Regardless of Deluge Recycled Wastewater Bolsters CA Water Safety / Public Information Service

UPDATED: To correct name and title. (Wed,. April 5, 10:30 a.m. MT)

By Naoki Nitta for Grist.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Grist-Public News Service Collaboration

Standing under a shady tree drooping with pomegranates late last year, Brad Simmons, a retired metal fabricator who has lived in Healdsburg, California, for 57 years, showed off his backyard orchard. Along with the apple, cherry, and peach trees, he’s packed one pear tree, two lemon trees, and a century-old olive tree into his bungalow’s compact garden.

Of course, the small grove requires plenty of water – an increasingly scarce resource in a state that continues grappling with a historic drought despite recent torrential rains. Yet Simmons, like many of his fellow 12,000 residents, has managed to keep much of this wine country community north of San Francisco looking verdant while slashing the city’s water use in half since 2020.

Healdsburg benefits from an invaluable resource that keeps gardens, trees, and vineyards irrigated: free, non-potable water produced by its wastewater-reclamation facility. The plant recycles 350 million gallons of effluent drained and flushed in the city every year, according to city officials, or slightly more than half its annual water consumption. The reused H₂O is used in irrigation, construction, and other applications that require lower levels of treatment than drinking water. This eases pressure on regional reservoirs and wells while enlisting a wide pool of users in promoting an ethos of conservation, all the while helping manage the amount of treated wastewater discharged into the Russian River.

“I worry about water all the time,” Simmons said as he dragged a hose across his parched grass to an enormous box filled with 275 gallons of reclaimed water. The washer-and-dryer-size containers have become a standard lawn fixture around town. “So this is a real lifeline.”

California’s wastewater projects

Currently, California treats and reuses approximately 728,000 acre-feet, or approximately 18 percent, of the yearly wastewater it produces. But the state has higher ambitions for increasing water security: New goals call for a near threefold increase by 2030 to 2 million acre-feet annually.

Backed by initiatives such as the California Water Board’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund and federal support, including a $750 million grant program, several large projects are in the pipeline. Orange County, for one, is upping capacity on its potable water-purification plant – already the world’s largest – to recycle 130 million gallons of effluent daily. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is eyeing a new $3.4 billion recycling facility that would secure a renewable source of drinking water for 19 million customers in the Los Angeles area.

For smaller communities or those with limited resources, however, a more modest approach can be just as effective, says Anne Thebo, senior researcher at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit water conservation think tank in Oakland, California.

“The local context can really give communities flexibility in developing their water-reuse plans,” she notes. Agricultural communities hold an advantage here, she says, because many forms of irrigation don’t require recycled water that’s clean enough to drink. But all communities have some flexibility in their ability to use treated effluent, because water used to irrigate timber or lawns can be lower in quality than that used for pasture grass like alfalfa or crops that can be eaten raw, such as strawberries and lettuce. Developing a water-recycling plan that suits the needs of the community can diversify a region’s water portfolio and offset overall demand.

Healdburg’s approach

Reuse wasn’t Healdsburg’s main priority when it upgraded the wastewater plant in 2008. The city needed to comply with environmental discharge regulations into the Russian River, which included meeting a higher threshold of nutrient and pathogen removal. The $29.3 million enhancement added pathogen-filtering membranes and UV light to a process that already included filtration and a microbial scrubbing. The additional measure purifies wastewater to near-drinking quality, making it clean enough to release into the 1,485-square-mile watershed.

Still, even at that quality, regional water authorities limit discharge to October through mid-May, when rain typically swells river volumes and reduces the risk of negative impacts. For the remaining months, “we have to figure out what to do with it,” says Healdsburg’s water and wastewater engineer Patrick Fuss. This became the core challenge, and eventual success, of Healdsburg’s program – ensuring that there’s enough demand for that supply.

Although state regulations allow the agricultural use of triple-treated water, they also require permits that outline specific uses, largely to ensure the safety of groundwater and the public. Healdsburg’s original permit included wine-grape irrigation along with residential, landscaping, and industrial use. But finding sufficient takers for the treated water was, for years, a challenge, Fuss says. While the recycled water is free, it’s non-potable and requires separate plumbing and tubing, making for a potentially expensive outlay. Others had unfounded concerns about nitrate, mineral, and chemical residues in the supply tainting their prized grapes.

As a result, treated wastewater continued to cascade into the river until three years ago, when municipal actions driven by the escalating drought pushed the city into full compliance with the discharge rules. The multifaceted approach tightens the amount of wastewater coming into the system through water-conservation measures, while increasing demand for recycled water.

Fuss laid some of the groundwork for that by enlisting vintners through a door-to-door campaign, and engaging potential participants in planning a pipeline extension for easier delivery to them. Meanwhile, the city required the use of reclaimed water in all construction projects, making it available at two fill stations. Finally, as state and regional water restrictions tightened last year, Healdsburg started free residential deliveries of up to 500 gallons per subscriber every week.

Accommodating a diverse range of users is crucial, says Fuss, to balancing supply and demand. “We know we can achieve compliance during a drought, when the influent – the amount of wastewater we need to treat – is reduced because people are conserving, while the demand on the other end is greater,” he says. A wet or normal year would flip the equation, which, without sufficient spigots, would quickly overflow the system.

Managing wastewater discharge quality is actually a major motivator of water-recycling projects in California, says Thebo. And as a rule, developing multiple benefits seems to be the common driver to success. “They’re at the core of the partnerships that form between cities, growers, environmental groups, and the slew of other stakeholders. And they’re also what gets the community and local politicians engaged.”

In Healdsburg, there seems to be no shortage of community engagement. Popularity, in fact, killed the residential delivery program, which at its peak served more than a quarter of city households. “It was [financially] untenable as a long-term strategy,” says water and wastewater superintendent Rob Scates, “but it definitely helped get the word out.” The water is still given away at filling stations, and several hauling companies deliver for a small fee (Simmons reports paying $40 for each biweekly delivery).

The city, however, isn’t taking chances. As extra insurance, it recently broadened permissible uses to include pastures, commercial orchards, and nondairy livestock. And plans are in the works to extend the pipe network – painted purple to denote the non-potable supply – directly into town for municipal irrigation, thanks to a $7 million state grant. “Word’s gotten out that the water quality is very good, and it’s a pretty reliable system,” says Scates. “Now [users] are really hooked on it. They keep us in compliance.”

As an early adopter, Dennis De La Montanya, owner of De La Montanya Vineyards, has no apprehension. He’s been irrigating the grapes that produce his award-winning pinot noir and chardonnay off the purple pipes for years. “It’s been a real boon in terms of water availability. And we don’t put a strain on groundwater resources or the public water system,” he says. “It’s a win-win.”

Tangible outcomes like this make the real value of recycled water apparent, says Thebo. “So many of the challenges of water scarcity can feel intractable. But when people can see solutions that impact their daily life, I think it becomes a point of pride for the community.”

Naoki Nitta wrote this article for Grist.

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Kentucky cities and towns could soon start ramping up water monitoring for PFAS chemicals in response to the latest nationwide limits proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In 2019, Kentucky tested 81 drinking-water systems statewide and found at least one out of eight different PFAS chemicals in more than half.

Betsy Sutherland – the former director of the EPA Office of Science and Technology and current member of the Environmental Protection Network – explained that the EPA now wants to set strict limits on six types of PFAS in water.

“That’s all going to change if EPA finalizes drinking water standards for these chemicals that are similar to what they just proposed,” said Sutherland. “And that’s because they’re all much lower than what Kentucky thought was a problem back in 2019.”

Found in non-stick cookware, fast-food packaging, dental floss, fire-fighting foam and other products, mounting evidence shows PFAS chemicals can accumulate in the body over time and have been linked to cancer and other health problems.

The EPA plans to hold a public hearing on the standards May 4. Members of the public can register to attend and provide comments.

More information is on the agency’s website.

Sutherland said that while the EPA works to finalize the rules, there’s already money available – a total of $5 billion in federal money through the bipartisan Infrastructure Law – for the Commonwealth and other states to start addressing contamination.

She added that beginning in 2025, the agency is also requiring every public water supply system in the country serving 3,300 or more residents to regularly monitor for PFAS compounds.

“So by the end of 2025,” said Sutherland, “we’re going to have much more detailed information on all the drinking-water systems in the country, as to whether they’re contaminated with these chemicals at a level of health concern.”

The Association of State Drinking Water Administrators says while the new standards are a step in the right direction, federal funding won’t be enough to cover construction projects – as well as ongoing increased operation and maintenance costs.

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By Zachary Shepherd and Kelsey Paulus for Kent State News Lab.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan reporting for the Kent State-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

In summer 2022, Garrett, Jenny and their young daughter Katie Betts had no potable water in their home in Vinton County, Ohio. The Betts family’s house was on the community water line, but they lived about 250 feet up a hill, which is too far for the system’s pumps to successfully push the water.

So several times a week, they made a two-hour-long trip to a local water pump to fill the tank in their trunk, which they used to fill a larger, underground storage tank. They’ve hauled water for more than a decade.

They’re far from the only Ohioans struggling to get clean, potable drinking water, says Terri Fetherolf, who runs the department of development in Vinton County. “Some people have to ration water, have to go elsewhere to get water,” Fetherolf said. “They haul it in tanks in the back of their pickup trucks and use [it] out of a 300-gallon tank. Depending on the size of their family, it may last them a few days or a week, and then they have to go haul it again.”

Fetherolf said approximately 1,700 of about 5,000 households in Vinton County depend on wells or water from elsewhere for basic household tasks.

Getting water to Appalachian communities is challenging and expensive, said Joe Pheil, the executive director at the Ohio Rural Water Association. Residents are spread out in small communities among the hills and it’s difficult to pump water up and down. The reason these people and communities are left without reliable drinking water? The cost.

“I’ve been to pretty large systems over on the western side of Ohio, where everything’s really flat … The whole system has one pressure [zone],” Pheil said. “I’ve been to other systems down in the Appalachian area that have 19 different pressure zones in order to pump through the hilly terrain.”

Water providers “would love for everybody to have access to water,” Pheil said, but the logistical challenges would probably lead to high water bills that aren’t affordable for the average household. The median household income in Vinton County was about $45,000 in 2020, compared to about $58,000 statewide.

“They’re having a hard time maintaining the infrastructure in those communities because the costs are going up,” Pheil said. “The residents in those communities can’t afford to pay more money.” There’s one other option – where the federal and state governments step in with funding for water infrastructure, he said.

Since 1987, the Ohio EPA has offered low or zero-interest loans to community water systems to help fund the development of drinking water infrastructure. The state spent $250 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds on wastewater and drinking water infrastructure projects.

But broadly speaking, Pheil said it can be hard to drum up support for grants like this since it can seem like a lot of money for infrastructure that helps relatively few people.

In the meantime, people haul water. The Betts family used a water tank, held down on their flatbed trailer with parallel winch straps. Their storage tank, located on a short but steep gravel drive behind their house, has seen its fair share of problems. They were once left without water during winter for a month.

“It was the middle of winter and I ran out,” Garrett said in 2022. “While I was trying to reprime the pump, my line ended up freezing right at the tank.” After that winter, Garrett buried the tank underground and hasn’t had any issues since, except a few times when the water tank emptied. In those situations, he has to reprime the pump, which takes a few hours.

By summer 2022, hauling water had become a normal part of everyday life, so much so they find themselves not having to keep track of the amount in the tank. Garrett said he typically hauls two to three loads of water every Saturday, which lasts the family a week.

“It’s so close, yet so far” to the community water system down the hill in MacArthur, Garrett said. “They talked about [needing] a pump station or a water tower, and we’ve already offered to donate property to help with that.”

In August, Ohio announced a $799,000 grant to connect 52 households in Garrett Ridge, a region of Vinton County near MacArthur, to drinking water. The project aims to extend Jackson County Water Company’s service lines into Garrett Ridge.

Keith Solomon, deputy manager of Jackson County Water Company, said this grant money is reserved for the engineering and designing of the project, and any remaining funds afterward will be reserved for the actual construction of the project if it moves forward.

“When the engineering and design work is completed we will be able to present a complete project to the funding agencies,” Solomon said via email. “This is a step in the right direction.” The Bettses are holding off on making any permanent, expensive changes to their water system in the hopes these grants will soon lead to potable water in their homes.

Garrett said he heard about efforts to fix local water infrastructure over the years – but he’s “not going to believe it until it’s running through my faucet.”

Zachary Shepherd and Kelsey Paulus wrote this article for Kent State News Lab. This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.

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The annual cleaning of acequias in northern New Mexico gets underway in earnest next week, just as a filmmaker debuts a documentary about their past, present and future.

Arcie Chapa, manager, Multi-Media Services, University of New Mexico Center for Regional Studies and a filmmaker, has created the hour-long documentary: “Acequias: The Legacy Lives On.” She said the hand-built irrigation ditches have enriched the Land of Enchantment since 16th-century Spanish settlers arrived, with many established by the Pueblo Tribes long before. While some stretches are drying up, prompting fears of their extinction, Chapa believes unified communities can help protect the waterways for future generations.

“My dream is that this film somehow brings communities together – because climate change, if we don’t start now, climate change is going to force us to become more mutualistic,” she said.

The Taos Valley Acequia Association has multiple events starting this Friday in which farmers and volunteers will conduct spring cleaning prior to water being released. Two free screenings of the documentary will be held at Santa Fe’s Jean Cocteau theater today and tomorrow (3/21 and 3/22) with additional screenings in Albuquerque next month.

Chapa believes it has been standing-room only for early showings of the documentary because people are hungry to learn more about the acequias and their self-governed history.

“If you are part of an acequia, you have to be a part of that community whether you like each other or not. When it’s cleaning day, you go out and clean it. You go out and take care of your section of the acequia that runs through your property,” she said.

Most of New Mexico’s acequias are concentrated in the upper valleys around smaller rivers and watersheds but some stem from larger rivers, not only providing water for agriculture but also miles of adjacent recreational trails. Chapa hopes the film serves as an inspiration to people to keep them flowing.

“If there’s water in the San Luis Mountains at the headwaters of the Rio Grande, then there will be water in the acequias, so we need to protect this infrastructure. It’s like one of the people said, ‘It’s the most important infrastructure that we have in New Mexico,’ ” she said.

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