By Marinee Zavala

For San Diego to thrive, residents need to have enough water; and in order for them to get it, large volumes of water need to be imported from elsewhere in California or even other states.

The system currently supplying this vital liquid to San Diego County residents has been so effective that people seldom realize how difficult it is to deliver water to their homes.

Due to a lack in the local water supply, San Diego water agencies currently pay three times what they did 15 years ago to bring water in.

“Right now, San Diego imports 85 percent to 90 percent of its water. This means that we’re getting it from people other than us, from places like the Colorado River or the Northern California Bay Delta,” says Brent Eidson, deputy director of External Affairs at San Diego’s Public Utilities Department.

To address water scarcity in San Diego, experts announced that they have begun the permitting process for the largest and most ambitious water purification project yet. The three-phase project is expected to get underway in 2019 and be completed by 2035. When finished, it would supply 83 millions of gallons per day to San Diego.

However, many people have found the process odd and difficult to understand. This is because a large percentage of the water will have originally come from toilets and sinks in San Diego’s homes and establishments; that is, it will be sewage that will be treated and reused as drinking water.

“It will be 100 percent safe. We are using the best available technology. In fact, this is already being done in other parts of the state, and instead of injecting the water into an aquifer, we are sending it to a lake and then treating it again,” added Eidson. “It is important to stress that we are not just taking sewage. What we are doing is separating the water that is in that sewage, and we are purifying it to the point that we have to add materials again, then sending it to a lake, and once it’s in the lake, we’re treating it again.”

By the time this reclaimed water is considered ready to be delivered to people’s homes, it will have undergone eight different purification processes.

The process has been tested many times over, said San Diego officials, in order to ensure the well being of anyone who drinks this water.

Since June 2011, the City has been producing 1 million gallons of purified water per day. Purified water samples have been tested thousands of times and have met all federal and state drinking water standards.