A water district that provides water and wastewater services for parts of the Conejo Valley and western Ventura County is facing a major problem, but hopes it has found an innovative solution.
Surplus purified water it releases into Malibu Creek doesn’t meet the state’s latest water quality standards. It created a quandary for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District and its sister Triunfo Water & Sanitation District.
"We were facing some new regulations which are the toughest in the entire country, and those regulations were going to cost us more than $100 million to really treat the water, and continue to manage it, in the way we had for 50 plus years, but really provide no new benefit," said Dave Pederson, General Manager of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District.
He said they came up with a plan to not only solve the wastewater problem, but also help the district’s ongoing water supply issue.
"We found a path forward that would achieve the requirements of the news regulations, and at the same time create a new water supply that's drought resistant," said Pederson.
After a decade of planning, construction is now underway on what’s called the Advanced Water Purification Facility.
"We're going to take excess recycled water that typically would have been for non-potable uses, like watering lawns, medians, and golf courses," said Oliver Slosser, Engineering Manager for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District. "We're going to treat it to a higher standard, so that we can serve it as potable (drinking) water."
"The wastewater we're dealing with is more than toilet water. It's rainwater, it's water that comes through the sink to our treatment plant," said Slosser. "It's treated to a nonpotable use standard so that we can water things like lawns. This project will treat it to a much higher degree than the water we drink today."
He said the recycled water won’t go directly to water taps, but will go into the district’s water network.
"This (highly cleansed water) goes into a reservoir, where it remains for a set amount of time, and a certain amount of mixing with other imported sources of water," said Slosser. "Then, it's pulled out of that reservoir, treated again, and served as potable water.
We’re talking to Slosser at the site where the facility is being built, on the 30000 block of Agoura Road, in Agoura Hills. He said they're building a facility that will treat about seven and a half million gallons of water a day, with three distinct purification steps.
To test the idea and to show the public how it works, the district built a small-scale demonstration facility in Calabasas. You can actually see the small plant in operation and taste the water
But building a full-scale plant is a very expensive proposition. It wasn’t an easy decision for the water district’s leaders.
"It's about $466 million, and we were uncertain as a community as to whether we could build a project of that size," said Pederson.
"What really helped is grants and loans," said the water district official. "This is a project that really checks all the boxes in terms of meeting the water policy objectives of the state and federal government."
He added that it will be an important new addition to the district’s limited water supply. The district doesn't have groundwater wells and is reliant on imported water, a source that can be hard hit during droughts.
Slosser talked about how much purified water the project will create.
"Seven and a half million of water come in, and six go out. About a million to a million and a half gallons is a salt water brine that we discharge to a regional pipeline, which goes about a mile out into the ocean. So, we can produce about six million gallons (of water, which will eventually be drinking water) a day."
He said it will be enough to meet about a third of the water district's freshwater supply needs.
Construction of the project is an involved process. It’s expected to take about four years, with the goal of having the facility online in 2030.
