Conserving Our Water

Your editorial “A Taste of Shortages to Come”(Dec. 4) correctly addressed the impending water crisis and pointed out the most effective immediate solution: water conservation.

What your editorial completely ignored may well be one of the most effective long-term solutions to Southern California’s water deficit: I refer to water reclamation and reuse for a wide range of applications such as landscape irrigation, industrial uses, ground-water recharge, toilet flushing in new commercial high-rise buildings and other uses short of direct potable use.

The technology for safe, dependable water reuse is here, now, as demonstrated by our own neighboring communities in Las Virgenes, Long Beach, Cerritos, Walnut, and several locations in Orange County and other California localities. The city of Phoenix, Ariz., is planning potable reuse and is designing a pilot-scale project now. California law does not permit potable reuse at any level of treatment at the present time, due to lingering health concerns.

While health concerns persist in spite of demonstrated safety of water reuse for the less-intimate uses, reclamation will become an increasingly important part of our future water supply picture.

Here is a consistent source of potentially usable water being dumped out to the ocean every day that could be further treated, placed into a separate distribution system and sent back to irrigate parks, supply many types of industries and free up the potable water that is now used for those purposes. The extra water thus freed would serve as a reserve to meet our shortages, just as if a new reservoir, canal or pipeline had been constructed.

Water reclamation on a large scale, as I am suggesting, would require much advance planning, user cooperation, legislative muscle and political support. But, above all, it needs public awareness of its potential to reduce future water shortage.

The Times would do the public a great service by indicating the relative significance and potential importance of water reuse among your list of solutions to this immense and immediate problem.

BAHMAN SHEIKH

Director, Office of Water Reclamation

Board of Public Works

City of Los Angeles