CITIZENS OK USING TREATED EFFLUENT PURIFIED OUTFLOW GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOLF LINKS PARKS, LOWERED TABLE.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Residents supported the idea of improving the Palmdale sewage treatment plant's purification process and using the cleaned-up effluent to water golf courses and parks and to replenish a declining local underground water table.

About two dozen people who attended a public workshop hosted by Los Angeles County Sanitation District officials indicated during discussion groups that they favored recycling the Antelope Valley's sewage into usable water.

``There's a lot of water that's not being used that's available,'' participant Michele Jardell said.

Sanitation district officials are under orders from state water-quality officials to reduce the nitrogen in the sewage plant outflow and simultaneously to devise plans to expand the sewage treatment plant to meet expected population growth.

The workshop was organized as a way to test public opinion as officials prepare an expansion project to accommodate projected population growth until 2025 as well as to making the outflow clean enough to irrigate crops or landscaping or to soak into the ground to raise well levels.

``It's not something you want to do as an agency in a vacuum,'' county spokesman Don Avila said.

Some participants favored extending the use of treated effluent to vegetable crops - beyond the alfalfa and orchards it is watering now - though Palmdale resident Marta Williamson said she didn't favor it personally.

``There's an ick factor and that's going to be a problem for a lot of people,'' said Williamson. ``Everybody decided they did approve of recycling. That was important. Groundwater recharging is important.''

The response was different than that encountered by Los Angeles officials four years ago, when an outcry erupted to a plan derided as the ``toilet-to-tap'' project: take treated effluent from a Sepulveda Basin treatment plant and pipe it to the Hansen Dam spreading grounds to percolate into the northeast San Fernando Valley's underground water table.

Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn killed the $55 million project after he was elected in 2001.

But purifying sewage and letting it soak into the ground - which naturally filters out bacteria and other impurities - has gone on elsewhere for years. In the San Gabriel Valley, about 20 percent of well water is now purified effluent, county officials say.

In Orange County, officials broke ground this year on a $487 million project, slated to open in 2007 to purify enough sewage water to serve 140,000 families. Orange County officials said an education campaign - using neighborhood meetings, tours and a videotape narrated by PBS personality Huell Howser - drew support for the idea from residents and politicians.

A draft environment impact report on the Palmdale plan is due out next spring. Officials said they didn't know how much the project would cost but said county policy is to finance expansion projects by developer fees on the new homes they will be needed to serve.

Existing homeowners' annual sewer charges are already going up from $71 to $160 by July 2006. That is expected to pay for cleaning up an existing nitrate contamination problem in underground water east of Air Force Plant 42 and to do some upgrades to the treatment process.

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com