Lake Officials Push Recycling of Water

Aug. 19–Lake Arrowhead’s main water provider is researching a plan to convert wastewater into water the community eventually could use for drinking.

At the same time, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District is forging ahead in its search for other alternatives, including recycling water for irrigation, using wells, buying from other agencies and boosting conservation efforts.

The utility could be forced to eliminate its 80-year reliance on Lake Arrowhead as the community’s main water source. The State Water Resources Control Board concluded this month the district doesn’t have rights to lake water and that the lake is only for recreational use.

The district’s board is challenging the ruling. A hearing date has not been set.

Recycling water for irrigation and other nondrinking uses is common in Southern California. The utility is proceeding with a $13 million project to recycle a million gallons of wastewater a day to use for irrigation — the largest single drain on Lake Arrowhead.

However, recycling wastewater to a higher level and putting it back into the drinking-water supply, called indirect potable reuse, is less common. The Lake Arrowhead Community Services District is proceeding with a $13 million project to recycle a million gallons of wastewater a day to use for irrigation.

Returning treated wastewater to Lake Arrowhead concerns some who have criticized the district for not aggressively seeking more water sources.

Ted Heyck, a critic who was elected to the utility’s board in November, said indirect potable reuse is unproven and raises myriad health concerns. Heyck filed one of the two complaints that led to the state’s decision.

But a water-treatment expert who oversaw a pilot reuse program in Lake Arrowhead a decade ago said the water is safe and can be converted more cheaply than alternatives like pumping water from other sources to Lake Arrowhead.

The utility has hired consultant Tetra Tech to research uses for recycled water, including treating water to a standard acceptable as drinking water.

“Beyond that, there is absolutely no plan” to use indirect potable reuse, spokeswoman April Blakey said.

Ultimately, the community must decide if it wants indirect potable reuse, she said.

The state order barring the utility from using Lake Arrowhead water also prohibits it from filling the lake to maintain its water levels.

“Absolutely nowhere in the United States has indirect potable ever been used in a recreational lake,” said Adrian Lee of Protect Lake Arrowhead Now.

Tom Love, executive manager of engineering for the Inland Empire Utilities Agency in Chino, said Southern California is seeing its drinking-water supply depleted.

“Given all that, development of local water resources and maximizing recycled water and conservation is very important,” he said.

The Lake Arrowhead Country Club, which has a 100-acre golf course, is the local utility’s largest user at more than 84 million gallons of water a year from the lake.

The utility’s plan to convert wastewater should be able to meet the golf course’s needs and lessen reliance on lake water, said Ryan Gross, the district’s engineer.

“That source is always going to be there,” Gross said of recycled water.

The district hopes to have the recycling system running by 2008. On Thursday, the district received $192,400 from the Environmental Protection Agency to advance the program.

The plan calls for a 1 million-gallon storage tank and a 15,000-foot pipeline to the golf course that will carry as much as 3.6 million gallons of recycled water a day. The utility estimates that reclaiming 200 acre-feet of water a year would prevent the lake’s level from dropping by three inches. An acre-foot contains about 325,000 gallons and supplies the needs of a family of four for about two years.

State law requires that recycled water be carried in separate pipes to prevent cross contamination. Gross said none of the recycled water from this project would make its way back into Lake Arrowhead.

The state encouraged the utility to use recycled water for the golf course. But it wasn’t until September that the utility had permission to use treated wastewater, Blakey said.

Heyck said the 700 heaviest users consume half of the water drawn from Lake Arrowhead. The utility has about 7,500 customers total.

“The district needs to produce recycled water,” Heyck said. “They could actually solve the lake-overdraft problem for the next 10 to 15 years without seeking new sources.”

But there are too many unknowns with indirect potable reuse, both Lee and Heyck said.

Indirect potable reuse treats wastewater to meet a higher standard than reclaimed water used for irrigation, according to the American Water Works Association, the nation’s largest organization of water-supply professionals.

The recycled water then is purposely discharged into groundwater or surface water and put back into drinking-water systems, according to the association.

“The technology is there,” said Love, with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency. “In fact, (indirect potable reuse) has been used in LA and Orange counties for over 40 years.”

The biggest challenge, Love said, is the public’s perception.

A 2003 water-district report estimated as much as 1,340 acre-feet of water could be returned to the lake through an indirect potable-reuse program.

The technology is used in rivers across the country, including the Santa Ana, but the utility’s report noted using lakes to store the water is more rare. Heyck and Lee cite a state water-recycling task-force report that warns of the health risks.

The Water Recycling 2030 report the task force released two years ago said environmental studies revealed potential long-term health risks associated with disinfecting chemicals, drugs and personal-care products that are found in recycled water.

“As we expand indirect potable reuse, public concerns increase as well as the uncertainties in our ability to quantify all of the factors,” the state task force said.

Treating water to a standard acceptable to return to it to Lake Arrowhead is a “nice idea,” Heyck said.

“It just doesn’t work,” Heyck said. “It may work tomorrow or may work 10 years from now.”

But a University of California professor who ran the program in Lake Arrowhead in 1993 said concerns are unfounded.

“We made wonderful quality water,” said Michael Wenstrom, a UCLA professor who specializes in water-treatment systems. “We made water that was much purer than the lake.”

The treated water would not go directly into the drinking-water system, he said. Instead, it would be stored in the lake for at least a year where remaining bacteria would decay, he said.

The technology exists to make the treated wastewater meet or exceed drinking-water standards, he said.

In addition, Wenstrom said the indirect potable-reuse program he led in Lake Arrowhead could produce water more cheaply than buying from outside sources.

Treating it would cost $1,000 per acre-foot, he said.

The utility has said it could cost as much as $2,600 an acre-foot to buy water from other agencies and pump it up to Lake Arrowhead.

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