Marking another step forward in building drought‑resilient water supplies for Californians, representatives of the State Water Resources Control Board and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board joined the City of Santa Monica November 17 to celebrate the opening of the city’s Sustainable Water Infrastructure Project (SWIP). The funding partners celebrated this first-of-its-kind facility that will recycle about 1,680 acre‑feet of municipal wastewater and stormwater per year - enough to serve more than 5,000 households, or about 10% of Santa Monica’s annual water supply. “The project’s innovative approach to reuse multiple sources of local water will not only help the city achieve long-term water self-sufficiency, it is also expected to divert over 100 million gallons of pollution away from Santa Monica Bay each year and help the city meet regulations the regional board established to reduce bacteria and trash pollution,” said David Nahai, vice chair of the Los Angeles Water Board. The $96 million infrastructure project, which received nearly $85 million in funding from the State Water Board and a recycling permit from the regional board, contains two advanced water treatment facilities, one new and one upgraded. The facilities will treat a combination of municipal wastewater, stormwater, dry-weather runoff and brackish groundwater to generate non-potable water for irrigation, toilet flushing, and injection into the local groundwater basin. “The City of Santa Monica’s new water infrastructure project is an exciting example of innovative efforts coming online now to improve our drought resilience and reduce the impacts of a hotter, drier climate,” said Nichole Morgan, member of the State Water Board. “Thanks to ongoing financial assistance from the state revolving funds and initiatives like Proposition 1, California’s water supplies are benefitting now from capital-intensive projects that took years to fund, plan and build.” |