Water desalination plant opens on Murrieta Road

Officials celebrate the opening of the Perris II water desalination plant in Menifee. (Photos by Kelvin Portillo)

By Kelvin Portillo, Correspondent

The necessity for safe, sustainable drinking water in American homes is hindered by ongoing challenges, such as a rapid growth in population and severe droughts. To facilitate clean drinking water to the masses, desalination facilities throughout parts of the world collect water from lakes, rivers, or groundwater and through the process of reverse osmosis converts it into reliable and safe drinking water.

Eastern Municipal Water District last week opened a new desalination facility located on Murrieta Road just north of Salt Creek.

EMWD, which services nearly 1 million people in western Riverside County, held a ceremonial grand opening for their new facility, named the Perris II Desalination Facility. This new addition will serve as a larger function to the existing facilities, Perris I and Menifee I Desalters.

The Perris II Desalter desalination facility collects water from either local water sources, such as groundwater or an imported water source.

The Perris II Desalter alone will provide safe water for more than 15,000 households. Water for 15,000 households equates to water treatment of 5.4 million gallons a day; however, water produced from all three desalters combined will serve up to 30,000 households.

Perris II uses mainly local groundwater from surrounding areas of Perris, Menifee, Lakeview, and Nuevo that is sent to the Menifee desalination complex. The EMWD’s groundwater program makes it possible to extract from local groundwater sources to send it back to the surrounding areas. The groundwater program removes 65,000 tons of salt each year.

Board members and staff of EMWD made it a key point that they want to fulfill local water needs by utilizing local water resources.

“As we continue to see economic development of our region, it is imperative that our agency makes a perfect water supply investments to not only maximize local resources, but in a responsible and sustainable manner,” said EMWD General Manager Joe Mouawad.

Like any desalter facility, it takes enormous manpower, engineering and funding to be successful. Perris II was made possible through Proposition 1, a 2014 voter approved act to fund projects for long-term water needs of the state. A total of $22.5 million in grant funding was received from partnership with the State Water Resources Control Board.

“Access to water in so many communities up and down in California, I think of that anxiety and that stress … the vulnerability that our communities have to drought,” said Chair of State Water Resources Control Board Joaquin Esquivel. “The opportunity to fund what is a human right to have water in the state of California. Investments to 21st Century approach; it’s about the science, the jobs it creates, and about addressing what our stresses and anxieties are of the drought and challenges before us it brings.”

A total of $10.8 million was funded by the United States Army Corps of Engineers for construction of the wells and pipelines to bring the water into the facility. Other partnerships included California Department of Water Resources, United States Bureau of Reclamation, Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In total, $72 million was the cost of funding Perris II.

“One thing we’ve done with this facility is we’ve designed it and we’ve constructed the facility so that we can easily be expanded in the future,” remarked Mouawad on the possible future on Perris II.

“What I think is so tremendous about this project is its local supply,” said Jeff Armstrong of the EMWD Board of Directors. “So, we’re in the middle of a drought, our water supplies come from the Colorado River, they come from the state water system imported here, and so when you can create a local supply of water, especially at this volume, you’re kind of mitigating some of the impasse to droughts in those two systems. It’s a really innovative approach and a huge accomplishment not only our organization, but for the communities.”