Water Reliability

By Shawn Dewane

Local Water Reliability and Science and Technology

Local reliability allows for the development of local projects that use science and technology to treat the water to drinking standards and then serve it to the retail customer for their beneficial use. Projects like the Groundwater Replenishment System, built and managed by the Orange County Water District use reverse osmosis to treat wastewater to distilled quality. It is then returned to the earth where retail agencies, like Mesa Water District pump it back out and serve it to you. I recently voted to expand this world renown, largest of its type in the world project to further implement water recycling and local water supply reliability. You can learn more about the GWRS by going here: http://www.gwrsystem.com.

Another type local project is Seawater Desalination. Desal uses the same process, reverse osmosis, to remove the salt and make it ready to drink. Recently, The San Diego County Water made a decision to purchase, at a price fixed for 30 years, 50 million gallons per day of desalinated water from the Poseidon Resources plant in Carlsbad, CA. They are developing their own local resource that will help to stabilize their supply of water and the price the consumers pay.

Ocean Desalination is a logical choice as a component in our water portfolio as it already exists where most of the people live and doesn't require the disruption to the environment required to import water from faraway places.