STW Resources Holding Corp. (fka STWSQ)

[rdragon]

After listening to the conference call, it seems that STWS is in the right place, with the right solutions, at the right time.

Saw this article on the Toilet to Tap solution for California. And state funding too.



Congressman seeks to end California water wars with waste-water recycling, desalination

By Steve Scauzillo, San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Posted: 06/29/15, 8:43 PM PDT

Emphasizing practical solutions in the battle over drought relief, a congressman urged local water leaders Monday to fight for funding for projects such as waste-water recycling and infrastructure repairs.
Northern California Rep. Jared Huffman came to Southern California to push his $1.4 billion drought bill and find some common ground in what he called the state’s water wars being waged in the halls of Sacramento and Washington.
The San Rafael Democrat, former assemblyman and environmental attorney, blasted his Republican colleagues for turning the state’s water shortage into a fruitless battle over environmental laws, instead of funding common-sense solutions such as recycled water plants, storm-water capture projects and desalination.
“The federal government has been absent on the funding side of things. Also, unfortunately, they’ve been absent on the policy side as well,” Huffman said.
Huffman, along with Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-El Monte, both members of the House Committee on Natural Resources, talked water with leaders from the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, the West Basin Water District, the Water Replenishment District of Southern California, the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California during a round-table discussion and tour of sewage treatment facilities at the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts in North Whittier.
Huffman’s bill would expand water recycling projects, fund repairs of leaky pipes, manage watershed areas, invest in desalination research, provide efficient agricultural irrigation, ground-water cleanup and recharge.
“It would help to get (water) infrastructure projects going,” he said.
Huffman last week began “crowd sourcing” his bill on his website, seeking public comment in an effort to break free from Washington-insider debates about lowering environmental protections including reducing water supplied for salmon and other fish in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta where Southern California imports two-thirds of its water, he said.
“Some in Congress have treated the drought as a political opportunity instead of a moral imperative. They’ve dusted off the same political agenda they’ve pursued for years: weakening environmental laws, gutting fishery protections, and redirecting water needed by other regions — and tried to sell it as a drought response,” Huffman wrote on his website.
Huffman and Napolitano urged local water agencies to submit projects for funding to the Department of Interior. Huffman said federal money has been set aside but then gets diverted for other reasons, such as debt reduction.
“Let them know these are projects Southern California has ready to go,” Napolitano told the water managers.
Though hardly a quick fix, water recycling and re-use should be in California’s drought-busting tool box if current water shortages continue into next year or as many believe, the state enters a new normal in terms of scarce water supplies, Huffman said.
Eight water recycling projects in the state produce 200,000 acre-feet of water a year. There are 17 more in the planning stages, which would add another 300,000 acre feet, said Rich Nagel, general manager of West Basin in the South Bay, which along with the Water Replenishment District, is already using recycled water.
At a tour of the San Gabriel Coastal Spreading Grounds in Pico Rivera, Huffman learned this was one of the few places that accepts storm-water runoff, recycled water and imported water. Eric Batman of the county’s Department of Public Works spoke of the importance of green space in capturing water over the din of water rushing into the channel and then settling along the soft-bottomed San Gabriel River, where it percolates into the West Basin.
The WRD will break ground in September on a treatment plant that will add 21,000 acre-feet of recycled water from the Sanitation Districts’ plant at the 60/605 freeways and inject it into the ground water. By 2018, the district will use 71,000 acre-feet of recycled water to replenish the aquifer, where wells deliver potable water to customers. (An acre foot equals 326,000 gallons, the amount used by a family in a year.)
The project will wean the WRD off imported water.
When politicians contact him about this new idea of using treated waste water to recharge aquifers, Robb Whitaker, general manager, smiles. “We have been using recycled water here for 55 years,” he said.
Their latest project comes at a time when levels of the underground aquifers are falling, reaching lows not seen in 50 years, according to a May engineering report.
The report found the basins fell four feet on average, but much more in particular spots. For example, in the 2013-14 water year, levels beneath Inglewood and Gardena fell 20 feet, while the basin under Whittier dropped seven feet.
Underground basins, from the Chino Basin in the Inland Empire to the San Gabriel Basin, are at record lows, said Ken Manning, executive director of the Water Quality Authority.
A new project that may be eligible for funding under Huffman’s bill would take treated waste water up from North Whittier to the spreading grounds at the 605 and 210 freeways. That project was conceived 15 years ago and shot down by politicians and Miller Brewing as “toilet-to-tap,” Manning said. The water districts in Orange County soon sped ahead with water recycling and surpassed Los Angeles County.
LA Daily News, June 29, 2015 article link: http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20150629/congressman-seeks-to-end-california-water-wars-with-waste-water-recycling-desalination