NO PROBLEMS IN AREAS USING TREATED SEWAGE CAN VALLEY OVERCOME 'YUCK' FACTOR?

Byline: Michael Coit and Harrison Sheppard Staff Writers

The benefits of recharging groundwater with recycled wastewater rather than sending it down rivers to the Pacific Ocean have been known for decades, proponents say.

A dozen water recycling projects are in place across the state, according to the Water Reuse Association of California. But most of them use the water for industrial or irrigation purposes, and not human consumption.

The Forebay Groundwater Recharge Project, opened in 1962 near the Whittier Narrows Dam, is the region's oldest ``toilet-to-tap'' site. It recharges the central and west basins with 50,000 acre-feet annually.

A second one has been operated in Orange County for about a decade, which takes water from the Santa Ana River discharged by communities upstream from Anaheim and spreads it into the ground.

``It's just clear to everybody in the water business that we don't have a choice,'' said Tom Dawes, project manager for the Orange County Water District, which is planning a 110,000-acre-foot project that will serve 2.3 million residents.

``These projects can help stretch our resources,'' he added.

Studies commissioned by the Los Angeles County Sanitation District in the mid-1980s found no ill health effects to residents using the Montebello water in the short term, according to David Spath, chief of drinking water and environmental management for the state Department of Health Services.

``The essence of it was there weren't any health effects that were obvious,'' Spath said. ``Recognizing that on the long-term basis, it was very difficult to do an epidemiological study in that type of environment in Southern California with the mobility and everything else to really get a picture where you could say with 100 percent surety that the results were unequivocal.''

Nationally, there are water reclamation projects in at least four other states, according to the Water Reuse Association. Three - in St. Petersburg, Fla., Centreville, Va., and El Paso, Texas - provide water for human consumption, with no health problems reported.

Still, water recycling proposals elsewhere in California have been marginally successful at best.

Residents of San Diego convinced the City Council to kill funding for a 'toilet-to-tap'' project last year. And a project introduced in 1995 in Irwindale came under fierce opposition from residents as well as the Miller Brewing Co., which had a plant downstream from the project.

After an intense lobbying effort and much legal wrangling, the project was scaled down and located downstream from the Miller plant.

Forest Tennant, a former West Covina mayor and a physician with a doctorate in public health, formed a citizens committee to fight the project. Tennant said he opposed it not because of the idea of reclaiming wastewater, but because of problems with specifics, such as a shallow and contaminated groundwater table and inadequate technology.

``You have to take a look at each project individually and see whether the situation makes common sense,'' Tennant said. The East Valley project's plan to filter the water more than 500 feet down, and wait five years before withdrawing it ``sounds like a good project,'' he said.

Ultimately, rising costs for imported drinking water could drive the demand for more projects that use recycled wastewater. Costs have discouraged all but the largest projects, but the gap is narrowing, making recycled wastewater more attractive.

The Metropolitan Water District, for instance, charges agencies in its six-county service area $431 for an acre-foot of drinking water. The cost 10 years ago was $230 an acre-foot, MWD officials said.

The East Valley project's cost is about $500 per acre-foot.

``If you look at it in terms of the long-term price of water and having to buy water in the future, it looks increasingly cost-effective,'' said Frances Spivy-Weber of the Mono Lake Committee.

``We better get used to it. This is a way to drought-proof the economy.''

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Gregg Miller/Staff Artist