Plant Tour Script - ELC

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

Donald C. Tillman: 32 mgd of treated wastewater

LA-Glendale: 12 mgd of treated wastewater

Terminal Island: 15 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 91% of the water that is supplied to Los Angeles is imported (2024)

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.

How many miles of sewer lines does LA maintain?

6700 miles of sewer pipes - enough to reach all the way to China

[ELC Pipe Exhibit] what does the white pipe contain?

white pipe contains stormwater and drains directly to the ocean without any filtration - why do we have a separate system for storm water and wastewater because our wastewater facilities cannot handle the flow of all stormwaters on rainy days

storm water is in the city called urban runoff which is then filtered by catch basins that collect big pieces of trash

(hence why keeping streets clean, and doing other things to ensure pavement is pollutant free is important)

when storm water washes over streets what pollutants mix with it?

trash, fecal matter, car fluids, pesticides and fertilizers

**For this reason, we ask people to keep the streets as clean as they possibly can! Most of the trash on the beach, and in the ocean, actually comes from cities and litter.

what purpose does the purple pipe serve?

carries recycled water

Hyperion has a purple pipe that connects to the ELC which reuses water for reuse. EX: toilets, sinks, the pond water outdoors

[WWTP] Preliminary Treatment Process - Screening and Bar Screens

-screening out of large inorganic trash like feminine products, bicycles, toilet paper, etc

DETAILED: bar screens catch an item then a big mechanical rake lifts the item up and dumps them into a trough and these items get chopped up and taken into a landfill

[WWTP] Preliminary Treatment Process - Grit Tank

uses centrifuges and other machinery to separate and compress heavier small items like sand, seeds, coffee grounds, and gravel

About 10 tons of grit are removed from the wastewater at Hyperion every day and transferred to a landfill

[WWTP] Primary Treatment Process

Flocculants are added to solids causing them to clamp up and settle to the bottom of underground sedimentation tanks (Ferric Chloride)

[WWTP] Secondary Treatment Process - Archimedes Screw

water comes from sedimentation tanks from the Archimedes screw

aerobic microbes are added to eat leftover solids such as proteins and sugars and requires oxygen to live

Oxygen is a concentrated form from cryogenics station located on plant

[WWTP] Secondary Treatment Process - Clarifying Tanks

upon leaving the reactors water goes into C tanks

once it arrives here it is clean enough to go into Santa Monica Bay or to be recycled

37 million gallons of water treated at Hyperion are pumped to the West Basin Water Reclamation Plant

[WWTP] Secondary Treatment Process - Santa Monica Bay

Most of Hyperion’s highly treated water flows out into the Santa Monica Bay through a 5-mile pipe that lies at a depth of 200 ft. allowing treated water to mixed well

[WWTP] Secondary Treatment Process - Biosolids & Digestion

biosolids are recovered from treated water are sent to centrifuges for dewatering (removal of water in the Thickening Waste Activated Sludge Facilities)

the solids that are removed from primary and secondary treatment plants are pumped to huge egg-shaped tanks called digestors

digestors contain no oxygen and are heated to 128F for 15 days to destroy any pathogens

Biosolids that are dewatered then get tested for pH balance and are then sent out to Green Acres farm to be used as fertilizers. Approximately 80,000 dry tons of biosolids are applied annually.

[WWTP] Methane Gas

the biosolids process creates a M gas which can be used to produce electricity and enough to power the ELC grid

ELC electricity makes us completely self-sufficient, and we’ve been off the grid since _____.

We generate enough electricity to power 25,000 homes at this plant. This is possible through our DGUP (Digested Gas Utilization Project).

Recycle 100% of wastewater Source 70% of all water locally Produce up to 230 million gallons of recycled water per day

History of Hyperion - year outline

1892 - City purchased 200 acres of oceanfront property

1894-1925 - raw sewage was discharged into the ocean at near shore waters / visitors and homeowners had objected to raw sewage in water

1925 - simple screen plant was established

1950 - secondary treatment system was established, biosolids processing facility and it was the first facility in world to capture energy from biogas through anaerobic digestors (creating a fuel-gas byproduct for 50 YRS)

1957- new facilities and upgrades caused the reduction of treatment levels- the new plant was discharging a blend of secondary and primary effluent through a 5-mile ocean outfall

1998 - full secondary treatment facilities rebuild completely

2002 - biosolids collection rebuilds

2017 - operation of bioenergy facility begins to fully generate electricity at Hyperion

[Topography map Exhibit] Describe the map and other facts

Each of the 4 squares represents a wastewater facility

1. Donald C. Tillman: 32 mgd of treated wastewater

2. LA-Glendale: 12 mgd of treated wastewater

3. Terminal Island: 15 mgd of treated wastewater

4. Hyperion: 262 mgd of treated wastewater

[POINT TO IMPORTED WATER AREAS ON RIGHT SIDE OF MAP]

Donald C. Tillman Plant has most of its treated water go into the lakes in a Japanese Garden nearby.

LA-Glendale uses most for irrigation purposes or to be discharged into the LA River.

Terminal Island Discharges 8.4 mgd into the ocean. Here at Hyperion, 234.3 mgd are discharged into the ocean, and 32.6 are recycled for in-plant use. Hyperion currently only recycles about 12% of the wastewater that is treated. Hyperion wants to increase this percentage to 100 like other facilities, by 2050.

All the piping flows downhill due to gravity and location of Hyperion, very rarely do we ever use pumping stations to help guide the water