Transcript

The Point Loma wastewater treatment plant located at the end of the Point Loma peninsula-- it's an advanced primary treatment facility and the Clean Water Act requires that wastewater treatment facilities provide up to secondary treatment. The requirements to protect the ocean have gotten stronger. And so we had to address either upgrading Point Loma or other options. And I am proud of the city in regards to the fact that they were innovative in identifying a different solution. The city of San Diego's Pure Water San Diego Potable Reuse program is the largest infrastructure program the City of San Diego has had. The pure water program is a multi-year phased program to try to offload wastewater from the Point Loma wastewater treatment plant. And the idea was to do this in phases, primarily because of the design of the system, and also, trying to spread out the impacts to the community and build a certain amount of capacity at one point in time and then another level of capacity at another point in time. Construction for the first phase of Pure Water San Diego is over 70% complete. And the facility where we're standing today, which is the North City pure water facility, is over 80% complete. We anticipate commissioning for our program will start later this year, with our first water delivered to Miramar Reservoir in 2026. This is ultimately where the water will be delivered that we're taking and purifying with the Pure Water program. So it's water that otherwise would have been discharged in the ocean as wastewater. We have diverted that flow, taking it through multiple advanced treatment steps. It's purer, cleaner than river water, cleaner than lake water. We deliver it ultimately back into this reservoir here for storage. And then it crosses the street to the Miramar Water Treatment plant, where it's treated again before being distributed to the public and the City of San Diego. In addition to the traditional treatment steps of membrane filtration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light with advanced oxidation, we have added ozone and biologically active carbon filtration to the influent side of the treatment train. The city has a long history of producing recycled water, tertiary treated wastewater to use for irrigation and industrial uses. Pure Water represents an evolution of that, to where we have the treatment technologies and the analytical capacity to prove that we are producing a high quality, safe, cost effective, source of water for San Diego's use. Stantec helped us with the Pure Water program, and they've been amazing, not only navigating the development of Pure Water Phase One, the program, but also the design process, getting into construction. Stantec was engaged early in the program to help with the conceptual design, the regulatory support, different elements, to put together the preliminary design and ultimately lay out what the program looked like with the city. Stantec really kind of set a standard, a really high bar within our department and what we look for with our other partners, too. Our program team, really in conjunction with the city staff, really serves as that center point of coordination between those contracts. The city hasn't done a project like this, so having resources to ask, ���is this normal��� or ���what could we do?��� ���what research have you seen?��� It's great to have that expertise that Stantec provides us. It's been a great partnership, and we're fortunate here at the City of San Diego to have them on board. It's important to note that there's no new water on the planet. So all the water that we have is recycled. 85% of our drinking water supply is currently, on average, imported. By 2035, we're projected to provide 50% of the City of San Diego's drinking water supply through the Pure Water program. Being able to successfully deliver a potable reuse program like San Diego helps be a harbinger, and an example of what we can do throughout the nation and the world. Having a drought-proof, sustainable, locally controlled drinking water supply that's going to really serve San Diegans for generations to come. It's just really special.