Wednesday February 8, 2023
The Mendocino Voice —
The city of Ukiah has received a $53.7 million grant to expand its water recycling project across multiple schools and parks, enabling the city to offset 50% of its average water use with treated wastewater by fall of 2024.
Ukiah’s program falls under an overall goal by the State Water Resources Control Board to increase California’s use of recycled water, which according to the Volumetric Annual Report of Wastewater and Recycled Water stood at 731,586 acre-feet per year (afy) in 2021. Ukiah’s multimillion dollar grant and others like it aim to support dramatic capacity increases, with a goal of reaching 2.5 million afy of recycled water by 2030.
“It’s a lot of money to leverage into this little town, but we had a good vision,” Sean White, Ukiah’s director of water and sewer, told The Mendocino Voice in a phone conversation. “All the leadership here really pushed to have Phase 4 be shovel-ready, so when that money came around after or during COVID to get things going, we would be in a good position to take advantage of those opportunities.”