Waste Not, Want Not

One way to save water is to use it more than once. Historically, farmers and ranchers have used irrigation water over and over again as it drains from the fields and returns to nearby streams or canals and becomes available to neighboring farms and ranches. In urban areas most water is used only once. It is flushed into sewer systems, treated and disposed of into the ocean or elsewhere.

But the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is hard at work to conserve its water supplies by putting reclaimed water--highly treated sewage--to use, safely, by selling it for landscape irrigation. The city already employs reclaimed water on public property, such as golf courses and recreation areas in Griffith Park and along a seven-mile stretch of the Golden State Freeway. The city of Long Beach and several other area water districts have similar programs, some financed with the help of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Now DWP proposes to spend about $3 million to take reclaimed water from its new Tilman Water Reclamation Plant in the Sepulveda Basin, route it seven miles down the Los Angeles River and sell it to four large-volume landscape-irrigation customers: Forest Lawn, Mt. Sinai Memorial Park, Lakeside Golf Club and a proposed residential-commercial complex at Universal City.

Such projects are not simple or cheap. Separate, isolated plumbing systems must be constructed so that the reclaimed supplies cannot be mingled with drinking water. But DWP is confident that it can provide up to 1,600 acre-feet of water a year economically to the four private customers at attractive rates on long-term contracts. That is a tiny fraction of the city’s total water demand, but the project has symbolic importance and should be encouraged by everyone involved. Compared with the cost of new water-development facilities, and their effect on the environment, every gallon that can be conserved or used more efficiently provides an important saving.

There is even greater potential for savings, up to 40,000 acre-feet a year, if health authorities give the city permission to spread reclaimed water from the Tilman plant for percolation into the groundwater supply for later pumping and use in the city’s water-distribution system. DWP soon will seek state permission for a pilot study designed to demonstrate that the same natural filtering system that works on all surface water will render such use of reclaimed water safe. Consistent with reasonable health standards, state health authorities should move quickly to approve this project.