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San Diego’s Pure Water Sewage Recycling System Ready for Construction With All Hurdles Cleared

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby David Garrick

San Diego is ready to start building the long-awaited Pure Water sewage recycling system, now that city officials have resolved litigation that delayed the project 18 months and increased its estimated cost to $5 billion, city officials say.

Pure Water will boost San Diego’s water independence by recycling 83 million gallons of treated sewage into potable drinking water by 2035.

All regulatory permits have been secured and construction bids are being opened and analyzed for the 10 projects that will make up Pure Water phase one, a large treatment facility slated to open in 2025 near Miramar that will be connected to many miles of pipeline in the northern part of the city.

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Remove Your Lawn the Healthy Way

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The day has come to replace your thirsty, water guzzling grass. Before you remove it, plan your process carefully to leave only healthy living soil as the foundation for a beautiful, thriving new landscape.

Don’t just turn off your irrigation and let your grass turn brown as it dies off. Healthy microbes in your soil will die off along with the lawn. You want to work with those microbes to help create healthy soil for your new plants.

Instead, keep your grass moist until you remove it. It’s also a lot easier to remove fresh, moist grass than to try and pry out dead dry grass and weeds in rock hard, dry soil.

Stay cool and save healthy microbes

Remove your old turf in a way that preserves valuable soil microbes. Photo: Water Authority

Remove your old turf in a way that preserves valuable soil microbes. Photo: San Diego County Water Authority

It’s tempting to remove your lawn through solarizing. Solarizing is sometimes used as a way to remove grass without chemical treatment. Instead, a covering such as a heavy black plastic tarp is placed over the grass. Sunlight heats the covering, which broils and kills the lawn through high temperatures. This heat also kills existing healthy microbes you need for healthy soil. It’s possible to artificially replace them with compost, but you need to invest in a lot of compost to restore the good microbes when grass is killed off and removed with this method.

When soil is solarized, it’s sterilized. It remains like this for weeks. Worse, it really doesn’t do much good. Opportunistic weeds move in quickly to try and take over the ground. These weeds don’t grow from existing seeds in the soil. These have usually been killed off. But without any competition, new weeds can arrive in a flash, and nothing prevents them from taking over.

Stay loose

If you use heavy equipment to remove your old turf, the equipment’s weight will compact your soil underneath. You need to avoid this. Minimize the use of heavy equipment and use walk-behind equipment with hand tools where possible. Use a tractor or scraper only where necessary.

Avoid tilling your soil. Tilling soil breaks up and kills your soil microbes. Without the microbes, you’re guaranteed to have those weeds pop up for a long time until new soil microbes develop.

Protect your trees planted in areas where the grass is removed. The key is not to damage their roots. Heavy equipment can destroy roots established by a healthy shade tree. Steer clear of the canopy area under the tree’s branches. Its root structure extends all the way out to the drip line at the edge of the leaves. Irrigate your trees generously during the removal process to help minimize root shock.

Save landscape trees from shock

Creating a DIY self-watering bucket will help prevent landscape trees from going into shock after surrounding turf is removed. remove your lawn

Creating a DIY self-watering bucket will help prevent landscape trees from going into shock after surrounding turf is removed.

When your new sustainable landscaping is installed, your previously existing trees may go into shock when irrigation is reduced overall in your garden. While it’s one of your watersmart landscaping goals, keep the trees watered during the first year after your grass is removed.

A good way to hand water your trees: Punch holes in a five-gallon plastic bucket. Fill the bucket, and set it down at the edge of the tree canopy, and let the water slowly seep into the ground. Repeat the process three to four times to water your beautiful mature trees. This mimics the natural rainfall Mother Nature provides.

This article is part of a year-long series inspired by the 71-page Sustainable Landscapes Program guidebook. The Water Authority and its partners also offer other great resources for landscaping upgrades, including free WaterSmart classes at WaterSmartSD.org.

San Diego Seeks Public Input on Plan to Produce 50% of Water Locally by 2045

/in , , /by /10 News San Diegoby Mark Saunders

The City of San Diego plans to develop more than half of its water locally under a plan introduced by Mayor Todd Gloria.

The plan intends to develop more than 50% of the city’s locally by 2045. A major factor in this goal will be the city’s Pure Water recycling program, which purifies recycled water to be used as safe drinking water. The project is expected to be fully implemented by the end of 2035 and have the capacity to create 83 million gallons of water daily.

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Actually, Pure Water Will Quench Half of San Diego’s Drinking Needs, City Says

/in , , /by /Voice of San Diego by Andrew Keatts, Megan Wood and MacKenzie Elmer Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

San Diego announced Tuesday that the system it’s building to purify wastewater well enough for drinking will provide enough water to cover half its population. That’s a significant increase over previous messaging that touted the Pure Water program would cover one third of the city’s water supply by 2035.

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OMWD’s 2021 Fourth-Grade Poster Contest Now Accepting Entries

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Encinitas, Calif. — Fourth-grade students living or attending school in Olivenhain Municipal Water District’s service area are invited to enter its 28th annual poster contest. The contest is held in participation with other North County water agencies, and will accept entries until April 5. This year’s theme is “Love Water, Save Water.”

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Earn up to $75 for Fixing a Leak During the Entire Month of March

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To assist customers with costs associated with leak repairs and to help conserve our most precious resource – water, Sweetwater Authority is offering rebates of up to $75 for repairs made in March 2021. The special month-long rebate is in celebration of the national Fix a Leak Week, which serves as an annual reminder to check household plumbing fixtures and irrigation systems for leaks.

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Water Authority Board Supports Regional Potable Reuse Projects

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February 25, 2021 – The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors today unanimously approved a formal resolution reaffirming its longstanding support for potable reuse and water recycling projects developed by local member agencies across the region.

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Water Authority Board Supports Regional Potable Reuse Projects

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The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors today unanimously approved a formal resolution reaffirming its longstanding support for potable reuse and water recycling projects developed by local member agencies across the region.

“Projects such as Pure Water San Diego, Pure Water Oceanside and the East County Advanced Water Purification Project are critical to the continued development of local water sources that help sustain the region’s 3.3 million residents and $245 billion economy,” said Water Authority Board Chair Gary Croucher. “The Water Authority has long supported water reuse and recycling projects, and we will continue to collaborate with member agencies in developing these vital local resources.”

Water supply diversification

For more than two decades, the Water Authority has promoted the advancement of water recycling and reuse in San Diego County as part of the region’s water supply diversification and reliability strategy.

The agency has sponsored and supported legislation to speed the development of potable reuse regulations in California, and has worked as an active member of the WateReuse Association to help shape the statutory and regulatory framework for potable reuse in the state. And Water Authority investments in high-priority, highly reliable water from the Colorado River support the development of local resources by delivering a low-cost baseload of water that can be recycled and repurified.

Potable reuse project funding

In addition, the Water Authority has advocated for robust funding in state bond measures, including seeking the inclusion of up to $500 million to expedite potable reuse and advanced water treatment projects in a legislative bond measure targeted for the November 2022 ballot. The Water Authority also helped secure nearly $500 million for local projects from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in 2019 and 2020, and most of that money was for potable reuse.

Potable reuse relies on advanced treatment technologies to produce a high-quality drinking water that is locally controlled, drought-resilient, and reduces wastewater ocean discharges. Every gallon of recycled or repurified water reduces the need to import or develop other supplies.

Recycled water, potable reuse projects under construction

Approximately 33,000 acre-feet of recycled water is expected to be reused within the Water Authority’s service area annually by 2025. The volume is expected to continue growing as new and expanded potable reuse plants come online. They are projected to produce more than 112,000 acre-feet per year of new drinking water supplies by 2045, enough to meet nearly 18% of the region’s future water demand.

Two of the first three potable reuse projects are now under construction in San Diego County:

A third project, the East County Advanced Water Purification Program, a combined effort by the City of El Cajon, Padre Dam Municipal Water District, the County of San Diego, and the Helix Water District, is in the design/pre-construction phase.

Develop a Mulch Master Plan

/in , , /by /Water News Network

How much mulch does your landscaping plan need? To develop your mulch master plan and answer this question, you first need to understand the job it will perform in different areas of your watersmart landscaping plan.

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Let Nature Be Your Guide: Compost vs. Mulch

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You may not know the difference between compost and mulch, but your landscape soil does. Compost and mulch represent two different soil treatments with different advantages when used in a watersmart landscape plan.

Compost is made of organic matter such as food scraps, landscape debris, or livestock manure that have already been partially consumed and mostly decomposed by microorganisms. You cannot tell the original source of compost. Good quality compost brings the helpful OWL formula of oxygen, water, and life together in one package. It is used to amend your landscape soil by adding valuable nutrients it may be missing.

Mulch can be either organic or inorganic material that covers soil. Unlike compost, it’s not worked into the soil itself. Another difference is that the original recycled debris source of mulch is often identifiable. Mulch can be made from organic sources (grass clippings, leaf and yard litter, shredded wood trimmings) or inorganic sources such as gravel or decomposed granite (DG). Mulch is a soil topping.

Healthy, biologically diverse mulch contains microbes with the ability to “knit” the organic material together, forming a thick blanket. Mulch covers and protects the soil and plant roots from temperature swings, retains moisture by slowing down evaporation from the surface of the soil; and keeps weeds from sprouting by reducing sunlight penetration to the soil surface.

Top Tips for Using Compost

Compost the right way, including using compost as mulch to prevent erosion and help soil filter pollution. Photo: Ben Kerckx/Pixabay

Compost can be purchased, or it can be homemade. The compost-making process, or composting, involves creating the optimal conditions for the microbes to do their transformative work.

When compost looks like soil, you can work it directly into the soil. When compost is more coarse or has visible bits of the original materials, it is more likely used on top of the soil instead of as an incorporated soil amendment worked in.

Compost works in several ways. The compost itself contains particles that improve soil structure. Next, as compost decomposes in the soil, it encourages the formation of soil macroaggregates. These macroaggregates are composed of existing soil particles and decomposed organic matter, which combine to create a more stable and better functioning soil structure.

Top Tips for Using Mulch

Mulch builds soil structure over time and holds in moisture. Photo: Monsterkoi/Pixabay compost

Mulch builds soil structure over time and holds in moisture. Photo: Monsterkoi/Pixabay

Mulch always sits on the surface of your soil. It is never worked in. Recycled organic material is the most effective type of mulch because it builds soil structure over time. It creates a durable, protective barrier.

The smaller the debris pieces are, and the more mixed the organic pieces are, such as leaves with wood chips, the faster it decomposes. When building your soil, small mixed mulch is best. When compost is made from course materials like decomposed granite, you can also apply it to the top of your soil as mulch.

Artificial and inorganic mulches (DG, gravel, rubber chips) are mainly decorative. They do not contribute to soil life or plant health. They are best used in limited applications, such as creating natural pathways.

To learn more about your soil, sign up for Soil & Site Assessments virtual workshop.

This article is part of a year-long series inspired by the 71-page Sustainable Landscapes Program guidebook. The Water Authority and its partners also offer other great resources for landscaping upgrades, including free WaterSmart classes at WaterSmartSD.org.