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Dry San Diego to look to sewers as water source
2014 Nov 19, 12:24am 7,134 views 22 comments
by zzyzzx follow (9)
Comments 1 - 22 of 22 Search these comments
HydroCabron
2014 Nov 19, 12:34am
I am not drinking clean water processed from organic waste.
I insist on bitumen in my aquifers instead!
zzyzzx
2014 Nov 19, 12:37am
I am not drinking clean water processed from organic waste.
There is really nothing wrong with drinking recycled water!
RWSGFY
2014 Nov 19, 2:13am
Dry? When I visit my relatives there I can't sleep because every half an hour some sprinkler system comes on and goes for 15-20 minutes. Than another and another. It seems like some neighbors are watering their landscaping 2-3 times per night. When I asked if they receive nasty letters from their water district with treats of huge fines for exceeding some arbitrary daily limits on water consumption like we do in SFBA they responded with a blank stare.
I am not drinking clean water processed from organic waste.
There is really nothing wrong with drinking recycled water!
Adding to the paranoia - are you ruling out undiscovered virus and other pathogens. What is the efficiency of filtration and what is the size cut-off?
Coming soon: Nestle's certified prion-free bio water.
Carlsbad is doing what all the other sane people on earth do, get a desalinization plant. Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Dubai, all big cities in a desert on salt water with plenty of water.
You'll be drinking in everyone else's drugs that have been filtered through their kidneys. Don't think pharma is going to sit by and let that happen without making money on it.
curious2
2014 Nov 19, 4:56am
people should only drink purified sewage from the "right" people.
I think such "holy water" is more of a Catholic thing, though the Baptists are said to bathe in it.
Carlsbad is doing what all the other sane people on earth do, get a desalinization plant.
Desalinization is good, and New Renter pointed out the potential for use in agriculture, but recycling waste water is good too. NASA astronauts have been drinking recycled pee for decades, without complaint, and some live into their 90s. We need to treat the waste water anyway, so recycling it can be cheaper than desalination. One concern though is with ever more people on toxic pills, the drugs accumulate in the water and are increasingly difficult to remove.
New Renter
2014 Nov 19, 7:10am
Carlsbad is doing what all the other sane people on earth do, get a desalinization plant.
Desalinization is good
Depends on how much it costs:
Desalinated water typically costs about $2,000 an acre foot...
..The authority will pay from $2,014 to $2,257 an acre foot for the water, depending on how much it buys. The agency, which provides water to 3.1 million people in San Diego County, signed a 30-year contract agreeing to buy at least 48,000 acre feet a year.
With that guarantee, Poseidon and its investors were able to sell bonds to finance the project. The company will be guaranteed a rate of return between 9 and 13 percent, depending on operating costs.
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-largest-ocean-desalination-plant-goes-up-near
9-13% guaranteed for the next 30 years? Damn, why bother with mortgages?
Some numbers to keep in mind:
Poseidon's Carlsbad RO Desalination Plant:
Cost of Plant $1B dollars (fixed location)
Size of plant (~45,000 sqft)
Cost to produce water: 0.28 cents/gallon ($900/acre foot)
Cost to SD Water Authority: 0.64 cents/gallon (~$2100/acre foot)
Energy used: 38MW/day
Production 50M gallons/day (100M gallons input)
WaterFX's Panoche pilot Solar Desalination Plant:
Cost of plant $1M (Panoche pilot plant, moveable)
Size of plant: ~6500 sqft
Cost to produce water: 0.14 cents/gallon ($450/acre foot)
Cost to local farmers: unknown
Energy used: :extremely low" (electricity is needed to pump fluids)
Production 65k gallons/day (~70k gallons input)
These WaterFX plants are modular and scalable. Its a good assumption capital costs would drop considerably with scale but even assuming they don't WaterFX can produce more water for less than 1/10th the capital cost and 1/2 the production cost compared to Posiedon's Carlsbad RO plant. The solids generated from the WaterFX desalination can further be sold to help boost those numbers. The waste water from the Carlsbad plant OTOH is considered an environmental hazard.
Given the solar desalination tech is adopted from photothermal power generating technology it may be possible to modify the design to also generate electricity as well as fresh water. That would make such plants useful in wet years as well as make them less of a drain on local power grids The plants are also moveable so they can be relocated as necessary to meet demand.
As to recycling, that is one of the main sources of water for solar desalination. Since the water is a distillate there is no concern of biological contaminants (unless perhaps the contaminant is a organic solvent) but a simple carbon filter should take care of that.
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-largest-ocean-desalination-plant-goes-up-near
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Solar-desalination-plant-5326024.php
Tenpoundbass
2014 Nov 19, 8:16am
I'm going to start conserving water so Californians wont have to drink their own piss.
No honest injun I am!
curious2
2014 Nov 19, 8:24am
Depends on how much it costs
You keep writing about the cost of desalinated water, but you seem never to mention the full cost of "free" water, e.g. CA's latest bond issue. Building all that tunnel/pipe/canal infrastructure uses a lot of energy too, e.g. bulldozers and many miles of concrete, all of which requires maintenance and security.
Strategist
2014 Nov 19, 9:53am
Sewage is 99% water.
It's the other 1% that turns people off, even though all water in existence has at some time in history splashed around in shit.
Rin
2014 Nov 19, 10:00am
Sewage is 99% water.
It's the other 1% that turns people off, even though all water in existence has at some time in history splashed around in shit.
Ignorance is bliss which is why if Poland Springs starts to put processed sewage into their product line, I don't want to know.
I'm in the water engineering biz and have been following these projects for years. San Diego is one of my largest clients. They had a choice to spend billions upgrading their old "Advanced Primary" sewage treatment plant at Point Loma to meet Federal Regulations just to dump clean treated water into the ocean. Or they could spend that money (and a bit more) to recycle that water with this new plan. I think it's the right call.
Desalination is great too. I live in Carlsbad and surf just south of where they are building the new plant. I believe desalination will get cheaper and cheaper thanks to the Military Industrial Complex saving humanity once again.
http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2013/03/22-2.htm#.VG1N7PldV8E
IRT to the recycled sewage, most of Southern California gets our water from the Colorado river. There are over 200 major communities and sewage treatment plants upstream in multiple states dumping their treated effluent into the river before we get it. So we are already drinking treated sewage.
HydroCabron
2014 Nov 19, 10:22am
Reverse osmosis plus UV sterilization at the final stage - pretty much mandatory if the public is going to go for this - means the water will be far cleaner than any bottled water, unless the bottled water company just draws it from the tap.
Does 'Enron by the Bay' finally have it right this time? You vill drink this vater! Big bucks for the bottled water industry. Rest rooms will have outlets to filter systems. OMG
New Renter
2014 Nov 19, 12:38pm
Depends on how much it costs
You keep writing about the cost of desalinated water, but you seem never to mention the full cost of "free" water, e.g. CA's latest bond issue. Building all that tunnel/pipe/canal infrastructure uses a lot of energy too, e.g. bulldozers and many miles of concrete, all of which requires maintenance and security.
Those costs are independent of the source of the water and will still exist with or without desalinated water sources.
Even the Carlsbad plant is expected to only provide 7% of San Diego's water needs AT BEST. You can bet if electricity prices go up and/or when the rains return that percentage will go down.
New Renter
2014 Nov 19, 12:42pm
Reverse osmosis plus UV sterilization at the final stage - pretty much mandatory if the public is going to go for this - means the water will be far cleaner than any bottled water, unless the bottled water company just draws it from the tap.
The water will be chlorinated anyway.
New Renter
2014 Nov 19, 12:48pm
Desalination is great too. I live in Carlsbad and surf just south of where they are building the new plant. I believe desalination will get cheaper and cheaper thanks to the Military Industrial Complex saving humanity once again.
http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2013/03/22-2.htm#.VG1N7PldV8E
If these new filters prove cost effective this could be a gamechanger for RO.
I look forward to developments.
zzyzzx
2014 Nov 19, 10:40pm
We need to treat the waste water anyway
We do, and it exits the waste water treatment plant cleaner than the water it goes into.
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/27425692/dry-san-diego-to-look-to-sewers-as-water-source
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Acknowledging California's parched new reality, the city of San Diego has embraced a once-toxic idea: turning sewer water into drinking water.
The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to advance a $2.5-billion plan to recycle wastewater, the latest example of how California cities are looking for new supplies amid a severe drought.
Each of the nine council members effusively praised the effort before the vote as a way to make San Diego less dependent on imported water and insulated from drought.
"We're at the end of the pipeline," said Councilman Scott Sherman. "We have a real problem getting water down here."
Such recycling, called toilet-to-tap by critics, has suffered an image problem that industry insiders call "the yuck factor."
San Diego, a city of 1.4 million people that imports 85 percent of its water from the Colorado River and Northern California, has slowly warmed to the idea. A 2012 survey by the San Diego County Water Authority showed that nearly three of four residents favored turning wastewater into drinking water, a major shift from one of four in a 2005 survey.
"The drought puts a finer point on why this is so necessary," Mayor Kevin Faulconer said. "Droughts are unfortunately a way of life in California, so we have to be prepared. This helps us to control our own destiny."
The plan calls to initially recycle 15 million gallons by 2023 and 83 million gallons a day by 2035, about one-third of the city's water supply. It enjoys broad support from business groups and environmental advocates.
The Orange County Water District, which serves 2.4 million people in California, plans to boost production of recycled water next year from 70 million gallons to 100 million gallons a day. It has reused wastewater for drinking since 2008 through treatment that includes sending water through ground basins.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves 1.8 million people in the San Francisco Bay area, decided in September to pursue construction of facilities that it says could lead to turning wastewater into drinking water for Sunnyvale and western Santa Clara County.
Still, it remains rare to turn sewage to drinking water. The WateReuse Association, a group of agencies behind the efforts, counts only 10 projects nationwide, including El Paso, Texas, and Fairfax County, Virginia. Two Texas cities, Wichita Falls and Big Spring, started projects within the past two years.
On Tuesday, the San Diego council ratified an agreement between the mayor and four environmental groups - San Diego Coastkeeper, Surfrider Foundation, Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation and San Diego Audubon Society - to ask the Environmental Protection Agency for another reprieve and to commit to the recycled wastewater plan. Unlike Orange County, San Diego plans to send water through a reservoir because it lacks groundwater basins.
Richard Nagel, general manger of the West Basin Municipal Water District, which serves about 900,000 people in Southern California, said he has fielded inquiries from about a half-dozen agencies lately who are interested in recycling wastewater. His agency began in 1995 in response to an earlier drought.
"It's the investment you make for a locally produced, drought-proof water supply," he said.
#environment