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In yet another step to further protect against drought, the city of Carlsbad unveiled expansion efforts of its recycled water plant on Wednesday. Along with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld, Carlsbad Mayor Matt Hall touted the $37 million project.

Blumenfeld also announced the EPA is distributing more than $182 million, including the Carlsbad project, throughout California to invest in statewide improvements for water infrastructure.

Hopping from one rock to another, Sue Ann Arens led her two boxers one recent afternoon up and down the uneven slopes of Folsom Lake, which years of drought have stripped bare. Their daily walks along Sacramento’s backyard reservoir had become a hike through the lake bed.

Well-worn trails threaded through clusters of brush in areas usually covered by water.By the next afternoon, Arens had to change course. A morning storm had submerged part of her trail. In the distance, water rippled over an island that had surfaced last year when the lake hit bottom.

 

In eastern Riverside County, almost to the Arizona border, is the Palo Verde Valley, where scorching summers, mild winters and access to Colorado River water have made it an agricultural hot spot, especially for alfalfa.

Some of the hay crop grown in the valley is used for domestic cattle and the rest is sold to other countries where land or water shortages preclude industrial-scale growing operations. The same is true in the Coachella Valley, the high desert of San Bernardino County and other Inland growing areas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today a $30 million loan to the city of Carlsbad to expand its water recycling facility.

 

The 1 percent federal loan will be coupled with $7 million from other funding sources to pay for the project, which will nearly double the plant’s capacity to generate water for non-potable uses like irrigation and industrial

uses.

The idea of turning waste water into drinking water is gaining momentum among government bodies in Southern California and across the nation, but regulators question how and when the concept will become palatable to the widespread public.

 

Local, state and federal officials discussed the environmental, health and financial impact of the sometimes derisively called “toilet to tap” technology, or recycled water reuse systems, during a panel session Tuesday at Renaissance Long Beach Hotel, as drought conditions and population concerns are pressing public agencies to come up with cost-effective and safe solutions to water supply problems.