North of the office buildings and urban sprawl of San Jose and Santa Clara, situated just south of the San Francisco Bay, one of California’s most innovative and exciting advancements in water supply technology sits in an unassuming industrial area. From the outside, the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center does not look to be anything different from the rest of the industrial facilities of the area. There’s a large tank, dozens of pipes and a large warehouse. For the average person driving by, it would be difficult to tell that this facility is the future of the South Bay’s drinking water supply.
Originally created to test the feasibility of recycled water as a drought-resistant water supply following California’s major droughts in the early 2010s, the purification center opened in July 2014. Costing $72 million, the state of the art purification center receives treated wastewater from the wastewater treatment facility across the street and purifies it to extremely high standards. The purification center uses a complex purification process of micro filtration, reverse osmosis and UV disinfection. The facility produces eight million gallons of purified water that meets California drinking water per day. All from wastewater!
For many people, thinking about the thought of drinking recycled water is a little frightening. That water was flushed down the toilet and is now safe to drink? It’s hard to believe, but the science actually shows us that the water from this facility may be even cleaner than the water from the tap! Water from this facility has a total dissolved solids (TDS) concentration of 40 mg/L. This is significantly lower than the average of 215 mg/L found in treated drinking water in Santa Clara County and even better than the recommended maximum of 500 mg/L for drinking water.
While this water is extremely clean, it is not approved for drinking purposes yet. Currently, the water produced at the purification center is blended with recycled water from the wastewater treatment plant and is used in the county’s purple pipe system. This water is often used for irrigation, industrial cooling, or other water using activities that do not require potable water. The water even is used on SCU’s campus! The vast majority of Santa Clara’s campus is irrigated with recycled water that comes from this purification center!
I was fortunate enough to be able to tour the facility in 2019 and would recommend anyone who has the chance to go check it out! In person tours are currently not available due to COVID-19, but you can find out up to date news on when they will reopen as well as Zoom tours here!