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Los Angeles needs to reclaim what we used to consider ‘wastewater’
By Robert Glennon, Professor at the University of Arizona College of Law
The city of Los Angeles’ Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant has long symbolized the absurdity of water policy in the American West. Although the plant generates a volume of water equal to the seventh largest river in the United States, until recently, the city of Los Angeles dumped every drop into the Pacific Ocean. Nonsensically, a desert city always in search of water disposes of 190 million gallons a day into the ocean.
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The announcement by Mayor Eric Garcetti last month that Los Angeles will recycle all the wastewater produced at the Hyperion plant by 2035 signals an end to the era of addressing water shortages by importing water from far-flung places and initiates a long-anticipated era of reusing locally available supplies. The shift will require L.A. residents to understand both the necessity of the plan and the technology that will produce safe water.
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Behind the technological sophistication is an elegantly simple concept: Rather than heavily rely on an elaborate and expensive system of pipes, canals and tunnels to deliver water from Northern California and the Colorado River, L.A. will use water it already has.
This transformation will be costly in the short term, an estimated $8 billion, but financially and environmentally wise in the long term. As climate change alters precipitation patterns, L.A.’s sources of imported water become less secure. The Colorado River is in its 20th year of drought, and it is unknown whether this is the last year of drought or, possibly, the 20th year of a 50-year-drought. What is known is that climate change is causing more frequent, prolonged and severe droughts.
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