For years, the water table has been dropping beneath thousands of acres of desert farmland in western Arizona, where a Saudi-owned dairy company has been allowed to pump unlimited amounts of groundwater to grow hay for its cows.
But the company and other landowners in the area will now face limits under a decision by state officials to impose regulation.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said Monday that her administration is acting to “crack down on the out-of-state special interests that are pumping our state dry while Arizona families and farmers suffer.”
Fondomonte, part of the Saudi dairy giant Almarai, is by far the largest water user in the area, using dozens of wells to to irrigate alfalfa that it ships overseas to the Middle East.
After conducting a review, the state Department of Water Resources designated the Ranegras Plain area, located 100 miles west of Phoenix, as a new “active management area” to preserve the groundwater.
This isn’t the first time the Democratic governor and her administration have used this approach to curb excessive pumping in a rural areas. In January 2025, her administration similarly established a new regulated area to limit agricultural pumping around the city of Willcox in southeastern Arizona.
Hobbs pointed out that some residents’ wells have gone dry as water levels have plummeted in the Ranegras Plain, and that the land has been sinking as the aquifer is depleted.
“Unlike politicians of the past, I refuse to bury my head in the sand. I refuse to ignore the problems we face,” Hobbs said Monday in her state of the state address. “We can no longer sit idly by while our rural communities go without help. They deserve solutions and security, not another decade of inaction and uncertainty.”
The state’s action will prohibit landowners from irrigating any additional farmland in this part of La Paz County and require those with high-capacity wells to start reporting how much water they use. It also will bring other changes, forming a local advisory council and requiring a plan to reduce water use.
State officials reached the decision after receiving more than 400 comments from the public on the proposal, the vast majority in support. Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, issued the decision, saying the future of residents and local businesses “depends upon protecting the finite groundwater resources.”
According to state data, water levels in wells in parts of the area have dropped more than 200 feet over the last 40 years, and pumping has increased over the last decade.
Some residents who spoke at a hearing last month said it’s wrong that Fondomonte gets to use the water to grow hay and export it across the world. Others said they don’t see any problem with having a foreign company as their neighbor but believe farms must switch to less water-intensive crops.
Following the state’s announcement, Fondomonte said in a written statement that it is “committed to progressive, efficient agricultural practices,” supports the farming community, and “has invested significantly to bring the latest technology to conserve water” on its farms. The company also said it would comply with state and local regulations.
The company currently faces a lawsuit filed by Arizona Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes alleging that its excessive pumping violates the law by causing declines in groundwater, land subsidence and worsening water quality. That lawsuit is set to continue while the state also imposes its new regulatory limits.
Holly Irwin, a La Paz County supervisor who for years has pushed to protect the area’s water, said she’s pleased the state finally acted “to stop the bleeding that threatens the vitality of our community.”
“It’s a big win,” said Irwin, a Republican. “It’s going to prevent other megafarms from being able to move into the area and set up the same type of operation that Fondamonte has going on right now. And it’ll prevent them from expanding.”
Fondomonte started its Arizona farming operation in 2014. Saudi Arabia has banned the domestic farming of alfalfa and other forage crops because the country’s groundwater has been depleted. As a result, Saudi companies have been buying farmland overseas.
A lawyer for the company has said it owns 3,600 acres in this part of Arizona. The company also rents 3,088 acres of farmland and 3,163 acres of grazing land in the state.
In addition, it owns 3,375 acres of California farmland near Blythe, where it uses Colorado River water to irrigate alfalfa fields.
Efforts to address the depletion of groundwater present complex challenges for communities and government agencies in Arizona, California and other Western states, where climate change is exacerbating strains on water supplies.
Arizona’s current groundwater law, adopted in 1980, limits pumping in Phoenix, Tucson and other urban areas. But those rules do not apply to about 80% of the state, which has allowed large farming companies and investors to drill wells and pump as much as they want.
Since Hobbs took office in 2023, she has supported efforts to address overpumping. In one step intended to rein in water use, she terminated Fondomonte’s leases of 3,520 acres of state-owned farmland in Butler Valley in western Arizona. That decision followed an Arizona Republic investigation that revealed the state had given Fondomonte discounted, below-market lease rates.
When she ended those leases, Hobbs said Fondomonte “was recklessly pumping our groundwater to boost their corporate profits.”
SALEM — The House of the Seven Gables is earmarking money to move five of its historic structures further inland in anticipation of rising seas and groundwater levels caused by climate change.
As such, the organization is seeking grants and donations to implement its 50-year climate adaptation plan. In 2022, the Gables received a $509,919 grant from the state to study site conditions and create the plan that was completed in May.
This page requires Javascript.
Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
VICKSBURG, Ariz. — Lush green fields of alfalfa spread across thousands of acres in a desert valley in western Arizona, where a dairy company from Saudi Arabia grows the thirsty crop by pulling up groundwater from dozens of wells.
The company, Fondomonte, is the largest water user in the Ranegras Plain groundwater basin, shipping hay overseas to feed its cows in the Middle East. Like other landowners in the area, it has been allowed to pump unlimited amounts from the aquifer, even as water levels have declined.
That soon could change, as Arizona officials are considering a plan to start regulating groundwater pumping in the rural area 100 miles west of Phoenix.
Misha Melehes, who lives near the rural town of Bouse, Ariz., speaks during a hearing held by the Arizona Department of Water Resources at an RV park in the community of Brenda.
At a meeting in mid-December, more than 150 residents of La Paz County sat listening in folding chairs as state officials underlined the severity of the declines in groundwater levels by showing graphs with lines sloping steeply downward.
“This is where the heaviest pumping is. This is where we’re seeing the most decline,” said Ryan Mitchell, chief hydrologist for the Arizona Department of Water Resources, as he showed charts of the plummeting aquifer levels.
The data from wells told the story: In one, water levels dropped a staggering 242 feet since the early 1980s. Another declined 136 feet.
Structures storing alfalfa at Fondomonte’s farm in Vicksburg, Ariz.
Mitchell said current pumping in the Ranegras basin isn’t sustainable, and that in places it’s causing the land surface to sink as much as 2 inches per year.
“That is a trend that is alarming,” he said. “The water budget for the basin is out of balance, significantly out of balance.”
As he read the numbers, murmurs arose in the crowded hall.
In recent years some residents’ household wells have gone dry, forcing them to scramble for solutions.
The problem of declining groundwater is widespread in many rural areas of Arizona. Gov. Katie Hobbs has said Arizona needs to address unrestricted overpumping by “out-of-state corporations. ” She also said the declines in the Ranegras basin are especially severe, with water being depleted nearly 10 times faster than it is naturally replenished in the desert.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources proposed a new “active management area” to preserve groundwater in this part of La Paz County, which would prohibit the irrigation of additional farmland in the area and require landowners with high-capacity wells to start measuring and reporting how much water they use. It also would bring other measures, including forming a local advisory council and developing a plan to reduce water use.
Some residents say this kind of regulation is overdue.
“What it is now is a free-for-all,” said Denise Beasley, a resident of the town of Bouse. “It’s just the Wild West of water.”
Denise Beasley stands outside her home in Bouse, Ariz.
She believes the change will bring much-needed controls and help ensure that her well, and those of others in her community of about 1,100, will be protected.
A lawyer for the company said it owns 3,600 acres in Vicksburg. The company also rents 3,088 acres of state farmland and 3,163 acres of state grazing land in the Ranegras basin under leases that expire in 2031.
Grant Greatorex fills jugs with purified drinking water at a water filling station at Bouse RV Park in Bouse, Ariz. He says this water tastes better than the water from his well at home.
The State Land Department is charging the company about $83,000 annually under those leases, said Lynn Cordova, a spokesperson for the agency.
Some residents who spoke at the hearing think it’s wrong that Fondomonte gets to use the water to grow hay and export it across the world. Others don’t see any problem with having a foreign company as their neighbor but believe the area must switch to less water-intensive crops.
“This is a desert, and our water is drying up,” said Misha Melehes, who lives near Bouse. “We’re bleeding out. We need a tourniquet while we wait in the emergency room.”
Others fear that state-imposed rules could lead to downsizing farms and even shipping water away to Arizona’s fast-growing cities.
An alfalfa field owned by the company Fondomonte, in Vicksburg, Ariz.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Kelly James, a resident who lives nearby, called the proposal a “water grab.” He urged the state to delay the decision and let locals develop their own plan.
He and others pointed out that Arizona has a history of cities finding ways to buy water that farms previously depended on, and that under state law three groundwater basins adjacent to Ranegras already are set aside as reserves to support urban growth.
The state proposal says nothing about transporting water out of the Ranegras basin. In fact doing so would be illegal under the existing law. But that doesn’t quell the misgivings of some people in the area.
“I have a lot of suspicion,” said Robert Favela, who uses his well to water a stand of bamboo on his 5-acre property in Vicksburg. “Trust me, they’re going to take our water.”
Larry Housley pumping water into buckets for horses at his farm near Bouse, Ariz.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Jennie Housley, who owns a 40-acre horse ranch near Bouse with her husband, Larry, fears the area could lose its agriculture industry and eventually lose its water to growing subdivisions and swimming pools.
“I believe that to sustain our country, we have to have agriculture in places like La Paz County,” she said.
Larry Hancock, a farmer who grows crops in neighboring McMullen Valley, wrote a letter to the state making a similar argument. He said growers already are “conserving water because it’s in our best interest,” and imposing regulation would bring economic harm.
Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke is scheduled to announce his decision on whether to start regulating groundwater in the area by Jan. 17.
No representative of Fondomonte spoke at the meeting. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Efforts to curb the depletion of groundwater present complex challenges for communities and state agencies throughout much of Arizona, California and other Western states.
Large farming operations expanded in Arizona in recent years, while global warming has put growing strains on the region’s scarce water. Scientists using satellite data estimated that since 2003 the amount of groundwater depleted in the Colorado River Basin is comparable to the total capacity of Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir.
Arizona has limited pumping in Phoenix, Tucson and other urban areas since the state adopted a groundwater law in 1980.
Since Hobbs took office in 2023, she has supported efforts to curb overpumping where aquifers are in severe decline. In January her administration established a new regulated area in the Willcox groundwater basin in southeastern Arizona, and Hobbs this month appointed five local leaders to serve on an advisory council that will help develop a plan for reducing water use.
“We feel like it has given us hope for a sustainable future,” said Ed Curry, a farmer who is a member of the Willcox council. “It gave us power.”
Luis Machado dismantles a pipe after testing a water well in Butler Valley, Ariz. Workers recently removed pumps from wells in the area after Arizona ended leases of state-owned farmland to the Saudi company Fondomonte.
Several months ago Hobbs toured La Paz County and spoke with residents about ways to protect the area’s water. The Democratic governor has taken other steps to rein in water use, terminating Fondomonte’s leases of 3,520 acres of state-owned farmland in Butler Valley in western Arizona. The decision followed an Arizona Republic investigation that revealed the state was charging discounted, below-market rates.
Now those former hay fields sit dry, with weeds poking through the parched soil. Workers have been removing pumps from the leased land, and power lines that once supplied the wells stand unused in the desert.
An alfalfa farm in Butler Valley sits parched after Arizona ended leases of state-owned farmland that had been granted to the company Fondomonte.
While Fondomonte continues farming nearby, the company also faces a lawsuit by Arizona Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes alleging that its excessive pumping violates the law by causing declines in groundwater, land subsidence and worsening water quality.
The lawsuit says the company uses at least 36 wells and accounts for more than 80% of all pumping in the Ranegras basin.
Fondomonte’s lawyers argued in court documents that the attorney general doesn’t have the authority to regulate groundwater pumping and that the suit is an attempt to have the court “wade into a political question.”
The Department of Water Resources’ proposal is a way to finally protect water for the area’s residents, said Holly Irwin, a La Paz County supervisor who for years has pushed to address the problem.
“You’re starting to see more and more wells get depleted. If we don’t try to slow this thing down, where are we going to be in 20 years?” Irwin said.
Nancy Blevins, who lives near the Fondomonte farm, agrees.
In 2019 she and her family watched their well run dry. She spent months driving back and forth to a friend’s house, filling up plastic bottles and bringing the water home.
Nancy Blevins outside her home in Arizona’s La Paz County.
Eventually, they bought a new pump and installed it at a lower level in their well, restoring their tap water. She still stores bottled water in a shed next to her mobile home in case the well dries up again.
“They should start regulating,” Blevins said. “People’s water levels are dropping around here.”
If something doesn’t change, the water eventually will run out, she said, and “future generations are going to be in trouble.”
For more than two decades, satellites have tracked the total amounts of water held in glaciers, ice sheets, lakes, rivers, soil and the world’s vast natural reservoirs underground — aquifers. An extensive global analysis of that data now reveals fresh water is rapidly disappearing beneath much of humanity’s feet, and large swaths of the Earth are drying out.
Scientists are seeing “mega-drying” regions that are immense and expanding — one stretching from the western United States through Mexico to Central America, and another from Morocco to France, across the entire Middle East to northern China.
There are two primary causes of the desiccation: rising temperatures unleashed by using oil and gas, and widespread overpumping of water that took millennia to accumulate underground.
“These findings send perhaps the most alarming message yet about the impact of climate change on our water resources,” said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and professor at Arizona State University who co-authored the study. “The rapid water cycle change that the planet has experienced over the last decade has unleashed a wave of rapid drying.”
Since 2002, satellites have measured changes in the Earth’s gravity field to track shifts in water, both frozen and liquid. What they sent back shows that nearly 6 billion people — three-fourths of humanity — live in the 101 countries that have been losing water.
Large parts of the world are getting drier
Vast swaths of the world are losing fresh water. In addition to the melting of glaciers and ice caps, many regions are getting drier and depleting their groundwater.
Each year, these drying areas have been expanding by an area roughly twice the size of California.
Canada and Russia, where large amounts of ice and permafrost are melting, are losing the most fresh water. The United States, Iran and India also rank near the top, with rising temperatures and chronic overuse of groundwater.
Farms and cities are pulling up so much water using high-capacity pumps that much of the water evaporates and eventually ends up as rain falling over the ocean, measurably increasing sea level rise.
Water flows from a well to irrigate an orchard in Visalia.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, found that these water losses now contribute more to sea level rise than the more widely understood melting of mountain glaciers or the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets.
The staggeringly rapid expansion of the drying regions was surprising even for the scientists. Famiglietti said it is set to worsen in many areas, leading to “widespread aridification and desertification.”
“We found tremendous growth in the world’s land areas that are experiencing extreme drought,” Famiglietti said. “Only the tropics are getting wetter. The rest of the world’s land areas are drying.”
The wave of drying has prompted many people across the world’s food-growing regions to drill more wells and rely more heavily on pumping groundwater.
The researchers estimate that 68% of the water the continents are losing, not including melting glaciers, is from groundwater depletion. And much of that water is to irrigate crops.
Where aquifer levels decline, wells and faucets increasingly sputter and run dry, people drill deeper and the land can sink as underground spaces collapse.
The loss may be irreversible, leaving current and future generations with less water.
Famiglietti said the potential long-term consequences are dire: Farmers will struggle to grow as much food, economic growth will be threatened, increasing numbers of people will flee drying regions, conflicts over water are already increasing, and more governments will be destabilized in countries that aren’t prepared.
The researchers estimated that the world’s drying regions have been losing 368 billion metric tons of water per year. That’s more than double the volume of Lake Tahoe, or 10 times Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States.
All that water, year after year, has become a major contributor to sea level rise, which is projected to cause worsening damages in the coming decades.
Previous studies have shown dropping groundwater levels, dry regions getting drier and these water losses contributing to sea level rise. But the new study shows these changes are happening faster and on a larger scale than previously known.
“It is quite alarming,” said Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar, an Arizona State research scientist who co-authored the study. “Water touches everything in life. The effects of its irreversible decline are bound to trickle into everything.”
He likened the global situation to a family overspending and drawing down their savings accounts.
“Our bank balance is consistently decreasing. This is inherently unsustainable,” Chandanpurkar said.
The draining of groundwater, often invisible, hides how much arid regions are drawing down their reserve accounts, he said. “Once these trust funds dry out, water bankruptcy is imminent.”
The researchers examined data from two U.S.-German satellite missions, called Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE-Follow On.
The scientists ranked California’s Central Valley as the region where the fastest groundwater depletion is occurring, followed by parts of Russia, India and Pakistan.
In other research, scientists have found that the last 25 years have probably been the driest in at least 1,200 years in western North America.
And farming areas that a decade ago appeared in the satellite data as hot spots of drought and groundwater depletion, such as California’s Central Valley and the Ogallala Aquifer beneath the High Plains, have expanded across the Southwest, through Mexico and into Central America.
Researchers identify western U.S. and Central America as one of four ‘mega-drying’ regions
These regions including large parts of Canada and Russia; southwestern North America and Central America; and a giant interconnected drying region spanning from North Africa to Europe, through the Middle East to northern China and Southeast Asia.
The satellite data show that these and other regions are not only shifting to drier conditions on average, but are also failing to “live within the means” of the water they have available, Chandanpurkar said.
“The truth is, water is not being valued and the long-term reserves are exploited for short-term profits,” he said.
He said he hopes the findings will prompt action to address the chronic overuse of water.
In the study, the researchers wrote that “while efforts to slow climate change may be sputtering,” people urgently need to take steps to preserve groundwater. They called for national and global efforts to manage groundwater and “help preserve this precious resource for generations to come.”
In many areas where groundwater levels are dropping, there are no limits on well-drilling or how much a landowner can pump, and there is no charge for the water. Often, well owners don’t even need to have a meter installed or report how much water they’re using.
In California, farms producing vast quantities of nuts, fruits and other crops have drawn down aquifers so heavily that several thousand rural households have had their wells run dry over the last decade, and the ground has been sinking as much as 1 foot per year, damaging canals, bridges and levees.
The state in 2014 adopted a landmark groundwater law that requires local agencies to curb widespread overpumping. But it gives many areas until 2040 to address their depletion problems, and in the meantime water levels have continued to fall.
State officials and local agencies have begun investing in projects to capture more stormwater and replenish aquifers.
Arizona has sought to preserve groundwater in urban areas through a 1980 law, but in much of the state, there are still no limits on how many wells can be drilled or how much water can be pumped. Over the last decade, out-of-state companies and investors have drilled deep wells and expanded large-scale farming operations in the desert to grow hay and other crops.
Famiglietti, who was previously a senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has extensively studied groundwater depletion around the world. He said he doesn’t think the leaders of most countries are aware of, or preparing for, the worsening crisis.
“Of all the troubling findings we revealed in the study, the one thing where humanity can really make a difference quickly is the decision to better manage groundwater and protect it for future generations,” Famiglietti said. “Groundwater will become the most important natural resource in the world’s drying regions. We need to carefully protect it.”
EAR specializes in site remediation, drilling, and water treatment
All 34 EAR employees will join LaBella under its brand
Environmental Assessment & Remediations (EAR), a Patchogue-based hydrologic and environmental consulting firm, has been acquired by LaBella Associates, an international architecture, engineering, environmental and planning company.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 1986, EAR provides technical, responsive environmental services to a diverse client base that includes public agencies, major oil companies, utilities, consulting firms, Fortune 500 companies and contractors. Its services include site investigation, drilling, and injection to remediation system design and installation, analytical reporting, and operations and maintenance.
Recent EAR projects include remediating contamination at a public supply well in Suffolk County, treating soil and groundwater in Queens, installing sub-slab depressurization systems in Brooklyn, and managing multiple remediation sites on Long Island and in the lower Hudson Valley, according to a company statement. The firm has also installed treatment systems on potable wells across New York State and partnered with LaBella to provide groundwater modeling services under the New York State Office of General Services Drinking Water Source Protection contract.
The acquisition expands LaBella’s presence on Long Island and strengthens its environmental capabilities, particularly in serving clients in the brownfield and commercial real estate sectors, according to a company statement.
“We are thrilled to welcome the deeply experienced EAR team to LaBella,” Jeff Roloson, president of LaBella Associates, said in the statement. “Known for their technical acumen and trusted client relationships, EAR brings specialized capabilities and a commitment to excellence that aligns perfectly with LaBella’s values.”
All 34 EAR employees will join LaBella and operate under the company’s brand.
“This transition strengthens our ability to serve clients with added resources and regional presence, without changing the high-quality service and relationships we’ve built,” Dave Vigliotta, EAR founder, said in the statement. “LaBella is a perfect fit for our company, based on its reputation of professionalism and integrity. We are excited to offer our staff opportunities for growth, diversification, and enhanced career development, and look forward to becoming part of the LaBella family.”
For LaBella, the addition of EAR enhances its brownfield, due diligence, and ecological service offerings while expanding coverage across Long Island and downstate New York.
LaBella Associates employs more than 2,000 multi-disciplinary consultants who plan, design, engineer and manage public and private projects. The company is involved in infrastructure, buildings, environmental and energy projects throughout the eastern U.S., the United Kingdom and Spain, according to the statement.
(FOX40.COM) — California has become known throughout the country for being one of the more environmentally friendly states, and a new regulation approved by the state promotes that notion even more.
On Wednesday, the State Water Resources Control Board voted unanimously to pass a water limit on hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, a carcinogen linked to various illnesses including lung cancer. According to the Associated Press, laboratory rats have developed cancer after drinking water tainted with hexavalent chromium.
The board’s chair, E. Joaquin Esquivel, said to the LA Times, “The standard adopted [on Wednesday] improves health protections for communities with impacted drinking water supplies.”
But Tasha Stoiber, senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, had a different sentiment, saying to AP, “This really leaves a lot of California communities unprotected from that potent carcinogen.”
Additionally, the cost associated with the new water limit is something that some water providers have said could have “unprecedented” impacts on California’s residents and water customers, especially those in disadvantaged communities.
State Water Resources board member Sean Maguire said, “[The new standard] is going to impact affordability for many small systems.” He continued, “The economic analysis shows that. And that’s what makes this decision so difficult, in part.”
According to CalMatters, hexavalent chromium has become a controversial contaminant, primarily after a 2008 study showed that rats and mice that drank high doses of the chemical grew cancers in their mouths and intestines.
The nonpartisan and nonprofit organization adds that about 10 years ago, California regulators tried to enact the same limit for hexavalent chromium, but the regulation was overturned in court because it “failed to properly consider the economic feasibility of complying.”
What are forever chemicals? Lead and similar harmful chemicals can stick around in drinking water and cause dangerous health disorders like cancer.
What are forever chemicals? Lead and similar harmful chemicals can stick around in drinking water and cause dangerous health disorders like cancer.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health held a presentation on the topic Thursday, telling participants what they can do to lower their risk of ingesting the chemicals.
“Even with adequate corrosion control and drinking water, when water sits in lead pipes, especially overnight, lead leeches into the water going undetected when the tap is turned on,” said Natalie Exum, an environmental scientist with the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
There are steps that you can take as a homeowner to protect you and your family, she said.
“A lot of utilities do not know where the lead lines lie,” she said.
If you think your home has lead pipes, Exum said to request a water report or reach out to plumbing professionals for an inspection. If it comes back saying your water contains lead, first run the water to flush the pipes.
“Flushing means running the cold water for about five minutes before drinking,” she said.
Then she said to clean the screens on your faucet, and, “only use cold water for cooking, drinking and especially for preparing baby formula.”
Why should you only use cold water? Exum said “hot tap water can dissolve lead into the pipes” and make higher lead levels more likely.
She said faucets and taps installed before 2014 can contain up to 8% of lead. New standards in place say that lead content needs to be below 0.25% for drinking water fixtures.
Carsten Prasse, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, said an estimated 98% of the U.S. population have detectable concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAs, also known as “forever chemicals,” in their blood.
California is set to adopt regulations that will allow for sewage to be extensively treated, transformed into pure drinking water and delivered directly to people’s taps.
The regulations are expected to be approved Tuesday by the State Water Resources Control Board, enabling water suppliers to begin building advanced treatment plants that will turn wastewater into a source of clean drinking water.
The new rules represent a major milestone in California’s efforts to stretch supplies by recycling more of the water that flows down drains.
Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.
“We’re creating a new source of supply that we were previously discharging or thinking of as waste,” said Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, a water think tank in Oakland. “As we look to make our communities more resilient to drought, to climate change, this is really going to be an important part of that solution.”
Water agencies in many areas of California have been treating and reusing wastewater for decades, often piping effluent for outdoor irrigation or to facilities where treated water soaks into the ground to replenish aquifers.
The regulations will enable what’s known as “direct potable reuse,” putting highly treated water straight into the drinking water system or mixing it with other supplies.
Cooley and other water experts say it’s inaccurate to call this “toilet to tap,” a term that was popularized in the 1990s by opponents of plans to use recycled water for replenishing groundwater in the San Gabriel Valley. They say the sewage undergoes an extremely sophisticated treatment process, and scientific research has shown the highly purified water is safe to drink.
“This is really about recovering resources, not wasting precious resources,” Cooley said. “This is really, I think, an exciting opportunity for helping to realize that vision of a more circular sort of approach for water.”
The process of developing the regulations, which was required under legislation, has taken state regulators more than a decade. It included a review by a panel of experts.
“We wanted to absolutely make sure that we put public health first priority, so that the public had confidence,” said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the State Water Board’s Division of Drinking Water.
“We have a very thorough set of regulations,” Polhemus said. “It has broad support, and we think we’ve gotten it to a point where everybody is comfortable with what it presents.”
Building plants to purify wastewater is expensive, and it’s likely to be several years before any Californians are drinking the treated water. But Los Angeles, San Diego and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are all planning to pursue direct potable reuse as part of ongoing investments in recycling more wastewater.
The regulations detail requirements for infrastructure, treatment technologies and monitoring, Polhemus said, and ensure “triple redundancy for each of the areas we’re treating for,” including bacteria and viruses as well as chemicals.
The water will go through various stages of treatment, passing through activated carbon filters and reverse-osmosis membranes, as well as undergoing disinfection with UV light, among other treatments.
The regulations require such thorough purification that at the end of the process, the water will need to have minerals added back so that the water will regain a taste and chemistry resembling typical drinking water.
“This will be by far the most well-treated, highest-quality water served to the public,” Polhemus said. “It’s an incredible amount of treatment.”
Once the regulations are approved by the State Water Board, they still need to be approved by the Office of Administrative Law, which is expected next year.
The treatment technology is similar to the process used for desalinating seawater, but recycling wastewater requires less energy and is less costly than turning saltwater into freshwater. Polhemus said the costs for purifying wastewater will probably be about half the costs of desalinating ocean water.
Direct potable reuse has been done for years in other water-scarce parts of the world, including Namibia and Singapore. Some communities in Texas are also doing it. Colorado has rules in place allowing potable reuse, while Arizona and Florida are developing regulations.
In California, some agencies have for years been doing indirect potable reuse, in which highly treated water is used to replenish groundwater, and is later pumped out, treated and delivered as drinking water.
Orange County, for example, has its Groundwater Replenishment System, the largest project of its kind in the world. The system purifies wastewater using a three-step advanced treatment process, and the water then percolates and is injected into the groundwater basin, where it becomes part of the water supply.
While Orange County plans to stick with indirect potable reuse, Polhemus said, other water districts are looking at direct reuse as an approach that saves costs by using existing infrastructure rather than building separate systems for recycled water.
This strategy also offers cities and water agencies a new route for reducing reliance on imported supplies and scaling up the use of recycled water — a source that water managers view as relatively drought-proof.
“Our communities are always going to generate wastewater even in the worst drought. And having this available can really augment that supply and add resiliency,” Polhemus said.
Recycling more wastewater also brings other environmental benefits, reducing the amount of treated effluent that flows into coastal waters.
“It’s easier on the environment you’re taking the water from, it’s easier on the environment you’re discharging it to, and sets us up to be better stewards of our environment overall,” Polhemus said.
The complexity and costs of the treatment plants will mean that large, well-funded agencies will adopt the technology first, Polhemus said. Direct potable reuse also is suited to coastal areas, he said, because the reverse-osmosis treatment, like a desalination plant, generates brine that can be discharged offshore.
As for how much purified water might be used, Polhemus said if some coastal communities are able to get 10% to 15% of supplies from treated wastewater during a drought, that would represent a significant improvement in diversifying supplies.
“Someday, it could be 25% to 40% of some communities’ water supply,” Polhemus said. “At some point, we could recycle the majority of wastewater that now flows to the ocean just as treated wastewater.”
The Metropolitan Water District plans to start doing direct potable reuse as part of its Pure Water Southern California project, building a $6-billion facility in Carson that is slated to become the country’s largest water recycling project.
It’s scheduled to deliver its first treated water as soon as 2028. Initially, the district says the supplies will be used largely to replenish groundwater basins for later use, with some water also going to serve oil refineries and other industrial users.
By 2032, MWD officials plan to be producing 115 million gallons of purified water a day. Of that, they expect to send 25 million gallons per day directly to a plant in La Verne to be mixed with other supplies from the Colorado River and Northern California, and delivered as drinking water throughout the region — an amount that’s projected to increase to 60 million gallons a day once the facility is operating at its full capacity of 150 million gallons daily.
Depending on how wet or dry a year is, the district will be able to store more water in aquifers or send more purified water directly into the distribution system, said Deven Upadhyay, the MWD’s executive officer and assistant general manager.
“We’re building that flexibility into the design of this program,” Upadhyay said. “If you needed to push more into direct potable reuse, you would be able to do that and back off of your deliveries to the groundwater basins.”
He said that flexibility is valuable as California deals with more extreme droughts fueled by climate change.
“Our view is that over time, those imported supplies will decline. And we want to take the water that is used, and reuse it as much as possible, and try to close that cycle of water use,” Upadhyay said. “Because it’s such a drought-proof supply, it really creates another degree of resilience for us.”
The Metropolitan Water District functions as Southern California’s wholesaler, delivering supplies to cities and agencies that serve 19 million people in six counties.
Currently, about 450,000 acre-feet of wastewater is being recycled in Metropolitan’s service area, an amount equivalent to the water use of about 1.3 million households.
The MWD’s water recycling project, as well as Los Angeles’ Operation Next project and San Diego’s Pure Water project, will dramatically increase the use of recycled water once they are built out, Upadhyay said.
“We should expect a doubling of recycled water that Southern California is producing and drinking by the time those three projects are completed,” Upadhyay said.
And part of that will come thanks to the state’s new regulations that enable direct reuse, he said.
“It’s a major milestone for the state,” Upadhyay said. “This is going to lead to water agencies throughout the state starting to plan for potable reuse projects in a way that results in a more resilient California water future.”
In the Bay Area, the Santa Clara Valley Water District also plans to pursue potable reuse.
In a study last year, researchers at the Pacific Institute said California currently recycles about 23% of its municipal wastewater, and has the potential to more than triple the amount that is recycled and reused.
Cooley said some portion of that will come through direct reuse where it pencils out for communities.
“It’s just part of the puzzle in terms of helping us to realize the full potential for recycled water,” Cooley said. “This is an important piece of helping make our communities more resilient.”
There has been growing public acceptance of recycling water as people have experienced more severe droughts and seen recycling projects expand, Cooley said.
Still, she said, acceptance isn’t universal, and “it’s important to really address openly concerns that people have as communities consider this as an option.”
She said reusing more water is one of multiple strategies that California should adopt, along with capturing more stormwater and improving water-use efficiency.
Peter Gleick, the Pacific Institute’s co-founder and president emeritus, pointed out that the water-recycling technologies in use today are fundamentally the same approaches used by astronauts on the International Space Station.
“It’s not toilet to tap,” Gleick said, adding that it’s better described as “toilet to an unbelievably sophisticated system that produces incredibly pure water to tap.”
In his book “The Three Ages of Water,” Gleick wrote that reusing water provides a valuable new supply, and should be part of a set of solutions for long-term water sustainability.
“High-quality water produced from wastewater is an asset,” Gleick wrote. “We have the ability and technology to produce incredibly clean water from any quality of wastewater, and we should rapidly expand the capacity to do so.”
Newsletter
Toward a more sustainable California
Get Boiling Point, our newsletter exploring climate change, energy and the environment, and become part of the conversation — and the solution.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
