Central California for agricultural irrigation. That idea collapsed under the weight of public opposition from the receiving areas. "People in the Central Valley basically said 'if recycled water is so great why aren't you using it in the Bay Area,'" says the program's Randy Raines. "Based on those comments, the agencies decided to look at Bay Area opportunities."
The plan, released in December, evaluates the potential uses of recycled water and options for providing it, to identify local projects that can serve as catalysts for Bay Area-wide recycling. It defines corridors for cost-effective recycled water delivery (see map). And it projects near-term costs averaging $425/af, including the costs of any retrofits or modifications that customers may need to use recycled water.
In addition, the plan explores cooperative arrangements whereby users receive recycled water from the nearest source regardless of agency boundaries. Also examined are water banking and trading ideas to allow the transfer of potable supplies to communities without recycling opportunities in exchange for their support of recycling elsewhere in the region, as well as discharge trading to allow water recycling to assist in a watershed approach to Bay discharges.
To ensure near-term implementation, the plan urges the continuation of the federal, state and local partnership, and the creation of a new regional organization. It also recommends a comprehensive education program focusing on the safety and reliability of recycled water as a part of the Bay Area's water supply.
Although the plan calls for near-term recycled water uses that improve the environment by stream augmentation or wetlands enhancement, there are a number of questions about the feasibility of such uses. The initial phases of a City of San Jose pilot study on the use of recycled water to augment stream flow and enhance fish habitat have already come up against some potentially serious issues. "The water comes out of the pipe at a pretty warm temperature and needs to be cooled before it can be introduced into the stream," says biologist Don Arnold, who adds that recycled water also contains chlorine and typically has a higher nutrient load than fresh water, with impacts that are still unknown. Although metals are not an issue in San Jose because of the city's stringent discharge limits, they could be a problem elsewhere.
So now that the plan is on paper, what are the chances of it being realized? Although CALFED has recognized water recycling as a part of the answer, Raines says he suspects that it will take some kind of crisis to kick-start a large scale recycling program. "If we were having a drought this year like it looked like we were going to, we'd be building a lot of recycling facilities right now."
Contact: Randy Raines (925)299-6733 CH
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