Last month the Lathrop City Council approved a plan to come up with a recycled water master plan to outline safe and efficient ways to use treated wastewater for landscaping within the city limits.
And thanks to River Islands, that plan is coming to fruition much faster now that the master planned community is requesting the ability to landscape with recycled water rather than using the city’s existing drinking water to maintain vegetation within the exploding tract.
Tonight, the Lathrop City Council will decide on whether to spend $107,192 plus an administrative fee of $16,079 to execute agreements with a handful of environmental engineering firms for the completion of the recycled water project master plan and its subsequent implementation to allow River Islands to move forward with its request.
The money required to implement the program will be provided by River Islands.
Until now, the recycled water byproduct of the city’s water treatment plant has only been used for agricultural purposes and distributed through spray fields, but the urban implementation would be an entirely new step for the city that could have wide-ranging implications moving forward.
The city, which currently gets all of its commercial water from a variety of wells around the community, has been active in attempting to work with other communities to establish a groundwater management plan to preserve the vital resource that flows to every tap in the community. It is a move spurred by concerns that underground basins are over drafted or even critically overacted, threatening the long-term sustainability of the resource.
Since the majority of residential water goes towards landscaping, the move towards recycled water – which is as pure if not even purer than the water that comes from taps thanks to advancements in water filtering and treatment – could end up preserving precious groundwater resources as the city moves to protect it amidst widespread development in surrounding communities that draw from the same basin they do.
The lion’s share of the cost being incurred by River Islands – $67,632 – will go towards the development of the recycled water program itself, while $28,600 will be paid to another firm to manage the program. A total of $10,960 will be used to setup the implementation and prepare River Islands – which has paid for the expansion of the consolidated treatment plant that they’ll be getting the water from – for the ability to use the resource for urban landscaping purposes.
The Lathrop City Council meets on the first and third Monday of every months at 7 p.m. at Lathrop City Hall – located at 390 Towne Centre Drive. For additional information, or to obtain a copy of the agenda, visit www.ci.lathrop.ca.us.
To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.
