A massive water provider for Southern California is seizing on a new state regulation to advance a $7 billion water recycling project. The hope is it will provide more flexibility during dry times and defuse an escalating conflict among seven basin states and Mexico over the Colorado River’s shrinking supply, which would bode well for Imperial Valley farmers bracing for the potential of more cutbacks.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has long played an outsized role in California’s infrastructure investments. The district serves nearly half the state’s 40 million residents and taps into the State Water Project and the Colorado River to account for 55% of its supply. Yet extreme droughts, climate change and a stream of regulatory hurdles have led the district to look elsewhere to boost its resilience and reliability.
Three large water recycling programs are in development in the region. Los Angeles is upgrading its treatment plant to use recycled water to recharge its aquifer, while San Diego’s project will provide nearly half the city’s supply by 2035. Metropolitan, meanwhile, is partnering with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts to build a treatment plant in Carson to handle 170,000 acre-feet of recycled water per year, sending it 40 miles to local suppliers through a seven-foot pipe — which will serve as the district’s third aqueduct.
The program will focus primarily on indirect potable reuse, when treated wastewater is released into a reservoir or groundwater and later retreated for use in drinking water or industrial purposes. One of Metropolitan’s member agencies plans to use up to 40 million gallons of this per day, setting it up as a cornerstone customer for the technology, according to John Bednarski, interim assistant general manager at Metropolitan. Another agency wants to use it primarily for groundwater recharge.
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The district is also considering direct reuse, skipping the environmental buffer and sending the highly treated water straight to customers.
John Bednarski, MetropolitanThe state has played a key role in helping the project become reality. Last year the State Water Resources Control Board enacted regulations enabling districts throughout California to develop protocols for converting wastewater into high-quality drinking water, providing more certainty for those investments. The pressure to ease the red tape for such projects came from Governor Gavin Newsom, who saw an opportunity with California’s populous coastal cities sending wastewater discharges out to the ocean. In 2022 he issued a water supply strategy calling for the state to reuse at least 800,000 acre-feet per year by 2030 and 1.8 million by 2040.
At the time, California was in the grip of its worst drought, with emergency declarations subjecting farmers to water right curtailments for multiple years.
“Don't let a good drought go to waste,” said Bednarski, speaking last week at the annual Water Education Foundation summit.
He explained how the district had been developing the recycling project since 2010, building up to a demonstration plant processing half a million gallons per day.
“We had a lot of the initial groundwork completed,” he said. “But the project wasn't really picking up a lot of steam until we hit the last drought cycle.”
That crisis exposed “serious defects in our existing infrastructure” for moving water from the typically wet north end of the state or from the Colorado River. The clamor in water policy circles for building more drought resiliency gradually whittled down to a focus on leveraging local supplies more aggressively. Post-pandemic budget surpluses then enabled the state to sink billions into climate and drought investments, a windfall that led to $80 million trickling from Sacramento down to Metropolitan for its project.
The district is now well into the environmental impact phase of the planning process and expects to release a draft proposal for public comment by the end of January.
Yet the $7 billion price tag keeps Bednarski up at night. Metropolitan is no stranger to big projects. It owns nearly half the water coming through the State Water Project south of the San Luis Reservoir. It will have a large role in financing Newsom’s Delta Conveyance Project, a $20 billion tunnel to shore up water deliveries amid threats of earthquakes and sea level rise. The district’s board of directors is also considering an investment in Sites Reservoir to store more during wet years.
But the money is drying up as well. The district has built its infrastructure legacy by selling nearly 2 million acre-feet of water to its customers every year. With new conservation measures in place, local providers have cut down on purchases and the volume has dropped to 1.3 million.
That has led the district to form unlikely allies across its border. The operational guidelines for the Colorado River expired in 2016 and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has been shepherding the basin states through negotiations over a long-term plan that accounts for climate change. Since California has senior water rights, its drier neighbors have been faced with difficult decisions to somehow conserve and store more. Knocking on the door of Metropolitan were the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Arizona Department of Water Resources, which manages more than 300 miles of aqueducts and pipelines within the Central Arizona Project.
Bednarski said Metropolitan is considering the proposition. Arizona and Nevada would invest in the recycling project in exchange for the district transferring a portion of its river allocation to them. Reclamation has given its blessing to the proposal. According to Bednarski, Southern Nevada has set aside about $750 million for the project, with an expected return of up to 20,000 acre-feet per year. Arizona is contemplating a similar number, he said.
“We're optimistic that by about a year from now, we'll have a real framework for those two agreements,” he said. “We'll be able to work those into the ongoing regulation discussions with the Bureau of Reclamation.”
Tina Shields, IID In the meantime, the board of directors has a critical vote coming up in December to decide if Metropolitan continues investing in Newsom’s tunnel project.
“We're optimistic that will go through and further benefits will be identified from that program,” said Bednarski. “Water in California is a collaborative effort between all of us. It really can't be a winners and losers proposition.”
Tina Shields, water manager at the Imperial Irrigation District, was heartened to hear Metropolitan’s portfolio has expanded enough to meet future demands and to consider a supply augmentation with other states. In a statement to Agri-Pulse, Shields said IID’s conservation potential is already pushed to the limit and growers are opposed to any additional long-term fallowing, seeing it as detrimental to the community as well as its resources, the Salton Sea and the nation’s food supply.
“The collaborative spirit that has developed within California through the more than three decades of ag-to-urban water conservation partnerships is the only viable long-term solution to complicated Colorado River issues,” said Shields. “This is yet another positive step in that direction by the Lower Basin.”
J.B, Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, said the project will "significantly augment supplies for the drought-stressed" river and position the states to better adapt to climate change and extended droughts.
The Newsom administration hopes to expand the project portfolios for more districts like IID and Metropolitan.
At the summit, California Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth said the state needs to invest in water recycling and other efforts at a greater pace. She emphasized the need by pointing out that the State Water Project’s service area encompasses the eighth-largest economy in the world.
“We have to reinvest back in infrastructure,” said Nemeth. “Love it or hate it, that is underpinning of a lot of water movement in California. That's not going to change.”
She called for more regulatory fixes so the water system works better for the economy, the environment and for drinking water.
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