Some Want More Aggressive Plan to Purify Waste Water

A proposal to purify waste water and recycle it as tap water for homes drew positive response at a public hearing Tuesday.

“Our analysis shows this is probably the most innovative project to come forth in Orange County in a long time as far as water is concerned,” said Tony Aguilar of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Orange County. He was one of a dozen speakers at the hearing, which drew about 50 people to the Fountain Valley headquarters of the Orange County Water District.

Some even suggested that the project might not go far enough in reclaiming water. And the only real challenge was a question about whether laying the pipeline might interfere with the operations of a golf course in Santa Ana.

Don Schulz of the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group, said the project would be good and suggested a more “aggressive” alternative.

“We would like to see eventually a goal that most or all of the water is recycled,” he said.

Irv Pickler, board member of the water district and chairman of the committee that held the hearing, said the panel has yet to hear any major complaints about the project, which means that it is likely to win approval in the spring.

“We’re trying to get negative input, but we can’t seem to get it,” Pickler said.

The proposed $400-million Groundwater Replenishment System would treat about 40% of the waste water from homes in north and central Orange County and make it clean enough for eventual household use. The purified water would be pumped into the ground-water basin and eventually sent into homes in an area west of a line drawn from Yorba Linda to western Irvine.

Officials of the county water district and the Orange County Sanitation District are proposing the project, saying it would be the largest of its kind in the world and could lead to much wider use of treated waste water, as well as cheaper desalinization of ocean water.

They say the project is needed because the north and central county population, now 2 million, is expected to grow by about 800,000 in the next 20 years. Without the project, the 50 billion additional gallons a year required would have to be imported from the Colorado River and Northern California.

Officials say the project would not raise rates because of savings in energy and water acquisition costs.