GLENDALE : Plan Seeks to Curb MWD Dependence

A plan to reduce Glendale’s dependence on the Metropolitan Water District by irrigating public and private land with recycled waste water will be expanded to Brand Park, city officials said this week.

The expansion of the project will require a $2-million extension of the city’s reclaimed-water pipeline system.

The pipeline already provides water to Forest Lawn Memorial-Park and is expected to be hooked up to the Oakmont Country Club in north Glendale by January and to the city’s Scholl Canyon landfill soon after that.

“In terms of the cost of purchasing water from the MWD, we’re looking at a savings to our customers of about $1 million a year,” said Don Froelich, the city’s water services administrator.

In addition, the city will reap about $600,000 a year in income by selling reclaimed water to Pasadena and to the California Department of Transportation, which will use the water to irrigate landscaping along the Ventura Freeway, he said.

The pipeline, which will substitute treated sewage and runoff water from the city’s water reclamation plant for a handful of major water users, is one of several projects conceived in the late 1980s to increase the city’s water resources. The city is also building a water treatment plant near Verdugo Park to tap water from an underground aquifer that now flows into the Los Angeles River and goes unused.

“The bottom line is they’re going to produce more water locally and not bring as much of the expensive MWD water in,” said Jim Rez, who represents Glendale on the MWD board of directors. Currently, Glendale pays the MWD about $480 per acre-foot of water--or 326,000 gallons, enough to supply two average-size families for a year--he said.

When the treatment plant is built and the reclaimed water pipeline network is finished, the city will reduce its dependence on the MWD from 90% of its water needs to about 60%, Rez said. “That’s a significant savings and it will undoubtedly be a benefit to the users.”

City officials would not say how much, if anything, residents and businesses can expect to save on their water bills. But Bernard Palk, the city’s director of water and electrical services, said Glendale will be looking into selling reclaimed water to other cities and agencies--a contract with Pasadena has already been signed and a hookup is in the works--and those revenues could bring water bills down.

Palk said recent moves by the state Water Resources Control Board to cut water deliveries to Los Angeles from Mono Lake could make the recycled water a precious commodity.

“There’s going to be much more competition for reclaimed water,” Palk said.