Pure water upgrade#
Pure water series#

If you can make a gift in any amount, we’d appreciate the boost. We’ve raised $54,000 so far - more than halfway to our fundraising goal! Orange County now does it, though it filters water through the ground, something the geology in San Diego doesn’t easily allow. That spawned a generation of “purple pipe” systems, named for the color of the separate pipe system that carries recycled water that is OK for irrigation and industry but definitely not drinking.īut the city kept talking about the possibility of making wastewater drinkable. What if, instead of trying to clean up water that was going into the Pacific, it tried to reduce the amount of water being dumped there in the first place?Īt first, this focused on recycling water only so it could be used for irrigation and certain industrial uses – not for drinking. Then, the mid-1980s, the city didn’t reapply in time for a waiver, setting off years of litigation.Īt that point, the city began offering to do something else instead of upgrading Point Loma.

Pure water upgrade#

San Diego, for about a decade, applied for and received those waivers, sparing itself a major upgrade to its still relatively new treatment plant. So the federal government began to allow waivers to the Clean Water Act’s requirements.

“So he and a bunch of other mayors who were similarly situated go to Congress and say, look, we got no truck with the Clean Water Act, but one-size-fits-all doesn’t make it for us San Diego and Anchorage, Alaska, and how about Honolulu, Hawaii – 4,000 miles into the Pacific,” said Ted Bromfield, a former deputy city attorney who represented the city. Estimates to upgrade plant hover at $1 to $2 billion and could take up to take decade. Then-Mayor Pete Wilson also didn’t want to spend a bunch of money improving the plant if it wasn’t causing harm.

The Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant / Photo by Sam Hodgson There’s an old saying for this in the water quality world: The solution to pollution is dilution. City officials also thought they could prove the plant’s discharge wasn’t causing harm to the ocean. Officials argued the Point Loma facility shouldn’t be held to the same standard as one in, say, Saint Louis, which dumps water not into a massive ocean but into the Mississippi River. But, the city argued, this time the tides actually were taking the sewage away. The Point Loma plant only cleaned sewage one way. In 1963, the city and several neighboring cities opened the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, which solved some problems but created others.īy the 1970s, Congress had passed the Clean Water Act and wanted water coming out of wastewater treatment plants to be cleaned up in two different ways.

In the 1930s, there was so much sewage off the coast that it was corroding the hulls of Navy ships and driving away tourists. For years, the city intentionally dumped untreated sewage into San Diego Bay, hoping the tides would take it away. San Diego has long struggled to deal with its sewage problems. That imported water is less and less dependable, thanks to climate change, overuse or stricter environmental regulations.īut the recycling project is perhaps possible only because of compromises made after years of legal wrangling over sewage which, unlike drinkable water, the city has often had too much of. Right now, San Diego is largely dependent on a tiny bit of rain that falls locally, a plant in Carlsbad that makes some ocean water drinkable and a lot of water imported from hundreds of miles away. The project is sold as a major leap for the region’s water supply. Last week, state lawmakers approved a bill meant to end the dispute and get the recycling project, now known as Pure Water, back on track. The latest was a dispute among contractors, labor unions and the city. There have been innumerable hurdles along the way – in the court of public opinion, and in actual court. Now, after years of scientific progress, regulatory wrangling, political ups and downs, and searching for the money, the city is getting ready to put shovels in the ground and get to work on a multi-part, multibillion-dollar project that will eventually provide a third of the city’s drinking water.

Pure water series#

The first stab at recycling wastewater involved a series of ponds in Mission Valley that grew hyacinths, long-rooted plants that gobble up sewage and leave relatively clean water behind. San Diego water officials have looked at turning sewage into drinking water for nearly 40 years. Inside of the North City Pure Water Facility / Photo by Megan Wood

A Brief History of Pure Water’s Pure Drama | Voice of San Diego Close