Water-recycling plant underway

Daly City's $5.6 million facility could save aquifer supplies

by Matthew Verrinder
December 4, 2001

DALY CITY -- The environmental impact study for a long-awaited $5.6 million water-recycling plant at Lake Merced is underway.

Officials are hoping that the use of recycled water to irrigate nearby golf courses will reduce demands on the Westside Basin Aquifer and help prevent saltwater from eventually entering it.

Construction of the new recycling plant, to be built at the city's existing wastewater plant at Lake Merced, is expected to begin in May 2002 and be finished by September 2003, according to Patrick Sweetland, Daly City's director of water and wastewater.

The three golf courses that will receive recycled water -- Lake Merced Country Club, the Olympic Club and the San Francisco Golf Club -- have not used wastewater currently treated at the existing plant because it isn't of a high enough quality to irrigate their fairways and greens.

Daly City receives 43 percent of its drinking water from the Westside Aquifer, which hydrologists believe will eventually become contaminated with saltwater if the golf courses continue pumping from the aquifer.

The remaining 57 percent of Daly City's water is bought from San Francisco and comes through the Hetch Hetchy system.

"We want to protect the aquifer as a potable resource, to only use it in times of need," Sweetland said.

The planned recycling facility will have the capacity to treat 2.8 million gallons of water per day.  The three golf courses around the lake are expected to need a minimum of 1.94 million gallons.

The remaining amount, Sweetland said, would be used to irrigate Daly City's nearby Westlake Park.

That wastewater pumped out of the existing plant is not recycled and flows to the Pacific Ocean.

Sweetland is confident that the switch to recycled water will "go pretty smoothly."  "We'll keep the current operations going while the transition is made," he said.

Environmental groups interested in protecting the Westside Aquifer have long pushed for the San Francisco PUblic Utilities Commission and Daly City to reach an agreement on ways to protect the aquifer.  The water-recycling plant is one sign that the parties are working together.

"The one thing that is encouraging is that we have elected officials in [Daly City Councilmember Adrienne] Tissier, [San Francisco Supervisor Tony] Hall and Mayor Brown who are all putting their reputations on the line and saying 'we're going to fix the problem at Lake Merced'," said Jerry Cadagan, a member of the environmental-advocate Friends of Lake Merced.

However, Cadagan still believes there is a long way to go in protecting water supplies.  "The reason we sound so impatient is because they first started kicking around this idea seven years ago, so this is the first step in helping things over there [at Lake Merced]," he said.

Cadagan was once a stern critic of both Daly City and San Francisco and their seeming lack of effort to protect both the lake and aquifer.  Now, however, Cadagan seemed particularly pleased with Daly City's focus and recent progress.  "Daly City is ahead of San Francisco in terms of getting into the business of recycled water," he said.  "They've spent money on engineering and have this environmental report out."

Public comment on the EIR will be accepted up to Dec. 15, and the sanitation district is scheduled to vote on whether to accept the report at its meeting Jan. 14.

A main environmental impact that officials will weigh is the affect the new plant will have on the Bay Area native red-legged frog, which dwells in nearby ponds and lakes.