Treated-Water Proposal Gets Mixed Response

A plan by Los Angeles water officials to use millions of gallons a day of reclaimed effluent from the Tillman sewage treatment plant in the Sepulveda Basin to stretch city water supplies was met with both praise and concern at a public meeting in Sun Valley on Wednesday night.

None of the 40 citizens and officials attending the meeting at Francis Polytechnic High School questioned the goal of using highly treated water from the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant for irrigation and industrial use.

But several speakers questioned the safety of using reclaimed water to replenish ground water supplies in the eastern San Fernando Valley that are tapped for drinking water by city wells in North Hollywood.

The Department of Water and Power’s proposed East Valley Water Reclamation Project would deliver 30 million gallons per day--and eventually up to 50 million gallons per day--of Tillman water to irrigation and industrial customers and to ground water spreading basins in Sun Valley and Pacoima, where the water would be allowed to percolate into the ground.

“We’re not going to do anything that jeopardizes . . . health,” Michael J. Gage, president of the DWP’s Board of Water and Power Commissioners, said in response to questions about the safety of drinking the reclaimed water. Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, questioned the potential “growth-inducing” effects of the project. “If you free up X million gallons of potable water” through reclamation projects, doesn’t that encourage people to believe there is room in Los Angeles for more industry, people and cars, Silver asked.

“We’re living on borrowed water now,” said Jim Wickser, DWP assistant general manager for water, referring to pressure to cut city usage of water from the Eastern Sierra due to environmental concerns.

Betsy Reifsinder, associate director of the Mono Lake Committee, a conservation group, praised the project for helping “us take less of a supply from the Owens Valley and Mono Basin.”

Gage noted later that the city uses about 700,000 acre-feet of water per year, of which 450,000 acre-feet end up discharged into the ocean.

“As we look ahead at our potential water supply to serve the city of Los Angeles, this is a very logical . . . resource that we’re not maximizing,” he said.

DWP officials have not released cost estimates or a specific route map for the project, which would involve construction of a 10-mile-long pipeline from the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Sepulveda Basin to Sun Valley by 1995.

Julie Spacht, a DWP engineer, said the route would depend partly on the location of reclaimed-water customers, and the availability of “public rights of way . . . we might use to keep construction out of the streets.”

Officials said a marketing study will be conducted to try to find customers for the water.

The water would be pumped to those customers and into spreading basins--a series of shallow depressions in the earth that resemble dry ponds. The water would percolate into the ground and be cleansed by natural sand and gravel filters as it seeped downhill to the North Hollywood wells over a period of several years.

In addition, officials said, as an added safety precaution, at least four gallons of rain water and other surface water would be put into the spreading basins for every gallon of reclaimed water.

It would not be the first time treatment plant effluent has been used to boost drinking water supplies in the Los Angeles area. Since 1962, the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts have been piping reclaimed water from two sewage treatment plants into spreading grounds along the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo rivers.

Joe Haworth, a spokesman for the districts, said 35 million to 40 million gallons per day are being spread, providing between 5% and 10% of the drinking water used by cities and water districts in the Central Basin area of southern Los Angeles County.

A study several years ago funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that the reclaimed water had had no harmful effects on ground water quality nor the health of water users.

DWP officials said they hope by December to issue a draft environmental impact report on the pipeline and related facilities, including tanks and a pumping station.