FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Orange County Water District (OCWD) recently finished the restoration of a new Green Acres Project reservoir that will store an extra 350 million gallons of water for the area.
The Green Acres Project is a water recycling effort that provides reclaimed water for landscape irrigation at parks, schools and golf courses as well as for industrial uses, such as carpet dying. The new reservoir, completed in June, allows the Green Acres Project to provide an additional 1,100 acre-feet per year (AFY) or 350 million gallons per year of recycled water for use in Orange County.
The reservoir provides the Green Acres Project with the additional storage required to operate the project around the clock and store excess water for peak demands during the night. Because most of the water is used at night for landscape irrigation, demands are low during the day.
Prior to the restoration of this reservoir, OCWD only had the capacity to store 1.3 million gallons of excess Green Acres Project water in an onsite underground reservoir at its headquarters in Fountain Valley. Additional new demands on the Green Acres Project will be forthcoming as future users complete their scheduled hookups. Some of these new users will be the Mile Square Golf Expansion, Bonita Creek Park, Eastbluff Park and the new IKEA site in Costa Mesa. After the addition of these new users, the total annual demand for Green Acres Project water will increase from 7,700 AFY to 8,800 AFY.
OCWD purchased the reservoir from the City of Santa Ana. Green Acres Project has the capacity to purify 7.5 million gallons per day of reclaimed water from the Orange County Sanitation District. The use of reclaimed water allows an equivalent amount of groundwater to be saved for household uses.
