Culver City Observer -

West Basin Municipal Water District which serves Culver City announces a record year in recycled water production at the Edward C. Little Water Recycling Facility, which produced 12 billion gallons of recycled water in Fiscal Year 2013-14.

As California enters its fourth consecutive year of drought West Basin's record production this past year would meet the water needs of approximately 74,000 households. This also means that approximately 12 billion gallons of drinking water did not need to be imported into Southern California.

Earlier this year, West Basin also reached yet another milestone of 150 billion gallons of total recycled water produced at the Edward C. Little Water Recycling Facility, which has been operating since 1995.

These milestones in water recycling were due to the facility's fourth expansion, which was completed in 2013 and increased its capacity to treat wastewater from 45 million gallons per day to 62 million gallons per day. Every gallon of wastewater that is treated at the facility is repurposed and does not go to the ocean.

"West Basin has a state-of-the-art water recycling program and is the only one in the world that produces five types of 'designer' waters to meet our customers' needs," said West Basin Board President Donald L. Dear.

"We look forward to continuing to increase our recycled water production to help with the drought and provide a reliable, locally-controlled supply of water for coastal Los Angeles County."

The five types of "designer" waters produced by the plant are: irrigation water (tertiary disinfected); cooling tower water (nitrified); low-pressure boiler feed water (single pass reverse osmosis); high-pressure boiler feed water (double pass reverse osmosis); and indirect drinking water (microfiltration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light with hydrogen peroxide).

West Basin began recycling water following the droughts of the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time the West Basin Board of Directors embarked on a program to diversify its water supplies by adding recycled water and conservation efforts to its water supply portfolio. Customers using West Basin's recycled water include Chevron, ExxonMobil and Tesoro refineries; Goodyear Airship Station; StubHub Center; Toyota, Honda and other corporate headquarters; city parks, golf courses and other large landscapes.

Additionally, approximately 50 percent of the City of El Segundo's water use is recycled water. Together, these organizations are helping to save billions of gallons of precious drinking water.

For more information on West Basin's recycled water program, please visit http://www.westbasin.org.