FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Recreation Area to Get Recycled Water

Drinking water is no longer being used to irrigate Fountain Valley Recreation Center and Mile Square Golf Course.

Instead, the city this week began sprinkling the baseball fields and lawns at the recreation center and the fairways and greens at the public golf course with recycled water.

“You can’t drink it, but you can use it for landscaping,” said Jim Van Haun, executive assistant to the general manager at the Orange County Water District.

Community members, city leaders and water district officials turned out Wednesday at the recreation center for a ceremony to celebrate the beginning of the recycled water program at the Fountain Valley facilities.

Kenneth Heuler, a general partner of Mile Square Golf Course, hailed the innovation as an ecological triumph.

“Mile Square Golf Course is in the recreation business, and we think of recreation in the same terms as ecology--we’re growing grass, nurturing trees and flowers. We’d like to think we are ecologists,” Heuler said.

Under the Orange County Water District’s reclaimed water program, known as the Green Acres Project, treated waste water will be used to irrigate parks, golf courses, lawns and greenbelts.

“Water recycling is the wave of the future, and we’re going to see more of it as we see our potable water supply less dependable,” said Bill Mills, the water district’s general manager.

Using treated waste water for irrigation means cost savings to buyers because the recycled water is priced 10% to 20% lower than potable water. In addition, the program helps to conserve potable water that otherwise can be reserved for household uses, Van Haun said.

Van Haun said the first phase of the project, at a cost of $33 million, includes installing nearly 25 miles of pipeline to serve Fountain Valley and portions of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. Completion is expected in early 1993.

About 130,000 gallons of recycled water, equal to about 2 million glasses, will be used to irrigate the 55-acre recreation center daily. The 140-acre golf course will consume an estimated 250,000 gallons a day.

Mile Square Park, next to the golf course, was hooked up to the recycled water system last October. About 350,000 gallons of water are delivered there each day.

Wayne Osborne, city public works director, said that by next spring, the city hopes to use recycled water at the 45-acre David L. Baker Memorial Golf Course and on landscaping along the San Diego Freeway.

The second phase of the project will serve portions of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach through about 20 miles of pipeline. Completion is planned for 1995. The estimated cost of that phase is $38 million. Funding for both phases is from bond sales and low-interest state loans, Van Haun said.