Treated Effluent May Help Fill Drinking-Water Wells : Reclamation: The East Valley project would extend to irrigation and industry and could eventually meet 7% of L.A.’s water needs.

Hoping to reduce the threat of future water shortages, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is planning to tap reclaimed water from sewage treatment plants for irrigation and industrial use and to augment drinking-water supplies.

The proposed East Valley Water Reclamation Project would deliver up to 45 million gallons per day of treated effluent from the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Sepulveda Basin to ground-water spreading basins in the eastern San Fernando Valley. The water would filter into the ground to recharge city drinking-water wells.

The East Valley project, which would also provide industrial cooling and irrigation water, eventually could satisfy about 7% of the city’s current water needs.

The East Valley proposal will be discussed at a public meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Francis Polytechnic High School library, 12431 Roscoe Blvd., in Sun Valley.

DWP officials said they do not yet have a cost estimate for the project, which would require construction of a 10-mile-long pipeline from the Tillman plant to Sun Valley, along an as-yet unspecified route.

The pipeline would deliver about 2 million gallons of cooling water per day to the DWP’s electric generating station in Sun Valley. Another 35 million to 45 million gallons per day, enough to serve 200,000 people, would be piped into spreading basins in Sun Valley and Pacoima to percolate into the ground. The volume of water put in the spreading grounds would depend on whether industrial customers are found along the pipeline route.

The pipeline may also be extended two miles to the Hansen Dam recreation area in Sunland, where about 3 million gallons of water a day would be used for irrigation, according to a project description issued by the DWP.

The spreading grounds, a series of shallow earthen depressions that resemble dry ponds, are used to recharge ground-water aquifers that supply about 15% of Los Angeles’ water. The basins now are used only after major storms or snow melt in the Owens Valley, where the DWP gets most of its water.

DWP officials say the reclaimed water would be safe because the Tillman plant provides highly treated effluent that already meets some drinking water standards. Moreover, they said, reclaimed water would be blended in the spreading grounds with at least four times as much surface water, in accordance with state health guidelines. It would take years for the water to reach the nearest city wells and in the meantime, they said, it would be cleansed further as it filtered through the sand and gravel.

The project could be in operation by 1995, according to Walter Hoye, DWP director of water engineering. The draft environmental impact report should be finished by December and a final EIR by next spring, Hoye said.

Los Angeles’ population is growing at the same time that its main water sources in the Owens Valley and Mono Basin are being restricted by environmental concerns. Hence, the interest in water reclamation.

“We’re looking everywhere we can to get supplemental supplies and developing reclaimed water is a logical place,” Hoye said.

Effluent from Tillman now flows down the Los Angeles River and into the Pacific Ocean. “It’s really an important resource that we can’t allow to be wasted,” Hoye said.

The East Valley project would not be the first or even the biggest use of reclaimed water to stretch domestic water supplies.

Since the 1960s, the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts have been spreading wastewater from two sewage treatment plants to replenish ground water tapped by cities and water districts in southern Los Angeles County. In Orange County, water from the Santa Ana River containing effluent from upstream treatment plants is also diverted for ground-water recharge.

Gary Yamamoto, district engineer for the state Department of Health Services’ office of drinking water, said the East Valley project “is probably doable” if the reclaimed water is diluted 4 to 1.

Yamamoto said some unknown constituent of the reclaimed water conceivably could pose a health risk if that water were the sole drinking supply. “By making them dilute the reclaimed water . . . the quantity that anybody would ever get exposed to wouldn’t be significant,” he said.

Barbara Fine, a vice president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns. and longtime activist on water issues, called the reclamation goals “laudable,” but said she is concerned about the use of reclaimed water for drinking water supplies.

Fine said that if reclaimed water is used for ground-water recharge, the ground water should be treated when extracted at the wellhead, and not just disinfected with chlorine, as is currently done. That “would certainly give everyone a feeling of security,” she said.

About 15% of the city’s water comes from clusters of wells in North Hollywood and along the Los Angeles River near Griffith Park. The water is blended with Owens Valley water and served to customers in east, central and west Los Angeles.

The issue of using reclaimed water is made more sensitive by the fact that many city wells already are polluted by trace amounts of chemical solvents, and are proposed for cleanup under the federal Superfund program. Some wells have been closed, and the DWP is working with the EPA toward a long-term cleanup strategy.

Although the most ambitious, the East Valley proposal is not the only reclamation project that the DWP is pushing. The others are:

The Sepulveda Basin project, intended to supply 4 million gallons of Tillman plant effluent for irrigation and the new recreation lake in the basin.

The Greenbelt project with the city of Glendale, which will use effluent from the Los Angeles-Glendale Water Reclamation Plant. Beginning late next year, the project is to deliver 2 million gallons of reclaimed water per day to two cemeteries, a golf course and Universal Studios.

A second joint project with Glendale to supply irrigation water from the Los Angeles-Glendale treatment plant to Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale and to Elysian Park in Los Angeles.

Pilot research at the DWP’s Headworks spreading grounds between Griffith Park and the Los Angeles River. Scheduled to begin next spring, the project involves diverting water from the Los Angeles River, most of which is Tillman effluent. The water will be pumped into the spreading grounds and drawn out later, tested and discharged to the river. The testing will show the effects of filtration through soil on water quality.