City to Study Alternatives to Filtration Plants

Homeowners fighting the construction of water filtration plants at Encino and Stone Canyon reservoirs have persuaded city officials to examine a new purification technology that could cut costs and avoid massive building.

City Council members Mike Feuer and Cindy Miscikowski said Tuesday they favor the alternative if tests show that ultraviolet light will make the water safe to drink for 500,000 residents of the San Fernando Valley and Westside.

“We can’t leave any stone unturned in looking at anything that meets the test for water quality for the least possible cost,” Miscikowski said.

State health officials were not impressed with the latest gambit in a battle that has been waged for years over the proposed construction of the $170-million plants.

“We are skeptical that that’s going to accomplish what we need,” said Cliff Charpe, head of field operations for the state health department.”I don’t think there’s any clear and strong evidence that you can depend on UV to protect you 100%.”

Feuer will lead a delegation to Sacramento on Dec. 17 to ask state health officials to consider the new ultraviolet technology as an alternative to direct filtration currently required by state rules.

“Ultraviolet is a technology that works,” said Barbara Hand of the Encino Hillside Coalition, a group of 200 residents who live north and east of the Encino Reservoir.

“It will satisfy what needs to be done at a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time,” Hand said.

Water in the city’s open reservoirs in the Santa Monica Mountains is subject to contamination by fecal matter from birds and animals and rain runoff from surrounding land. At times, contamination has forced the city to shut down the reservoirs as a drinking-water supply.

Filtration plants use chemical disinfectants as well as screening processes.

The less costly ultraviolet system uses high-intensity light to disinfect the water. DWP officials also are not sure the ultraviolet light would work, but they say an exemption from filtration requirements would allow them to consider other, less costly disinfectant systems as well, including treatment with ozone gas, said Robert Yoshimura, project director on the filtration plants.

DWP officials said scrapping the filtration projects in favor of disinfectant systems could cut the costs from $170 million to $30 million or $40 million.

The structure needed would also be much smaller. Proponents say the ultraviolet system would be as small as a minivan.

The Encino filtration project includes a 15-million-gallon concrete storage tank and large treatment plant.

“It [UV] would be a much less expensive and less intrusive alternative,” Feuer said, adding he would only endorse the change if the UV system can be shown to meet water quality standards.

Yoshimura said the technology has only been used in other cities to treat sewage for disposal and has never been tried on drinking water.

For that reason, Yoshimura said the DWP is continuing to pursue the filtration plant projects while talks are held on the alternative proposal.

A public hearing on the draft environmental impact report on the Encino project is scheduled tonight at 7 at the Encino Community Center.