Plant Tour Script - ELC

1. Water’s Many L.A. Ways

Complete the sentence,

fresh water, wastewater, recycled water, storm water, and groundwater are …

all the same! It is our duty to protect, preserve and clean water for future use

1. Water’s Many L.A. Ways

How will we be able to conserve our water?

1. Capture stormwater

2. Conserve potable (drinking) water/ groundwater

3. Growing water reclamation practices

Every form of water is the same just in different stages

What are watersheds?

An area of land that separates waters flowing into different rivers, basins or seas

The topography map in ELC represents

Bright colors represent the City of Los Angeles and the rest of the map represents contracting cities and the County of Los Angeles

How many reclamation plants are in the city of LA? What is their water flow?

Hyperion: 262 mgd of treated wastewater

How do each of the reclamation plants treat their water?

1. Donald C. Tillman: Tertiary treatment process (nitrification/denitrification, chlorine disinfection, and dechlorination)

After treated, what happens to the water at each of the reclamation plants?

1. Donald C. Tillman: 24.3 mgd recycled for lakes and Japanese Garden, 2.1 mgd to DWP (irrigation & cooling towers), 5 mgd recycled for in-plant use, 0.5 mgd discharged into LA River

2. LA-Glendale: 1.1 mgd to City of Glendale, 1.9 mgd to City of LA (irrigation), 0.8 mgd for in-plant use, 7.4 mgd discharged into LA River

3. Terminal Island: 8.4 mgd discharged to ocean, 4.3 mgd recycled for Dominguez Gap (saltwater intrusion barrier), 1.2 mgd recycled for in-plant use

4. Hyperion: 234.3 mgd discharged to ocean, 32.6 mgd recycled for in-plant use, 27.5 mgd recycled by West Basin Municipal Water District (refineries, seawater protection, irrigation)

Which reclamation plants are recycling 100% of their wastewater?

Donald C. Tilman, L.A Glendale and Terminal Island are currently recycling 100% of their treated wastewater

***Hyperion is currently using about 12% of the water we treat for beneficial reuse.

***Hyperion does plan to increase our recycled flow to 100% like other facilities by 2035

Name the benefits of recycling water

1. Beneficial Reuse: can be used for industrial use such as irrigation, power, cleaning, cooling towers

2. Potable Offset: can be used for showers, washers, drinking fountains, cooking, etc.

Where does our water come from?

(California Aqueduct, Colorado River Aqueduct, and the Los Angeles River Aqueduct)

Who would like to guess how much water we import?

Around 89% of the water that is supplied to Los Angeles is imported

48% comes from the LA Aqueduct (Mono Lake/Owens Valley)

9% of our water is considered to be groundwater

2% of our water is recycled water

Importing as much water as we do is not sustainable, which is why we must increase the amount of water we recycle in Los Angeles

how much of Earth’s water is freshwater?

97% is salt water, almost 3% is frozen, and only 0.0007% of Earth’s water is freshwater

Why do we have so little fresh water available to us?

More of our freshwater is stored in the ice caps and glaciers found around the world.Which is why we are concerned about the melting of the ice caps! It would cause sea level to rise and flood many coastal cities.

Preserve freshwater!

How many pipelines are under the city of Los Angeles that carry water in their different phases?

 4 separate pipelines

FOR fresh/potable water, wastewater, storm water and recycled water

blue pipe carries drinking water inside and it comes out of the faucets and is used in toilets, showers, washing machines, dishwashers, etc

The brown pipe carries wastewater from the drains in the sinks, showers, toilets, washing machines, etc.

The white pipe contains stormwater

The purple pipe carries recycled water. We actually have one in this building! At Hyperion, this water is used for our beneficial reuse for things such as irrigation, sinks, toilets, etc.

TRIVIA: the blue pipe gets it water from where?

We are getting our fresh water from the aqueducts and from our groundwater sources)

TRIVIA: the brown pipes water travels where?

Try to recall the 4 locations we highlighted on the topography map.

A water reclamation plant

Why do you think it is important to separate wastewater from all other forms of water?

If you think about older times, without wastewater treatment we would see many deadly diseases return and kill a large amount of people.