Water Boards and City of Santa Monica celebrate opening of water recycling facilities

SACRAMENTO – Marking another step forward in building drought-resilient water supplies for Californians, representatives of the State Water Resources Control Board and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board joined the City of Santa Monica today to celebrate the opening of the city’s Sustainable Water Infrastructure Project (SWIP). The funding partners celebrated this first-of-its-kind facility that will recycle about 1,680 acre-feet of municipal wastewater and stormwater per year, enough to serve more than 5,000 households, or about 10% of Santa Monica’s annual water supply.

“The project’s innovative approach to reuse multiple sources of local water will not only help the city achieve long-term water self-sufficiency, it is also expected to divert over 100 million gallons of pollution away from Santa Monica Bay each year and help the city meet regulations the regional board established to reduce bacteria and trash pollution,” said David Nahai, vice chair of the Los Angeles Water Board.

The $96 million infrastructure project, which received nearly $85 million in funding from the State Water Board and a recycling permit from the regional board, contains two advanced water treatment facilities, one new and one upgraded. The facilities will treat a combination of municipal wastewater, stormwater, dry-weather runoff and brackish groundwater to generate non-potable water for irrigation, toilet flushing, and injection into the local groundwater basin.

“The City of Santa Monica’s new water infrastructure project is an exciting example of innovative efforts coming online now to improve our drought resilience and reduce the impacts of a hotter, drier climate,” said Nichole Morgan, member of the State Water Board. “Thanks to ongoing financial assistance from the state revolving funds and initiatives like Proposition 1, California’s water supplies are benefitting now from capital- intensive projects that took years to fund, plan and build.”

Statewide goals for stormwater capture, wastewater recycling, desalination, increased storage and conservation are all part of Governor Newsom’s Water Supply Strategy, which seeks to offset the projected 10% loss in California’s water supplies by 2040 due to climate change. The last two state budgets committed funding that support these goals, with the inclusion of $$8.7 billion for water resilience and drought response. In addition, the state just received $609 million under the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as the first of five years of federal funding awards for water infrastructure improvements.

Passed eight years ago, Proposition One, The Safe, Clean, and Reliable Water Supply Act authorized the sale of $7.5 billion in general obligation bonds to upgrade California's water-system infrastructure. The State Water Board was appointed to administer several Proposition 1 programs and, through these, has provided over $1.2 billion to 65 stormwater projects, 44 groundwater projects and 60 water recycling projects to date. Altogether, these projects are projected to add over 580,000 acre-feet of water annually to the state’s supplies by mid-2030, or enough water to sustain

1.7 million households.

“Without the funding support through the State Water Board and Prop 1, we would not be moving toward our goals to achieve water self-sufficiency,” said Rick Valte, Director of Public Works for the City of Santa Monica. “Our reduced dependence on imported water, improved drought resilience, and diminished impacts on Santa Monica Bay make this project a benefit to the entire state.”

The State Water Board first executed a funding agreement with the City of Santa Monica in 2017 to finance this infrastructure project through a low-interest $76 million loan from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, $4 million of which was later forgiven. This year, the board supplemented that funding with an additional $8.7 million from the Proposition 1: Storm Water Grant Program for the purpose of constructing a subsurface dry-weather and stormwater harvesting system to reduce pollution, increase water supply reliability, and improve water quality in Santa Monica Bay and along the shoreline.

The State Water Board’s mission is to preserve, enhance and restore the quality of California’s water resources and drinking water for the protection of the environment and public health, and to ensure proper resource allocation and efficient use for present and future generations.