Orange County Water District Gets $2.8 Million for Wetlands Repair

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, California, January 11, 2006 (ENS) - Water quality for 2.3 million people in the communities south of Los Angeles from Anaheim to Huntington Beach is expected to be cleaner soon, now that funding is in place to restore a wetland damaged by last winter's storms.

The Orange County Water District was awarded $2.85 million as part of a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the state of California to help tackle some of the damage from the severe storms and flooding of last winter.

Included in the funding is $2.85 million that has been awarded to the Orange County Water District (OCWD). The District manages the large groundwater basin that underlies north central Orange County that provides most of the water for

The basin, larger than the largest reservoir in Southern California, sustained Orange County through the recent five-year drought.

District officials said they will put the grant funding to use in repairing and restoring the Prado Wetlands behind Prado Dam. When complete, the work will help to recharge the aquifer the provides drinking water for communities south of Los Angeles,

The Prado Wetlands in Chino, California is a free water surface constructed wetland consisting of 50 shallow ponds that treats about 70 percent of Santa Ana River water before its passage into Orange County, where it is used for groundwater recharge.

The Prado Wetlands that cleanse drinking water for Orange County were damaged in last winter's storms. (Photo courtesy California State Coastal Conservancy)

During last winter's storms, extremely high water levels caused debris and sediment to block the river adjacent to the wetland, causing the wetland to flood and facilities to be destroyed or severely damaged.

Crews must restore the river to a course that does not threaten the Prado wetlands, the district said Monday.

To restore the wetlands debris must be removed from the Santa Ana River. The job then will be to rebuild levees, install culverts, replace damaged canal gates, and remove 300,000 cubic yards of sediment and debris from the wetland ponds.

Accepting the grant, Phil Anthony, OCWD board president, thanked the entire Orange County Congressional Delegation, Congressman Miller, Calvert, Royce, Rohrabacher, Sanchez and Campbell, and California's two U.S. Senators, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, for "having the foresight to ensure Orange County’s water is of the highest quality."

"Rebuilding the wetlands is an important part of OCWD’s groundwater recharge system," said Anthony. "The wetlands provide natural treatment by removing unwanted nitrates from the Santa Ana River water before the water is percolated into the Orange County groundwater basin," he said.

A year long study to understand the changes in water chemistry and microbial composition of the wetlands as affected by different concentrations of plants per wetland pond was published in June 2005 by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and District scientists.

Describing the Santa Ana River as an effluent dominated body of water that receives natural mountain runoff and tertiary wastewater from municipalities in the Santa Ana River watershed, the study said the main function of the Prado Wetlands has been the removal of nitrate-nitrogen from the river through microbial and plant processes.

Lead author and microbiologist Mark Ibekwe Abasiofiok, with the U.S. Agriculture Department Plant Sciences Research branch in Riverside, California, says 11 species of bacteria were identified with DNA techniques.

The team found that ponds with 50 percent plant cover had as much as 99 percent nitrate removal. Bacteria bloom in the presence of high nitrate levels, so the District says this result means the sooner the storm damage to the Prado Wetlands is repaired the cleaner Orange County drinking water will be.

In a statement acknowledging the grant, the District said it is "committed to constantly improving Orange County’s groundwater quality and reliability in an environmentally friendly manner."

"With years of prudent planning and careful investment," the OCWD said it has "doubled the yield of the groundwater basin."

OCWD is a special district, separate from the County of Orange, that supplies to residents in the cities of Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Newport Beach, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Tustin, Villa Park, Westminster and Yorba Linda.