Water Agencies Get Federal Money To Build Out Infrastructure

By Erin Stone

Published May 28, 2024 4:23 PM

A man in a white hardhat and neon safety vest points to a machine that puts wastewater through reverse osmosis to purify it.

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Topline:

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the L.A. Department of Water and Power received funding from the federal government to expand local water supplies.

The funding: The MWD — which supplies water to 19 million people in the Southland, including cities such as L.A., Long Beach and Torrance — received $99 million from the Biden Administration's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The funding is part of more than $8 billion being allocated for water resilience projects over the next five years across the US. The L.A. Department of Water and Power also received $30 million.

What the money goes to: The MWD’s grant will go towards its new facility in Carson that will recycle more water that currently ends up in the ocean. The project aims to reduce as much as 15% of the amount of water the agency imports from the Colorado River and northern California. It’s expected to cost some $6 billion in total. LADWP’s grant will go towards its groundwater replenishment project, which is almost done — a $500-million effort to use recycled water to refill aquifers beneath the San Fernando Valley.

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Why it matters: Most of the drinking water that MWD sells to Southern California cities, as well as L.A.’s water, comes from the Colorado River and Northern California. But overuse and the climate crisis are stretching those traditional supplies thin. Water experts say recycling more water that flows down our drains — and, yes, that we flush down the toilet — will become the backbone of our water supply in a drier future.

What’s next: MWD expects to start delivering recycled water from its new facility as soon as 2028. The city of L.A. has the goal to recycle all of its wastewater to drinkable standards by 2035. Recycled water costs less than desalinating ocean water and importing water, so officials say these recycled water projects will also ease bills in the long term.

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