DOUGLAS J. REINHART : Drop-Off in O.C. Water Supply : Drought and Growth Require Reclamation, Cooperation

After four years of drought, the possibility of a devastating water shortage is finally being taken seriously in Orange County and elsewhere in Southern California. While Orange County has a large supply of local ground water, and thus does not face the same acute pressures as some other areas of the Southland, the water situation nonetheless could soon pose a threat to economic growth.

Just last week, the Orange County Board of Supervisors came out in favor of a plan to cut water consumption by 10% through voluntary measures. If that doesn’t work, some form of rationing could follow. And the long-term outlook for the region’s water supply is grim, even if the drought ends next year.

To meet the water challenge, residents and businesses in Orange County will have to conserve and otherwise work to protect water supplies. Ground water will have to be preserved from further contamination. Treated water from sewage plants will have to be “reclaimed” and used for watering lawns and the like. New construction and development will have to take place with an eye toward responsible water consumption.

Douglas J. Reinhart, head of the Orange County office of the civil engineering firm ASL Consulting Engineers, has long been involved in building the pipes, pumps and wells that constitute the unseen underside of the water supply system. As a member of the Reclamation and Reuse Task Force of the California Water Conservation Coalition, he has been actively involved in developing solutions to the water problem. He spoke with Times staff writer Jonathan Weber about the nature of the water crisis in Orange County and some possible remedies.

Q. Now that the drought is entering its fourth year, the water shortage is finally making headlines. How serious do you consider the water situation to be in Orange County?

A. It makes more sense to talk regionally, and regionally the water problem is serious. The drought may end next year, just as the ‘76-77 drought ended, but the water shortage we are now experiencing will not end with that.

Because of some court decisions (which restricted Southern California’s access to Colorado River water), and development, the available water supplies have become taxed to the point where they have a difficult time meeting the needs of the population. In Orange County, the population has increased greatly, but no new sources of water have been located for years.

Q. What was the last new source?

A. If you discount reclaimed water, it would be the state water project developed in the 1960s and ‘70s, and that project still has not realized its potential.

Q. To what extent does Orange County depend on water from outside the region?

A. Southern Orange County is entirely dependent on imported water. There are no wells to speak of. Conversely, most of central and northern Orange County gets most of its water from ground water. In times of drought, these towns can decrease their use of imported water and give that to South County and increase the amount of pumped well water.

But another thing that has affected Orange County to some degree, and Los Angeles County even more so, is ground water pollution from chemicals and sea-water intrusion. Some people look at the situation and say, ‘We have no problem, because we sit on this huge lake with millions of gallons of water.’ But not all of it is available to use in any year.

Q. Taken as a whole, will the water problem become grave enough to affect economic growth in this area?

A. It already has. In the 1976 drought, and again now, communities have used infrastructure such as water to limit growth. And I feel strongly that you should limit growth and control growth through planning processes and the legislative process, and then build infrastructure to serve those needs.

It’s pretty drastic if you can’t water your lawn except from a hand-held bucket, like in Santa Barbara now. I don’t think we’re in that serious a position here if people are allowed to plan for the growth.

Q. Are some projects not being built because there is not enough water?

A. Well, maybe scaled down. Developers have to go to each agency and determine what their ability is to serve the development, and look at all the different environmental impacts. The sanitation facilities are a crucial aspect, and in that sense it’s a double-edged sword. Bringing the water in also requires treating the water when you’re done with it.

Q. And what sort of planning should be taking place? What possible new sources might there be?

A. We’d like to see the completion of the state water project in a way that is environmentally sensitive. That can be solved if it is done in a non-emotional and logical manner. The State Water Resources Board is now holding hearings and will determine how much water goes to the San Francisco Bay Delta, to the fisheries, and to the farmers, and how much goes to municipal and industrial uses.

Right now there are a lot of emotions involved, and if Northern California continues in the drought, there will be pressure to cut the flow down the state water project.

I would also like to see more water conservation taking place. Southern California is a leader in accomplishing a lot of those things. We’ve done things like zero-scaping, or landscaping with plants that don’t use much water . . .

Q. But that’s not really done on a very broad basis, is it?

A.It’s starting to get more recognition as developers and various citizens realize the importance of going back to a desert-like atmosphere. When I first came out here, the big thing was this tropical atmosphere, with ferns and all these things that take a lot of water and don’t handle dry heat very well. We still have a long way to go, but along the new roads being built they are now going to a native plant.

Another important thing is the use of reclaimed water. I’m from St. Louis, and we drank water from the Mississippi River that was utilized by other people and put back in the river and used again. That’s reclaiming water. Here, we don’t have rivers, but we do have flows out of treatment plants that can be used for many safe uses such as irrigation, greenbelts, highway irrigation, parks and golf courses.

Q. How much water is reclaimed in Orange County?

A. Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 acre-feet (there are 325,829 gallons in an acre-foot) per year, and there are plans to increase that dramatically.

Q. How much is that on a percentage basis?

A. It’s a small amount, less than 10% of all the water used, but it can greatly add to the supply. Orange County uses 350,000 acre-feet per year, maybe 500,000.

Q. Potentially, how much water could be reclaimed?

A. A lot of it will have to do with the way it is perceived by the public. In the past, the perception about reclaimed water was: ‘Don’t touch that or you’ll die.’ But people from the Midwest and the East are used to getting water from rivers that others have dumped into. I don’t have any unusual-looking growths. There needs to be a general education for the public about how reclaimed water can safely be used.

Here in Irvine, there are three high-rise buildings that use reclaimed water to flush toilets. This took many years to get approved, because the state Health Department is moving very cautiously on the kinds of uses they will approve. Recently I was shown a draft report by the department where they are reconsidering (whether to allow this kind of use of reclaimed water). The reasoning is that in later retrofitting by a plumber, he could connect into the wrong pipe, and reclaimed water would go into a faucet or a drinking fountain.

Q. So systems that use reclaimed water have a separate set of pipes? How expensive is that?

A. I don’t have a figure, but it’s very expensive. Right here (in the Irvine Spectrum) there are dual systems in the ground to sprinkle the greenbelts. The Irvine Ranch Water District mandates that.

Q. I didn’t think water coming out of treatment plants is toxic.

A. It’s not. It’s highly treated. There could be plant upsets that no one knows about that get into the system, and the Health Department is concerned with the overall health effects of drinking waste water. But reclaimed water meets the drinking water standards, and in many instances it has less dissolved solids and other materials than water that people drink.

Q. Your firm is building a water system for the Irvine Coast project. How much reclaimed water will be used, and how much will the system cost?

A. The project will use about 2.9-million gallons per day of domestic water, and an additional 3.1-million gallons of reclaimed water. The regular water system will cost about $25 million, and the reclaimed water system about $25 million.

Q. What is the main obstacle to greater use of reclaimed water? Is it the health concern, or that fact that it’s expensive to have double pipes?

A. Expense is a problem, but health concerns are the major thing. The cost of water is going up all the time, and as the cost increases it becomes more and more feasible to use other sources.

I believe we need to reclaim water on a statewide basis. Maybe it’s not easy to convince a city like Sacramento, one that has a river flowing right by the doorstep, that they need to reclaim water. But I think water is a statewide resource. If it’s good to conserve it in Southern California, it’s good to conserve it in Northern California.

Statewide, we’re a north and a south, and we have been for many years. People in the north have a tendency to think we are taking their water, their resource. We have to come together and realize it’s a state resource.

Q. What should businesses be doing to help address the water problems?

A. They can ensure that their plants and facilities are utilizing water judiciously, just like homeowners. They need to look at places where they can reclaim water, or use reclaimed water, or use less water by switching to a different process. This has occurred in Northern California for a number of years.

Q. What kinds of things can real estate developers in particular do to reduce the amount of water consumed by new developments?

A. When they put in large slope areas, greenbelt areas, they should be using reclaimed water. And they should be using native plant types.

Q. But that is not mandatory at this point?

A. By and large, no.

Q. It would seem that all these new office parks with ponds and grass are inappropriate and contributing to the problem.

A. There is some wastefulness. They recycle that water, but there is evaporation. We’ve got to realize we are a semi-arid climate, not the tropics. A lot is being done, though, to bring reclaimed water to various points of use such as golf courses.

Q. What needs to be done to preserve this ‘huge underground lake’ you referred to?

A. We have to keep what’s called a positive gradient in the water flowing from the north through the Santa Ana River watershed out to the ocean, because if we don’t and the ground water table is lowered too much, then seawater will flow back in. The Orange County Water District does an excellent job of watching that, and they are also injecting some reclaimed water close to the interface between seawater and ground water to adjust the gradient.

Over the last few years we have been ‘mining’ water, taking more out then we put back in. The subterranean basin covers most of central and northern Orange County, and all the wells penetrate into it and take water out.

Q. How is the water table replenished?

A. The runoff from the Santa Ana river is captured and not allowed to run out to the ocean. That’s why when you cross the river at the Santa Ana freeway it looks dry. That water has been intercepted and put into basins and spread and allowed to percolate into the ground. We’ve started a project for Orange County Water District to improve their spreading basins, so they can spread more Santa Ana River runoff water more efficiently and help get this huge underground lake back to its normal level.

At times when other sources are reduced, we can increase the take from underground. But it’s like a savings account: There are only so many years that you can mine your savings account. You have to watch it and not get to a critical level.

Q. How close are we to that critical level?

A. Everyone’s concern is that, in 50 years, there has never been more than three consecutive dry years, and we are now entering our fourth year. Is there going to be a fifth? Who knows? We’re not at a critical point now, but you want to keep something in the bank.

Q. How big a problem is pollution of the ground water?

A. If you’d asked 10 years ago, I would have said not too great a problem, but we have learned a lot since then. One big thing is our ability to measure, to test in parts per billion. We were fat, dumb and happy before, but now we can detect many things we couldn’t detect previously.

There certainly have been problems. We have had to close down the pumping at a number of wells, or go through very expensive treatment processes.

Q. Are there parts of the county that are especially hard hit by the water shortage?

A. In parts of Central and South County they realize that if they don’t do something now, they are going to be short. There’s a new pipeline going into the upper part of Mission Viejo. It’s a similar situation to the one in San Clemente. It’s not that San Clemente doesn’t have enough rights to water, it’s just there are not enough pipelines to bring what they need. So their supply is short, and they’re constructing another pipeline to be ready in 1991.

Q. You mentioned that the water problem should not be used as an obstacle to growth. But doesn’t there need to be a change of thinking, a move away from this idea that we do what we want to do and the water district will get the water from somewhere?

A. Water purveyors should not be put in the position of stopping growth. They are there to serve whatever growth happens. They should be part of the planning process, but not the roadblock, or the means to curtail development. Don’t stop a water project because it’s growth-inducing. You figure what the growth there is going to be and then develop the projects to serve that.

Q. But maybe there just isn’t enough water for more growth.

A. Then you stop the growth through the planning process.