Recycled water plant opens in June

Water will help golf courses, preserve drinking water and restore Lake Merced

By Emily Fancher, STAFF WRITER

DALY CITY -- After years of lobbying and planning, the city's recycled water plant will open in June to provide water to three local golf courses. The project is part of an effort to preserve precious drinking water and restore the water level of Lake Merced.

"This is where all the hoo ha is happening," said Patrick Sweetland, director of Daly City's Department of Water and Wastewater Resources, surveying the recycled water treatment plant that is nearly complete. The plant is part of the city's water treatment complex off Lake Merced Boulevard.

The $6.8 million plant will provide recycled water to two athletic fields and three golf courses -- the Olympic, Lake Merced and San Francisco Golf Clubs -- that now gobble up precious drinking water for irrigation.


The plant has been funded by $1.4 million from a state grant, $1 million from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and the rest from a low-interest loan from the state that Daly City will repay through the North San Mateo County Sanitation District.

Daly City gets half its drinking water from an underground aquifer called the Westside Basin Aquifer, and half from San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy system. In recent years, concern over the depletion of the aquifer set in motion the push for recycled water.

The plant is a result of an April 2002 agreement between the golf courses, Daly City, San Francisco and the SFPUC. It will provide 2.6 million gallons a day of recycled water that will cost the courses about 50 cents per unit, which equals about 748 gallons.

Environmentalists hope the use of recycled water also will help alleviate the problem of sinking water levels of Lake Merced, but Sweetland said no one knows for sure if this will help.

Greg Bartow, groundwater manager for the SFPUC, said the water level of Lake Merced has been sinking since the mid-1980s and that has alarmed boaters and trout fishermen who have flocked to the lake in the past.

But he added, "We're on an upswing to restoring the lake."

What likely will increase the water's depth is a pilot project currently under way to introduce treated storm water back into the lake from the Vista Grande Canal.

John Plummer, a Daly City resident and spokesman for Friends of Lake Merced, said his group questioned the original Vista Grande Canal plan because it felt the safeguards against polluted water were inadequate, but the group is satisfied with the revised pilot plan. He said his group is working with the SFPUC and Daly City on other ways that recycled water can replace well water, specifically at Colma's cemeteries.

Sweetland said Colma's cemeteries and local school grounds also could benefit from recycled water, but that currently pipelines aren't in place to expand its use much beyond the golf courses. In the future, however, more pipes could be added.

"We never take the supply of water for granted," said Sweetland. "We recognize it's a treasure."

Staff writer Emily Fancher covers Daly City, South San Francisco, Colma and Brisbane. She can be reached at 650-348-4340 or efancher@sanmateocountytime.com .