Southern California’s water wholesaler is considering building a water recycling plant modeled after Orange County’s world-acclaimed facility to replenish groundwater supplies in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Initial plans call for building a recycling plant in Carson that would purify 60,000 acre-feet of treated sewer water from the next-door Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County water treatment plant, then pumping the water to several recharge areas, including one in Orange County, where the water would be put back into the ground.

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California staff members presented an outline of the plan to the agency’s board Monday. If Metropolitan goes forward with the plan, it would mark the first time the agency partnered with another local agency to produce a new water supply. The water wholesaler’s focus is importing water from Northern California and the Colorado River.

The proposed facility comes as California grapples with a four-year drought that water managers say even El Niño won’t erase this winter. The lack of rain has led to an increasingly dire water situation as supplies from Northern California thin and agencies rely more on groundwater.
Metropolitan estimates groundwater production in Southern California has dropped 250,000 acre-feet per year from the drought.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/water-684012-california-metropolitan.html