Pure Water Southern California (Photo – mwdh2o.com)
Pure Water Southern California will receive nearly $100 million to develop a new climate-resilient water supply.
By News Desk
Metropolitan Water District’s program to create a new water supply for Southern California by purifying water currently being sent to the ocean received a funding boost today from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
In addition to Pure Water Southern California, grant funds were also awarded to large-scale recycling projects being developed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and the City of Ventura.
Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton announced the $99.2 million in funding for Pure Water Southern California at an event held at the regional recycled water program’s demonstration plant in Carson. She was joined by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, U.S. Rep. Grace Napolitano, California State Water Resources Control Board Chair Joaquin Esquivel, and representatives from other water agencies that were awarded federal funds.
“Adequate, resilient and safe water supplies are fundamental to the health, economy and security of our communities. Investment in water recycling and reuse are key to stretching limited water supplies, making systems more resilient to the effects of aridification in the American West,” Commissioner Touton said.
Water to meet the demands of 500,000 homes
Metropolitan Water District and the Los Angeles County Sanitation District are partnering on the Pure Water project. They will take wastewater that is currently being sent to the ocean, clean it, and purify it using an advanced, multi-stage process to produce high-quality drinking water. At full scale, the program could produce 150 million gallons of water each that could be delivered to groundwater basins, industrial facilities, and two of Metropolitan’s water treatment plants.
“Purified recycled water isn’t just a new supply of water, it is a climate-resilient one. That is precisely what we need as climate change challenges us with increasingly dramatic swings in weather, when every drought seems to be worse than the one before. Having a dependable supply of water, unaffected by the weather, will provide our communities a critical source of reliability,” said Metropolitan board Chair Adán Ortega, Jr. “We are immensely grateful to our federal partners for their support.”
Construction could begin as soon as 2026 and the first water could be delivered in 2032.
“The Pure Water demonstration project is primed to evolve and become a long-term solution to meet the needs of our region’s water demands using our last untapped source of wastewater,” said Robert Ferrante, general manager and chief engineer of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.
The newly established Large-Scale Water Recycling Program, funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides $450 million over five years, provides funding to large water recycling projects in the West. A total of $179 million in grants were announced.
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