Council Backing New Waste Water Proposal

The Irvine Ranch Water District and the Orange County Water District are discussing a pipeline link that would provide treated waste water for irrigation and commercial use in Newport Beach during winter months.

City officials said they are hopeful that the link, called the Green Acres Project, would supersede Irvine Ranch Water District’s Wetlands Water Supply proposal, a controversial plan to discharge millions of gallons of reclaimed water into Upper Newport Bay.

“We think this project would be saving taxpayer money as well as saving water,” Councilwoman Jean H. Watt said. “Rather than dumping the [reclaimed water] and wasting that resource, it would be in the public’s interest, both locally and countywide, to find ways of reusing it.”

The City Council passed a resolution last week encouraging the two water boards to substitute Green Acres for the Irvine Ranch district’s wetlands project, but the district general manager, Ronald Young, says this is unlikely.

“Green Acres would not be a replacement project for the Wetlands Water Supply. It’s something that could be done in addition,” Young said.

For a decade, the Orange County Water District has recycled waste water and distributed it to parks, golf courses and green belts in Santa Ana, Fountain Valley and Costa Mesa.

During winter months, the Irvine Ranch Water District has an excess of reclaimed water that it pays the Orange County Sanitation Districts millions of dollars to handle.

Irvine water officials have maintained that the wetlands project would save the district from that expense by filtering 5 million gallons of water daily through 70 acres of duck ponds that would then empty into a tributary of the bay during non-summer months.

The state Water Quality Control Board on April 19 will review a request for a two-year demonstration of the project.