Running Water

Yesterday was the first real meeting of the South Bay WPCP Master Plan Community Advisory Group. We saw a presentation about the master plan process, mixed a bit in small groups to get to know each other better, and then decided to defer electing two spokespeople until our next meeting in January.

The small group discussion focused on what makes for an effective committee, and then an exploration of everyone’s vision of what the WPCP could be. I was inspired to hear so many participants express the dream of a facility that would be a draw in itself, not only through uses to benefit the public on its 2700 acres of land, but also a treatment plant that would incorporate green building practices and the latest in water treatment technology and become a model for others.

Many other members of the group share my enthusiasm for recycled water, as well. I’m still unclear on the extent to which we will be able to influence the direction of the master plan, but, despite the explicit understanding that the group is not required to reach consensus, I’m encouraged about the direction we seem to be heading already.

I have to hope that you’re not getting your news from my blog (especially given the frequency with which I post) but I wanted to make sure that this piece of news didn’t slip by. The California State Department of Water Resources has announced that 2009 allocations for the State Water Project, of which the SCVWD is a contractor, will be 15% of “normal.” This is an initial allocation, of course, that depends on winter conditions. Last year’s initial allocation was 25%, and rose to 35% after the winter rains. The last time initial allocations were lower was in 1993, when they started off at 10%, but rose to 100% after a good winter. Hope for a good winter.

In other news, the SCVWD board on Tuesday voted 4-3 to raise their salaries by 10%. This sounds like a princely sum, until you read that this brings them up to $260 per meeting. Chair Kamai and Director Sanchez cast two of the no votes, the Mercury story doesn’t say who the third was, but I’d expect it was Director Wilson. Director Sanchez is going to decline the raise, as he has been doing.

Director Kwok voted for the raise this year, changing his tack from last year, saying that higher pay would help bring in new blood. I’m afraid that an extra $23 a meeting isn’t going to do it. To get a real change in the quality of board members would take county supervisor-level salaries. But to get public acceptance of those, the board would also need to accept term limits.

I’m proud of my wastewater treatment plant. I wouldn’t think of naming it after a lousy president. The people running it aren’t looking for a waiver to continue violating federal water treatment guidelines. And it hasn’t been discharging raw sewage on to the streets.

I know it’s probably the definition of un-sexy, but San José is very fortunate in the South Bay Water Pollution Control Plant.

Today was my first meeting of the Community Advisory Group for the Water Pollution Control Plant. Another half of the group met this past Wednesday, and we’ll all be getting together on 1 November.

Today we got a deluxe tour of the plant. Based on Pierluigi’s description of his tour, I was looking forward to the people mover, but our tour was evidently just a notch below the Council tour. We did get to see a lot more than on the regular public tour, about which I’ve already blogged.

Again, the order of the tour differed from the actual order of operations; the raw sewage seems to arrive in the middle of the plant, and follow a very circuitous route around. But we did get to go to the top of the filter building

down into the very loud basement with the sewage pumps

into some of the miles of underground tunnels

and over to the sludge-drying ponds

(that’s twelve feet deep in sludgy goodness.)

As before, the ESD employees giving the tours were very straightforward; there is no sense at all of spin or flack. The tours and the CAG have the stated purpose of building community support for the $2 billion in capital improvements that the plant needs.

My goals in participating in this group are to champion increases in the production and use of recycled water, and to advocate environmental uses for the land surrounding the plant. The Tesla giveaway is seemingly a done deal, but there needs to be some counterweight to the attitude, expressed by Tom McEnery, that “The land set aside is in the buffer area of the Water Pollution Control Plant and clearly unfit for housing or retail uses.” As if those are the only ones that count.

Of course, the CAG has no legal standing, and if City staff or the Council have already decided what the area surrounding the WPCP is going to look like, then there is not a lot that I can do to change that. But developing the new plant Master Plan is a three-year process, so I’ll at least have plenty of opportunity to have my say.

And yours. I applied for a position on this body saying that I, in some way, still represent the nearly 7,000 people who voted for me in June. So let me know what you want to see up there at 700 Los Esteros Rd.

There is a nice article in the NY Times about backyard gleaning, featuring Village Harvest, including a pithy quote from yours truly and, if you know where to look, a photo of my plaid-clad knee.

I’ve been enjoying the Aguanomics blog, which has as its premise that. if water were priced to encourage conservation, that’s what people would do. He’s got a post today about the water district down in Antelope Valley, where directors also seem to run unopposed for years and years, appoint their own successors, and maintain that they’re not politicians.

This morning’s Mercury features an article by Paul Rogers about the Semitropic Water Bank down near Bakersfield, where the SCVWD has been storing water for the past decade. It’s not a true bank, in that we don’t get back the same water that we “deposit.” In years like this one when the District makes a “withdrawal,” it diverts water from the Delta that would have otherwise gone down to Semitropic. It’s actually a big weakness, since any disruption in Delta pumping would immediately increase our need for the water, while making it impossible to reach.

When I was reading about Semitropic this spring, I got the impression that its storage capacity was a result of way too much pumping in the past. But Paul doesn’t mention that angle.

I’ve just learned that I’ve been appointed one of the 16 members of the Community Advisory Group for the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant’s Master Plan. I “will participate in a three-year process to develop a Plant Master Plan, which has recently been launched to guide improvements to the Plant’s facilities, operations and land use over the next 30 years.”

On a related note, I attended the preview of the new Willow Glen branch library yesterday evening, and I was pleased to see that the outdoor landscaping is irrigated with recycled water. Increasing use of recycled water will be a major goal of mine in this new committee position. When Minnesota Avenue was being torn up a month or so ago, I wondered whether it was bringing purple pipe to the new library, so I was excited to see the purple sprinkler heads yesterday evening. Now that we have purple pipe in Willow Glen, what else can we do with it?

In case you don’t regularly read the paper of record, here’s a NY Times article about Orange County’s water recycling. Although the author does get around to saying

To understand the basics of contemporary water infrastructure is to acknowledge that most American tap water has had some contact with treated sewage. Our wastewater-treatment plants discharge into streams that feed rivers from which other cities suck water for drinking.

just once, it would nice to see an article that didn’t start with a variant of

I gazed balefully at my hotel toilet in Santa Ana, Calif., and contemplated an entirely new cycle. When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The “new” water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap.

From the Onion

Filling a large number of bags with sand and then placing them side by side next to a body of water remains the nation’s most sophisticated method for flood prevention, a two-month FEMA study concluded Tuesday.