Cal Poly Pomona Gets Gift From Water District

The Three Valleys Municipal Water District didn’t wrap the present it gave Cal Poly Pomona on Tuesday. But university officials nonetheless seemed appreciative of the gift--all 12.2 tons of it.

The Claremont-based water district, after two years of using $100,000 worth of sewage treatment equipment that came from a study to biologically remove nitrates from ground water, decided to give it to Cal Poly’s LandLab, an educational project that uses the Spadra Landfill in Pomona as its working laboratory.

As part of an aquaculture project, LandLab officials plan to use the “recycled” gift to remove ammonia from reclaimed water and channel that water into fish ponds.

“Here we were, a water district, sitting with pieces of equipment that we couldn’t use anymore. We would have had to just turn it into scrap,” Three Valley’s board member Bruce R. J. Milne said. “(Cal Poly) can use it and they’re happy to get it.”